How Does the Pandemic Facilitate Mobile Payment? An Investigation on Users’ Perspective under the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Owing to the convenience, reliability and contact-free feature of Mobile payment (M-payment), it has been diffusely adopted in China during the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce the direct and indirect contacts in transactions, allowing social distancing to be maintained and facilitating stabilization of the social economy. This paper aims to comprehensively investigate the technological and mental factors affecting users’ adoption intentions of M-payment under the COVID-19 pandemic, to expand the domain of technology adoption under the emergency situation. This study integrated Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with perceived benefits from Mental Accounting Theory (MAT), and two additional variables (perceived security and trust) to investigate 739 smartphone users’ adoption intentions of M-payment during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The empirical results showed that users’ technological and mental perceptions conjointly influence their adoption intentions of M-payment during the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein perceived benefits are significantly determined by social influence and trust, corresponding with the situation of pandemic. This study initially integrated UTAUT with MAT to develop the theoretical framework for investigating users’ adoption intentions. Meanwhile, this study originally investigated the antecedents of M-payment adoption under the pandemic situation and indicated that users’ perceptions will be positively influenced when technology’s specific characteristics can benefit a particular situation.

Social Distancing, Health Concerns, and Digitally Empowered Consumption Behavior Under COVID-19: A Study on Livestream Shopping Technology

“…All of the items were developed based on previous research and the opinions of relevant experts and academics to ensure they were valid. Each construct was measured using four items each from the following sources: perceived susceptibility from Yuen et al ( 7 ) and Huang et al ( 31 ); perceived severity from Huang et al ( 31 ); perceived benefits from Zhao and Bacao ( 8 ) and Park et al ( 57 ); perceived barriers from Huang et al ( 31 ), Zhao and An ( 24 ), Jensen et al ( 58 ), and Wang et al ( 59 ); trust from Zhao and Bacao ( 8 ); attitude from Chatzisarantis et al ( 60 ); and behavioral intention from Ma ( 2 ) and Yuen et al ( 7 ). A five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 = “strongly agree” was used to evaluate these items.…”

“…Globally, COVID-19 remains one of the most serious threats to public health despite the recent development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines (6)(7)(8). From May 24 to May 30, 2021, the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to decrease, with over 3.5 million new cases and 78,000 new deaths reported globally.…”

Fear of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Social Distancing as Factors Determining the Change in Consumer Payment Behavior at Retail and Service Outlets

“…Data reported by the online payment operator PayPal on rising revenue and the number of registered transactions may serve as a measure of the change in consumer payment behavior on a global scale, indicating the increasing importance of e-commerce [38,39]. The change in consumer payment behavior has been not only analyzed in the context of cashless payments [40], but also has been analyzed from the viewpoint of its impact on the economy. Bounie et al [41] showed that the increased importance of e-commerce has reduced the shock caused by the pandemic in some sectors of the French economy.…”

The Determinants of PayTech’s Success in the Mobile Payment Market—The Case of BLIK

“…In this case, the majority of studies focuses on innovation drivers and barriers of adoption, as well as on the relationship between mobile innovations and their impact on regions, financial inclusion, customers' well-being (Nejad 2016 1 ;Weichert 2017;Górka 2018;Szumski 2020;Tang et al 2021). In the case of payment innovations, the extant literature characterizes particular types of new developments: e-wallets (Górka 2016;Yang et al 2021;Daragmeh et al 2021), online and mobile payments (Li et al 2020;Hwang et al 2021;Zhao and Bacao 2021) and digital currencies (Goodell et al 2021;Civelek et al 2021). These analyses are conducted mostly for selected countries or geographical locations, as cultural and demographic factors are important drivers of innovation adoption.…”