Individual Factors as Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing Practices among Students at a Malaysian Public University: A PLS-SEM Analysis

Knowledge sharing is widely acknowledged to be a key component of collaborative learning in higher education; however, the personal, dispositional drivers of this action are less thoroughly researched than their social, technological and institutional counterparts. This paper challenges and identifies the individual dimension of self-efficacy, attitude, intrinsic motivation and interpersonal trust as a predictor of knowledge sharing behaviour among students of a public university in Malaysia. Data were obtained from a convenience sample of 367 undergraduate and postgraduate students at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Puncak Perdana utilising a positivist, cross-sectional quantitative methodology using a structured, multilingual questionnaire. Descriptive and reliability tests were performed with IBM SPSS Statistics and measurement, and structural model assessments were conducted with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 4. The individual factors construct had an acceptable level of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.811; composite reliability = 0.859). The individual factors had a statistically significant positive effect on knowledge sharing practices (β = 0.314, t = 4.730, p <.001) which was the strongest predictor among the tested antecedents. There was a high level of confidence, attitudes, enjoyment and trust across the board, all falling within the “high” interpretive bracket of the study’s mean-score classification. The findings extend Social Cognitive Theory to the domain of student knowledge sharing and show interventions targeting self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation may have disproportionate returns compared to infrastructure or policy interventions alone. The paper discusses implications for theory, pedagogy and university policy, as well as limitations of the study and directions for further longitudinal and multi-institutional research.

knowledge sharing; individual factors; self-efficacy; intrinsic motivation; Social Cognitive Theory; higher education; PLS-SEM; Malaysia

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