Towards a Cashless Society: The Effects of Perceived Convenience and Security on Gamified Mobile Payment Platform Adoption

Integrating gamification into mobile payment platform incentivizes people to use digital alternatives for payment and could spur user-centric, platform-mediated interactions. This study examines the relationship between perceived convenience and perceived security on individual users’ intention to use a gamified mobile payment platform in Malaysia; a developing country envisioned to build a cashless society. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique is employed on a final sample of 388 online users. The results show that perceived convenience has a strong but indirect effect on the intention to use. Perceived security has a strong and direct effect on intention to use and mediates the relationship between perceived convenience and intention to use. Furthermore, the reliability aspect of security is a top priority concern for users interested in using mobile payment. The multi-functional aspect of convenience is a top priority concern to attract users who are not interested in using mobile payment at first. The study discusses theoretical and practical implications for developing a dual strategy of ‘ensuring convenience’ and ‘assuring security’ to encourage the gamified mobile payment platform adoption in developing countries.

Effect of barrier related factors on perceived usefulness and ease of use of social media applications in the Australian healthcare sector

Despite the growing popularity of social media internationally, an extant review of the literature revealed a low rate of social media usage among healthcare professionals. While cynicism amongst healthcare professionals might be a reason, there might be other factors that could explain healthcare professionals’ reluctance to use social media in their practices. This research investigated potential barriers that affected healthcare professionals’ behavioural intention to use social media. A cross-sectional survey was randomly administered to 824 healthcare professionals working in Australian healthcare organisations. At the end of data collection, 219 usable responses were collected. Analysis of data via structural equation model (SEM) found that perceived trust, privacy threats, professional boundary, facilitating conditions and self-efficacy significantly influence the notion of perceived usefulness and ease of use. In addition, information quality directly influences health professionals’ perceived ease of utilising social media technology. The result also indicated that gender moderates the relationship between barrier-related factors and perceived usefulness and ease of use. This study’s findings have important implications for healthcare providers and policymakers regarding medical professionals’ perceptions of the potential challenges in using social media as well as developing strategies to counter misinformation against the backdrop of COVID-19.

Understanding the Perception of Information System Niche: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Validation

The number of niche technologies is growing, and they are getting noticed. However, the usage dynamics of such systems have not been explored. This study introduces the “niche” information systems (IS) construct to differentiate between mainstream and niche technologies and to illustrate how such differences potentially influence a person’s IS usage behavior. We posit that niche-ness is perceptual, and a measurement to gauge an individual’s niche perception in the domain of systems usage is desired. Resting on Optimal Distinctiveness theory, the study develops a novel conceptualization and operationalization of niche technology perceptions, focusing on social networking systems. Our main contribution includes the examination of the typology of the perceived niche, which results in the development and validation of an eight-item instrument for perceived technology niche through three studies. In addition, by placing the construct in a nomological network in a fourth study, we demonstrate that the perceived technology niche construct is related to IS continuance intention.

Trust Types and Mediating Effect of Consumer Trust in m-payment Adoption: An empirical Examination of Vietnamese Consumers

This study employs a quantitative method to investigate different types of trust in m-payment adoption. It aims to overcome the limitation of previous studies which are lack of differentiating trust types and investigating any mediating effect to m-payment adoption. Data of the study was collected in Vietnam, one of fastest growing m-payment usage markets globally in 2019. The research found significant and positive impacts of m-payment provider trust, institution-based trust, and seller trust on the overall consumer trust, which then fully mediates the relationships of three trust types and m-payment adoption. The study also revealed that technology trust is embedded in m-payment provider trust, suggesting that the m-payment provider is considered fully responsible for ensuring technology protection from the perspective of the m-payment consumers. The results enable researchers to better understand trust characteristics in m-payment adoption as well as technology adoption in general. In addition, the findings are beneficial to practitioners such as policy makers, consultants, and m-payment service providers to improve different elements of consumer trust, leading to higher m-payment adoption.

Health Seekers’ Acceptance and Adoption Determinants of Telemedicine in Emerging Economies

This study investigates health seekers’ acceptance and adoption determinants of telemedicine services in a rural public hospital setting in an emerging economy using an adapted, extended Technology Acceptance Model. The present study pursued synthesising a plethora of existing literature and contextualised the significance of seven broad categories of potential determinants that significantly affect patients’ acceptance and adoption intentions: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, self-efficacy, service quality, privacy and data security, social influence, and facilitating conditions. The partial least square structural equation modeling technique was employed to test the conceptual model and research hypotheses. A cross-sectional survey was administered among 500 telemedicine users in randomly selected rural and remote areas of Bangladesh. Excluding self-efficacy and ease of use, five determinants expressively contributed to patients’ acceptance of telemedicine adoption, explaining 65% of the variance (R2) in behavioural Intention. The empirical findings have the quality of rigour obtained from rich data sets in health informatics and can contribute to build telemedicine into an institutionalised health infrastructure in Bangladesh and similar settings. Pertinent implications, limitations and future research directions were recommended to secure the long-term sustainability of telemedicine healthcare projects.

