Consumer acceptance of mobile payment across time. Antecedents and moderating role of diffusion stages
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-08-2016-0312 |
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| Pages | 1761-1776 |
| Author | Jinnan Wu,Lin Liu,Lihua Huang |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
Consumer acceptance of mobile
payment across time
Antecedents and moderating role
of diffusion stages
Jinnan Wu and Lin Liu
Anhui University of Technology, Maanshan, China, and
Lihua Huang
School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Abstract
Purpose –Although perceived risk and usefulness have been identified as two major factors that influence
consumer acceptance of an innovative mobile payment (m-payment), relatively few researchers have explored
the impact of affective factors on perceived risk and usefulness, and the relationship between perceived risk
and usefulness. Also, it is unclear whether there is a difference in the acceptance intention among users across
different diffusion stages of this innovation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of positive
emotion in consumer acceptance of WeChat payment across time.
Design/methodology/approach –This study proposed and validated a framework integrating the
consumer response system model and the affect heuristic. A total of 484 valid responses were collected
through two online surveys at two diffusion stages of WeChat payment technology. The structural equation
modeling and multigroup analysis were used to test the hypotheses.
Findings –The results show that users’acceptance intention is relatively related to perceived risk, perceived
usefulness, and positive emotion. Positive emotion has a strong negative impact on perceived risk and a
positive impact on perceived usefulness. Also, perceived usefulness strongly decreases users’perception of
risk. Multigroup analyses find that both positive emotion and perceived risk have significant positive and
negative impacts on acceptance intention at the stage of market introduction rather than market growth.
Rather, the influence of positive usefulness on acceptance intention is significantly higher at the stage of
market growth than at market introduction.
Originality/value –This study indicates that exploring the role of positive emotion and the moderating
effect of diffusion stages in m-payment acceptance provides a more comprehensive understanding of how to
achieve a greater acceptance rate of an innovative m-payment.
Keywords Perceived risk, Mobile payment, Affect heuristic, Diffusion stages, Positive emotion,
WeChat payment
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The fast advancement of communications, mobile technologies, and the proliferation of
mobile devices has increased the importance of mobile payment (m-payment) services for
users (Baptista and Oliveira, 2015). Although m-payment presents convenience, ubiquity,
and time-saving for consumers, it is not always readily accepted or used by consumers.
Despite embracing the most important m-payment market in the world, China’s users have
not readily accepted or used m-payment since this service was introduced to China. It was
reported that over 71 percent of Chinese users visiting the internet with a mobile phone
never used m-payment and that only 6.3 percent of this population frequently used
m-payment service (iiMedia, 2013). Due to the increasing importance of m-payment,
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 117 No. 8, 2017
pp. 1761-1776
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-08-2016-0312
Received 6 August 2016
Revised 7 February 2017
Accepted 15 February 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71371013, 71302140,
and 71471079), the Humanity and Social Science Key Foundation of Education Committee of Anhui
province (SK2016A0151), the Philosophical and Social Science Foundation of Anhui Province
(AHSKY2016D16), and the Support Program for University Excellent Young Talents in Anhui Province.
1761
Consumer
acceptance of
m-payment
researchers should comprehensively understand the reasons why some people tend to favor
using an innovative m-payment and why others are yet reluctant to use it.
Several factors may explain the acceptance or resistance of consumers to use m-payment.
Extant studies have identified the influences of positive (e.g. perceived ease of use, perceived
usefulness, trust, flow, satisfaction, compatibility, relative advantage, and network externalities)
and negative (e.g. need for interaction, perceived risk, and cost) factors on consumer behavior
intention for m-payment (Hanafizadeh et al., 2014; Liébana-Cabanillas et al., 2014; Qasim and
Abu-Shanab, 2016; Schierz et al., 2010; Yang, Pang, Liu, Yen and Michael Tarn, 2015; Yang,
Liu, Li and Yu, 2015; Zhou, 2013). Among these studies, perceived usefulness and risk are two
main positive and negative factors widely investigated in m-payment acceptance literature,
leaving affective factors or the feelings of users relatively unexplored (Dahlberg et al., 2015).
Some researchers examined the impacts of affective factors on consumer behavior in online
shopping (Koo et al., 2014); others investigated how affectivefactorsinfluencemobileappuse
and continuance intention (Ding and Chai, 2015; Hew et al., 2015). However, our review of this
body of work revealed that few studies examined factors mediating the relationship between
positive emotion and behavior intention. Even fewer studies identified factorst hat moderate the
effect of positive emotion on behavior intention, with the exception of Venkatesh et al. (2012) and
Hew et al. (2015). They examined the moderating effects of individual differences, namely,
age, gender, experience, and education, on the relation between hedonic motivation and behavior
intention to accept and use technology (Hew et al.,2015;Venkateshetal.,2012).Thereisstillthe
need for theorizing of other factors that would moderate the emotion-intention relation.
Further, although perceived usefulness and risk have been identified as two major
factors for predicting m-payment acceptance, little is known about the interaction between
perceived risk and perceived usefulness and their relative impact on acceptance intention.
Also, prior research has not adequately addressed the moderating role of IT diffusion stages
in risk-intention and usefulness-intention relationships. These gaps pose the following
important questions: How do perceived risk, perceived usefulness and positive emotion
relatively influence the acceptance of consumers to use an innovative m-payment that is
characterized with greater risk and more unknowns? Does positive emotion have an indirect
impact on acceptance behavior by reducing users’perception of risk and increasing
perceived usefulness to such an innovation? We argue that an in-depth analysis of these
questions can improve our understanding of consumers’acceptance and usage of
m-payment as well as other new technology in consumer context, and offer clear benefits to
online service providers.
In addition, most studies on m-payments acceptance or adoption were conducted after
these technologies were adopted in the target market (Schierz et al., 2010; Yang et al., 2012).
However, the relationship between behavior intention and its determinants may not be the
same for initial adoption of an innovative m-payment service. Also, the degree of influence
may differ (Karahanna et al., 1999). Innovation diffusion is the process by which an
innovation is communicated over a period of time, suggesting how an innovation spreads
(Rogers, 2003). People who adopt an innovation early (such as at the market introduction
stage) have different characteristics than those who adopt an innovation later (such as at the
market growth stage) (Di Pietro et al., 2015). Yang’set al. (2012) work enhanced our
understanding of m-payment adoption for potential and current users. However, they
examined the impact of cognitive factors on adoption outcomes with two data sets collected
during the same period rather than at different diffusion stages. Moreover, as far as we
know there is no study to investigate the moderating effect of IT diffusion stages on the
relationship between positive emotion and acceptance or use of an innovative technology.
This motivates us to ask: Do the impacts of perceived usefulness, perceived risk, and
positive emotion on users’acceptance of an innovative m-payment system differ at different
diffusion stages of such an innovation?
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