Do users' pro-environmental personal norms hold significance in electronic payment adoption context?

Abstract

The adoption of “Electronic Payment Systems (EPS)” presents an effective alternative for mitigating natural ecosystem degradation and serves as a robust catalyst for fostering green innovation and sustainability efforts. From this perspective, this article aims to investigate the drivers that impact EPS adoption in Morocco. This research also introduces an innovative theoretical framework combining the extended “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)” model by considering three additional constructs namely perceived trust (TR), perceived risk (PR), and structural assurance (SA), along with the “Value-Belief-Norm (VBN)” theory. A sample of 484 users was surveyed, and the PLS-SEM technique was employed to analyze the relationships within the research model. The results indicate that pro-environmental personal norms (PPN) significantly affected both behavior intention to use EPS (BI) and actual use (AU). Likewise, the VBN theory's sequential chain in activating PPN was confirmed as well as the direct impact of social influence (SI) and the new environmental paradigm (NEP) on PPN. Additionally, findings highlighted the significant effect of performance expectancy (PE), TR, SA, PR, SI, and effort expectancy (EE) on BI. However, facilitating conditions (FC) were found to be statistically insignificant toward BI. Similarly, awareness of adverse consequences (AC) did not significantly affect PPN. These findings have deepened our understanding of EPS adoption dynamics, providing valuable insights to policymakers and Fintech firms for more targeted green marketing campaigns, and paving the way for future research.