E-governance using mobile applications: A case study of India during the COVID-19 pandemic

Healthcare initiatives backed by electronic-governance (e-governance) principles have contributed well to the extant literature and practice. Governments and healthcare systems across the world were taken aback by the swamping impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they reacted quickly by developing contact-tracing mobile applications (apps) for creating awareness, providing information about various healthcare initiatives, and helping citizens to use the required information in case of emergency. The major challenge was to develop such e-governance interventions in a short time and ensure their quick adoption among the masses. Hence, it is worthwhile to investigate the factors leading to the adoption of such e-governance initiatives, especially in the context of a widespread pandemic situation. The present study is an attempt to analyze the factors driving the intention to use contact tracing mobile apps launched by governments globally during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have conducted the study in the context of India, where the government launched a community-driven contact tracing mobile app for its citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. The study adopted an empirical approach to test how epistemic value, convenience value, conditional value, functional value, and privacy concerns influenced the intention to use this approach. The study found that intention to use such an app was positively influenced by functional value, which in turn was positively influenced by convenience and conditional values. It suggests that the convenience of using the app, perceived seriousness of the pandemic (i.e., conditional value), and utilitarian benefits (i.e., functional value) of the contact-tracing mobile app enhanced its acceptance. However, its novelty (i.e., epistemic value) and privacy concerns are not significant predictors of intention to use. The study recommends that the government should place more emphasis on improving the functional value which is driven by convenience and context-specific features to push the use of an e-governance initiative during the crisis.

Why have consumers opposed, postponed, and rejected Innovations during a pandemic? A Study of mobile payment Innovations

The highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 virus has made the use of contactless payment methods a health exigency. Yet, consumers are resisting using mobile payments (m-payments) during the pandemic, a confounding behavior that needs to be better understood. The present study explicates this behavior by examining consumer resistance to m-payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, it provides more granular findings by measuring three levels of resistance/non-adoption, namely, postponement, opposition, and rejection. In this way, the study adds depth to the literature, which has largely examined resistance at an aggregate level to yield generic findings. Toward this end, the study draws upon the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) to propose that usage, value, risk, tradition, and image barriers influence the three levels of resistance/non-adoption differently. An artificial neural network analysis (ANN) of the data collected from 406 non-users of m-payments confirmed that the influence of the five barriers varies for the three levels of resistance/non-adoption. The results further suggest that the usage barrier is the most significant contributor to opposition and rejection intentions toward m-payments, whereas the image barrier is the most influential for postponement intentions. This study thus makes a useful contribution to theory and practice.

Interactive app-based services: Recovery evaluations and the mediating role of satisfaction in the relationship between customer-brand engagement and electronic word of mouth

Based on the theory of co-creation and resource-based theory, this study examines the differential impact of varying levels of customer participation in service recovery (firm, customer, and joint) on recovery satisfaction, customer-brand engagement (CBE), and electronic-word of mouth (e-WoM). Besides, using social exchange theory, this study examines the mediating role of consumers’ recovery satisfaction in the relationship between the types of service recovery and electronic word of mouth (e-WoM). The data to accomplish the research objectives was collected from 495 customers of interactive food delivery apps in India. The experimental design was used to collect the data. The multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and PROCESS macro techniques were used to test the hypotheses. The findings suggest that joint recovery results in better recovery evaluations such as CBE, recovery satisfaction, and e-WoM. Also, recovery satisfaction mediated the relationship between CBE and e-WoM. These findings provide empirical evidence for the linkages among the theory of co-creation, resource-based theory, and social exchange theory. The marketers of interactive food delivery apps may use these findings to ascertain which recovery type they should emphasize to improve recovery satisfaction. Moreover, they are encouraged to take steps for improving recovery satisfaction as CBE affects e-WoM through recovery satisfaction.

What’s behind a scratch card? Designing a mobile application using gamification to study customer loyalty: An experimental approach

The use of game design elements (often called gamification) by firms to engage the customers has attracted attention in recent times. These game elements contribute to shaping up customer’s motivation and loyalty. Gamification is explored from the lens of both empirical as well as an experimental methodological standpoint. There still lacks substantial evidence that explains how and which types of rewards help to understand the customer's motivation. The study addresses this gap by designing an experimental study of 2x2 to address how gamified mobile apps used for making payments can help capture customer’s loyalty by offering them rewards. Data is collected from 385 customers who have been using mobile apps to make payments in the past. The data were tested to check if gamification positively helps the user hedonic and utilitarian motivation, which then positively impacts their loyalty. The study is also moderated by type of rewards (direct cash rewards v/s indirect third party partnered rewards) on the relationship of gamification and customer loyalty mediated through motivation. The results confirm that mobile payment apps' cash rewards are more useful, especially when the degree of uncertainty in the game element is high (scratch card). Additionally, they contribute to a higher degree of utilitarian benefits to the customers. The results contribute to the extension of the self-determination theory and stimulus organism response framework as well.