Continuance Usage Intention toward E-Payment during the COVID-19 Pandemic from the Financial Sustainable Development Perspective Using Perceived Usefulness and Electronic Word of Mouth as Mediators

Abstract

Digital transformation is essential to financial sustainable development. Since the beginning of 2020, the whole world has been under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated the pace of financial digitization. According to the perceived usefulness of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the perceived seriousness of the health belief model (HBM), this study developed and explored the theoretical framework of consumers’ continuance usage intention toward e-payment. A questionnaire survey was conducted to explore this continuance usage intention among consumers who have used e-payment in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a total of 387 valid samples. The overall model was analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM). The empirical results showed that the security, perceived seriousness, and perceived usefulness of e-payment significantly affect electronic word of mouth (eWOM), while the security and perceived seriousness of e-payment have a significant effect on continuance usage intention through perceived usefulness and eWOM. During the COVID-19 pandemic, e-payment providers should encourage consumers to use e-payment via eWOM, perceived usefulness, and consumers’ perceived health seriousness and should improve the use efficiency of e-payment through e-payment financial services, thus encouraging consumers’ continuance usage intention toward e-payment.

Generation Z Cashless Preferences in the Post Covid-19 Pandemic Era: Identifying the Continuity of Digital Payment Usage

“…Previous research fromChaveesuk et al (2022),Liu et al (2022), andRawashdeh et al (2021) confirmed that perceived usefulness does not influence the intention of continuity of use.While H8 is accepted, satisfaction significantly affects continuity intentions with tstatistic results of 6.006 and a p-value of 0.000. It shows that user satisfaction with digital…”

How does platform's fintech level affect its word of mouth from the perspective of user psychology?

“…Roy et al ( 2017 ) also found that the platform's fintech application increased user satisfaction and WOM in the retail industry. Similarly, Liu et al ( 2022 ) found that electronic payment services, one of the significant fintech, could increase the perceived usefulness and payment efficiency of users, thereby increasing the WOM of financial platforms. On the other hand, existing research has explored the driving influence factors in the process of fintech's influence on WOM.…”

Investigating M-Payment Intention across Consumer Cohorts

“…This component explains how personal and environmental factors interact to predict individual action. In prior research within the realm of technology adoption, scholarly inquiries commonly integrate various behavioral intentions, encompassing aspects such as word-ofmouth intention, e.g., [59][60][61], online purchase intention, e.g., [62], or continuance usage intention, e.g., [59]. Consequently, behavioral intention can be categorized as the degree of an individual's anticipation to execute a certain action [26,63].…”

“…The surplus of benefits over costs is integral to shaping the overall perceived value [47]. While other studies have explored the impact of perceived benefits and costs on behavioral intention [59,60], this study specifically focuses on examining perceived value. Within this concept, consumers have meticulously evaluated the benefits in relation to the sacrifices.…”

“…In addition, it is noteworthy that concurrently incorporating both benefits and sacrifices in the same model may yield non-significant results, e.g., [14,45,48]. For instance, in the study of Liu, Lin, and Hsu [59], perceived usefulness from TAM and perceived seriousness from the health belief model (HBM) were operationalized as perceived benefits and costs, respectively, in the context of behavioral intention toward continued e-payment usage and no significant results were found. However, based on this line of argument and our prior discussion on SCT that technological self-efficacy will affect both the psychological state and behavior response of consumers in m-payment intention, the following hypotheses are formulated: H2.…”