Empowered or Constrained? Digital Agency, Ethical Implications, and Students' Intentions to Use Artificial...

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Digital Agency Theory

Background:

• Understanding student intentions to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) is crucial for educational technology adoption.
• Existing frameworks like expectancy-value and self-regulated learning offer insights but may not fully capture the role of agency.
• Digital agency theory provides a lens to examine how students perceive their control and influence in digital environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the complex relationship between students' sense of agency and their intention to use AI.
• To test a moderated mediation model where sense of positive agency (SOPA) influences AI intention through perceived value and benefits, moderated by sense of negative agency (SONA).
• To elucidate the conditional pathways through which different agency orientations shape AI adoption intentions.

Main Methods:

• A quantitative study involving 673 university students.
• Utilized conditional process analysis (PROCESS Model 59) to examine moderated mediation.
• Measured sense of positive agency (SOPA), sense of negative agency (SONA), perceived value, perceived benefits, and intention to use AI.

Main Results:

• Sense of positive agency (SOPA) did not directly predict AI intention; its effect was fully indirect and conditional.
• SOPA influenced perceived value and benefits only at moderate to high levels of sense of negative agency (SONA).
• Perceived value strongly predicted AI intention, with this effect amplified by higher SONA; perceived benefits' influence weakened and became non-significant as SONA increased.

Conclusions:

• AI adoption intentions are shaped by a conditional appraisal mechanism influenced by perceived agency.
• As negative agency perceptions rise, perceived value becomes a more potent driver of AI intention, while perceived benefits lose motivational impact.
• Findings support an agency-aware perspective on AI adoption, highlighting the interplay of cognitive appraisals and agency orientations.