Determinants of Consumers’ Adoption of App-Based Mobile Financial Services in Bangladesh: The Role of Financial Trust

Abstract

This paper looks at the drivers of behavioral intention of consumers to adopt app-based mobile financial services in Bangladesh, especially focusing on financial trust. A survey survey was conducted which yielded 430 valid responses. In the proposed PLS-SEM Model, the following predictors of behavioral intention were included performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, perceived financial value and financial trust. The measurement model obtained a satisfactory level of indicator reliability, internal reliability, convergent and discriminant validity. Such issues as common method bias and structural collinearity were not major issues. The structural model accounted 61.68% of the variance in behavioral intention and was significantly predictively relevant. The most positive influence was on performance expectancy and next, financial trust. Effort expectancy, perceived financial value, and social influence also had a significant positive impact. There was no statistically significant direct effect of conditions that facilitated. According to the out of sample test, the PLS model produced smaller root mean squared prediction errors in comparison to the linear benchmark in all indicators of behavioral intentions. The results suggest that consumers embrace mobile financial application when they perceive that it has a distinct functional advantage, the providers are trustworthy to safeguard financial interests, the applications are user friendly and are getting reasonable value. The research provides practical recommendations to the providers, regulators, and platform designers aiming to adopt sustainably, reasonably, and inclusively.