Page 650 - ISC PROCEEDINGS 21.4

Table 4. SmartPLS hypothesis summary
Hypothesis Relationship Decision

Perceived Ease of Use → Perceived
H1 Supported
Usefulness
H2 Perceived Usefulness → Attitude Supported
H3 Perceived Ease of Use → Attitude Supported

H4 Attitude → Behavioral Intention Supported
Social Influence → Behavioral
H5 Supported
Intention
H6 Trust → Behavioral Intention Supported

H7 AI Literacy → Perceived Usefulness Supported

H8 Behavioral Intention → Actual Use Supported

5. Discussion
The present study results offer good empirical evidence of the extended Technology
Assistance Model (TAM) to explain the adoption of generative artificial intelligence tools
by the students within a digital learning setting. As expected in the initial TAM
assumptions, it was found that perceived ease of use has a significant impact on
perceived usefulness, and therefore when students believe that generative AI tools are
simple to use, they have a higher chance of understanding its academic usefulness. This
result is consistent with the existing literature on the adoption of AI in higher education,
which highlights usability having a crucial role in the perceptions of usefulness (Saif et al.,
2024; Kanont et al., 2024).
On the same note, perceived usefulness was statistically significantly positively
related to the attitudes of students, which indicated that the perceived capability of
generative AI to increase productivity, academic achievement, and learning efficiency is
an influential factor of favorable attitudes. This finding aligns with previous TAM-related
research in the area of educational technology and generative AI use (Zhang and Zhao,
2024; Li and Wong, 2025).
Furthermore, it can be seen that the attitude, social influence, and trust can be used
to predict behavioral intention to use generative AI tools significantly. Among them,
attitude was the most important predictor, and it is necessary to point out the fact that
overall positive opinion of students towards AI technologies plays an important role in
determining the decision to adopt them. The high impact of social influence also suggests
that peer encouragement, instructor support, and institutional acceptance can
significantly help students to increase their intention to use AI-based learning tools, which
is also consistent with the previous technology adoption literature (Ursavaş and Yildirim,
2025; Wang and Li, 2025). Moreover, the importance of trust in AI systems was also
identified as a decisive factor, and the relationships between trust and generative AI
adoption are stronger with the consideration of the systems being seen as reliable,
credible, and accurate (Ibrahim and Ali, 2025; Fel and Osman, 2025).
One of the findings is the fact that AI literacy plays an important role in increasing
perceived usefulness. This is an indication that the students who have a higher level of AI-

649