The pervasive integration of digital platforms into daily life has amplified their perceived indispensability. This study investigates the factors influencing this perception across countries with contrasting platform landscapes, focusing on platform quality and usage patterns. We conducted surveys in Finland and Korea, countries representing distinct platform ecosystems. The results revealed higher perceived indispensability in Korea than in Finland, with usefulness and habitual platform use emerging as significant predictors of indispensability in both countries. However, the specific aspects of platform quality influencing this perception diverged. In Finland, the platform’s comprehensiveness and security risk significantly impacted indispensability, while social interaction features played a negligible role. Conversely, in Korea, social interaction features significantly influenced indispensability, while platform comprehensiveness and security risk were non-significant. These findings underscore the multifaceted nature of digital platform indispensability, shaped by the interaction of platform quality and usage patterns. The contextual variations highlighted by our cross-country comparison suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to platform regulation or user education may be ineffective. Future research should explore these cultural and platform-specific nuances to devise tailored policies.

In response to the global COVID-19 situation, quarantine measures have been implemented at the educational institutions around the world. This paper aims to determine the antecedent factors predicting the university students’ satisfaction with e-learning systems during the COVID-19 situation. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) and evaluated a conceptual model on the basis of a sample of university students from Finland (n = 131) and South Korea (n = 114). The SEM results showed that the COVID-19 related factors, i.e., COVID-19 awareness, perceived challenges during COVID-19 and the educational institutions’ preparedness indirectly influence the satisfaction with e-learning systems. Moreover, we found a statistically significant moderating effect of course design quality, and instructor’s teaching style between the COVID-19 related factors and the satisfaction with e-learning systems. The implications of these results for the management of e‐learning systems are discussed.

Information and communications technology (ICT) and digital technologies are being actively used for education, and the ICT-enabled education market continues to grow. The recent COVID-19 pandemic situation is undoubtedly very stressful, because all teaching and learning activities have been forced to move online. This is an international comparative study examining the effects of 21st century skills (e.g., digital and information literacy) on intention to use digital technologies for learning in Korea and in Finland. To conduct a rigorous comparison of the two countries, this paper conducts an empirical study on 194 Korean and 192 Finnish young people in their 20s and 30s. A theory-based conceptual model is devised to examine the differences between Korean and Finnish respondents’ ICT usage using Structural equation modelling (SEM). The SEM results showed that information literacy has a direct effect on the intention to use digital technologies for learning in Korea and Finland. The higher information literacy is directly related to higher intention to use digital technology for learning with a small effect. The effect of digital literacy on intention to use technologies is fully mediated through the habit and performance expectancy with a medium effect. In addition, this study used multigroup analysis (MGA) to examine whether the impact of digital literacy and information literacy on intention to use digital technology for learning differed between Korean and Finnish respondents. Based on these results, recommendations for prospect research and theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Higher education institutions have increasingly been challenged in providing their core services of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. As such, many higher education institutions, if not all, have shifted towards distance learning and e-learning using learning management systems. In this paper, based on a comparative study among Finnish and South Korean university students, we aim to investigate students' level of satisfaction with e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on a data set of 256 students from Finland and South Korea, the results of structural equation modelling (SEM) showed that all three of the COVID-19-related factors explored had a significant effect on students' level of satisfaction with e-learning. In addition, the SEM results showed that students' level of satisfaction with e-learning systems is affected by the level of students' information literacy skills as well as the information technology (quality and accessibility) used to access the e-learning systems. We also found interesting differences between Finnish and South Korean students, from the perspective of path model analysis. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Digitalisation impacts in the higher education environment and specifically on using digital technologies for learning purposes has increasingly changed such activities. In an informationbased society, where individuals are overloaded with the sheer amount of information and digital tools and devices, literacy skills of an individual play an important role in how activities are being executed. In this paper, we aim to investigate how information and digital literacy of university students impact their decisions to use digital technology for learning. As such, an extension of the UTAUT model is applied on a dataset comprising of 194 and 192 young Korean and Finnish people in their 20s and 30s. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) results show distinct differences between young Korean and Finnish people in multiple path relationships. For example, while digital literacy has no direct impact on the intention to use technology for learning for Finnish people, this path is significant for the Korean people. Based on this, recommendations for prospect research in adopting the proposed model are outlined and theoretical and practical implications are discussed.