Understanding accounting students’ intentions to use digital badges to showcase employability skills

By incorporating employability skills within the accounting curriculum, universities face the issue of how best to recognise students’ achievements. Digital badges are emerging as a potential means to recognise such achievements. Being shareable on social media sites, such as LinkedIn, and on other platforms, badges allow students to showcase their attainment of employability skills to potential employers. As student acceptance is a prerequisite to the success of this technology, this exploratory study examines accounting students’ perceptions of badge usefulness and ease of use, and whether these influence their intentions to use them for job applications. We also examine factors that contribute to these perceptions. A survey is undertaken of accounting students within a single university. Results suggest that both subjective norm and perceived usefulness directly influence intentions, while job application relevance and perceptions of external control have important indirect effects. Implications for universities are discussed and future research opportunities identified.