Incorporating AI Literacy and AI Anxiety Into TAM: Unraveling Chinese Scholars’ Behavioral Intentions Toward Adopting AI-Assisted Literature Reading

The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence has brought about novel approaches and opportunities for scholars, especially those non-native English speakers, to read and process the enormous amount of literature. However, research on the utilization of AI in assisted literature reading is limited and requires further academic focus. This study incorporates AI literacy and AI anxiety into the technology acceptance model to explore the factors influencing Chinese scholars’ behavioral intention regarding AI-assisted literature reading. 368 graduate students and 259 faculty members from Hubei, China, participated in this study. Partial-least squares structural equation modeling was applied for hypothesis testing and multi-group analyses to explore in depth the differences in the relationships of the variables across groups. This study reveals that AI literacy and AI anxiety are important players in influencing Chinese scholars’ perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and behavioral intention in using AI-assisted literature reading. Further, this study found significant differences in these relationships across disciplines and social roles of scholars, which provides valuable insights into the application and development of AI in academic literature reading.