The Determinants of Electronic Textbook Use Among College Students

Abstract

Electronic books are a fast-growing component of the publishing industry. Sales of electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) are growing, but at a slower rate. In this research, we use data from an undergraduate college student survey to estimate the determinants of e-textbook use. Students who are younger, lower-income, and graduated from larger high schools are more likely to use e-textbooks. Furthermore, e-textbooks are more likely to be used by students in technically-oriented fields, especially in business, where electronic materials are often required. An environment of continued growth in student technical competence with information technology, continued increases in college cost and a reduction in professor resistance to e-textbooks would bode well for growth in their use.

The paper slip should be there!

“…Two domains with recent examples are education [4] and microfinance [6]. Like in other applications, we find user preferences to be mixed in our context as well: some prefer paper, some digital.…”

“…But such techniques are not scalable and will not work for systems like Eko, which are operator-agnostic. 4 Second, it is important to note that reliability was just one factor that was driving users towards the use of paper and attributes like accessibility and tangibility are hard to achieve in digital receipts, in general. From a pragmatic perspective, a combination of paper and digital is likely to work better than digital alone.…”

Užívání tištěných a digitálních zdrojů v práci učitelů 2. stupně ZŠ: hybridizace a remixování

“…Zdroje využívající nové technologie se označují jako digitální (digital resources/textbooks/texts, např. Jung & Lim, 2009;Rodríguez, Bruillard, & Horsley, 2015), elektronické (electronic, Chulkov & Van Alstine, 2013;Miller, Nutting, & Baker-Eveleth, 2012) nebo zjednodušeně jako e-učebnice, e-zdroje (e-textbooks, e-resources, např. Dobler, 2015).…”

Instructors’ Perceptions and Experiences Re: Creating and Implementing Customized E-Texts in Education Courses

“…Multiple higher education institutions including the University of Liverpool (Barker, 2015), University of Idaho, Northwest Missouri State University, and for-profit entities like the University of Phoenix have been experimenting with e-text programs (Miller, Nutting, & Baker-Eveleth, 2013). The rise of e-texts has been accompanied by the decline of traditional print media, as well-known brick-and-mortar bookstores declare bankruptcy and shut their doors after losing millions of dollars (Ditmyer, et al, 2012), and prestigious print newspapers either downsize or go out of business entirely (Miller, et al, 2013).…”