Adopting Smart Campus in Iraqi HEIs: a UTAUT and KM perspective

Abstract

Smart campus initiatives connect teaching, research and administrative services, but Iraqi academics’ acceptance remains underexplored. This study examines how technology acceptance and knowledge management relate to teaching staff members’ behavioural intention to adopt smart campus technologies. An integrated model combines four constructs from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology - performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions - with knowledge generation, knowledge storage and sharing, and knowledge application. Data were collected between March and July 2024 through an emailed Google Forms questionnaire completed by a convenience sample of professors, assistant professors and lecturers at the public Universities of Baghdad, Mosul and Basrah. The proposed relationships were assessed using partial least squares structural equation modelling in SmartPLS 3.9. All seven paths to behavioural intention were positive and statistically significant (p < 0.001). Knowledge application had the largest estimated coefficient (β = 0.370), followed by knowledge storage and sharing (β = 0.323). Among the technology acceptance factors, facilitating conditions had the largest coefficient (β = 0.265). Together, the predictors explained 52.6% of the variance in behavioural intention; Q²_predict (0.498) indicated improvement over a naïve mean-prediction benchmark. The findings suggest that academics assess smart campus technologies partly through their expected contribution to using and exchanging knowledge, alongside usability and institutional support. Universities can use these insights to design services around academic tasks and strengthen practical support.