What leads students to adopt information from Wikipedia? An empirical investigation into the role of trust and information usefulness

Abstract

With the prevalence of the Internet, it has become increasingly easy and common for students to seek information from various online sources. Wikipedia is one of the largest and most popular reference websites that university students may heavily rely on in completing their assignments and other course-related projects. Based on the information adoption model, this study empirically examines the effects of trust and information usefulness on Hong Kong students’ information adoption from Wikipedia. We conducted an online survey and analysed the responses using partial least squares. Overall, the model explained 69.4% of the variance in information adoption, 59.1% of the variance in trust and 62.7% of the variance in information usefulness. Interestingly, deviating significantly from the information adoption model, trust played a major role in determining information adoption and fully mediated the relationship between information usefulness and information adoption. The implications of this study will provide important insights to both researchers and practitioners.