The role of emotions and basic psychological needs in pre-service teachers' intention to use information technologies: A motivational approach to the acceptance of technology

The aim of this study is to examine the variables that influence the pre-service teachers' acceptance of technology with a motivational approach in the context of basic psychological needs and emotions, to evaluate relationships between variables with a model proposal, to examine the role of individual differences in relationships, and to determine the predictive power of the model. For this purpose, Information Technologies Acceptance Scale, Information Technologies Emotion Scale and a technology acceptance model for the intention to use information technologies in education were developed. The participants of the study consisted of pre-service teachers studying in 10 different departments of Anadolu University Faculty of Education. During the scale development phase, data were collected from 1087 pre-service teachers in four stages, and from 591 pre-service teachers in the model development process. SPSS 23, AMOS 21 and SmartPLS 3 programs were used in the analysis of the study. As a result of the factor analysis, IT Acceptance Scale consisting of 6 factors and 27 items, and IT Emotion Scale consisting of 4 factors and 14 items were developed. Structural equation modeling results showed that the 10-construct model explained 78.7% of perceived usefulness, 83.2% of perceived ease of use and 79.8% of intention, and 13 of the 17 hypotheses were supported. Analyzes on the predictive power of the model revealed that the predictive power of the model was high. The results indicate that the model provides an effective tool that has high explanation and predictive power, offers a motivational perspective on the psychological needs and emotions of pre-service teachers, and can be used in the field of education for both during and after the pandemic.