Acceptance of a mobile-based educational application (LabSafety) by pharmacy students: An application of the UTAUT2 model Arefeh Ameri 1 & Reza Khajouei 2 & Alieh Ameri 3 & Yunes Jahani 4,5 Received: 13 March 2019 /Accepted: 3 July 2019/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Several cultural and psychological factors can affect the behavior of users towards the use and acceptance of mobile-based educational applications. One of the methods to measure the factors resulting in the acceptance of mobile-based educational applications is Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The objective of this study was to evaluate the behavioral intention of the pharmacy students for acceptance and long-term use of the mobile-based application for educating safety measures in pharmaceutical laboratories (LabSafety) using UTAUT2 in 2017–2018. The research population was all pharmacy students (n = 241) who had experience of using the LabSafety application. Data were collected using a translated and modified version of the UTAUT2 questionnaire. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used for statistical analysis. Based on the obtained results, “Perfor- mance Expectancy”, “Social Influence” and “Habit” had positive effects on “Behavioral Intention”. “Behavioral Intention” had significant positive effects on “Use Behavior”. The effect of “Habit” on “Use Behavior” in men was higher than women. As a result, the usefulness of educational applications such as LabSafety, their positive impact on the improvement of students’ efficiency, and the influence of the faculty member’ view- points on their use can result in frequent and daily use of these applications. Keywords Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use Technology (UTAUT) . Technology acceptance . Mobile application . Educational technology . Pharmacy education 1 Introduction Currently, the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at universities has changed traditional education methods into technology-based education Education and Information Technologies https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-09965-5 * Reza Khajouei r.khajouei@yahoo.com; r.khajouei@kmu.ac.ir Extended author information available on the last page of the article