An Investigation on Factors Influencing Behavioral Intention: A Study on Usage of Unified Payments Interface

Abstract

Contactless payment, the latest trend in the digital payment industry, has created a revolution in the Indian banking system. Digitization has transformed India from a cash-based economy to a cashless economy driven by people, processes, and products. Indians embraced the notion of making India digitized and concurrently, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched India’s first homegrown real-time payment interface and named it Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Unified Payments Interface is a smartphone-based money transfer interface that can be integrated into any banking application to facilitate digital payments using a mobile phone. UPI merges various banking features in a single window and aids one-click payment making the payment process simple, quick and contactless. Since UPI is a significant Indian digital innovation in the payment industry, hence to understand the perception of Indians towards UPI usage and to investigate the drivers that influence the intention of users to adopt UPI, the present study aims to identify the influential antecedents of behavioral intention to adopt UPI with UTAUT3 (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 3) as the theoretical lens. Though the study adopted an established model as its theoretical background, the research also explores the influence of two more vital constructs on behavioral intention. Those two constructs are trust and word of mouth content. Thus the independent variables examined in the study are performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, habit, hedonic motivation, personal innovativeness, trust and word of mouth content. In contrast, the dependent variables of the study are behavioral intention and actual usage. Furthermore, the research also examined the mediating role of behavioral intention on the association between performance expectancy, trust and actual usage. The data collected for the research investigation has been statistically analyzed using SPSS and AMOS. SPSS was used for inferential statistics, descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests, whereas AMOS was used to conduct structural equation modeling. The model proposed in the study has been verified using structural equation modeling, whichcomprises two types of model: the measurement and the structural model. Both the measurement and the structural model showed good model fit. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the significant antecedents of behavioral intention to adopt UPI are performance expectancy, social influence, habit, personal innovativeness, trust and word of mouth content. The significant drivers of actual usage of UPI are facilitating conditions and behavioral intention. The study also conducted a mediation analysis to examine the mediating role of behavioral intention where it was established that the direct effect of performance expectancy and trust on actual usage is significant. Contrarily, the indirect effect of performance expectancy and trust on actual usage is non-significant, demonstrating that behavioral intention fully mediates the relationship between performance expectancy, trust, and actual usage concerning UPI adoption. Studies concerning the usage of UPI are still in the inception stage, and hence the present study attempted to flourish the literature with more empirical findings on the adoption behavior of UPI. The research work successfully contributed to the existing body of knowledge with critical theoretical and managerial implications. The managerial implications proposed in this research work might help policymakers understand the real-time scenario, formulate policies and customize services based on the requirement.