Moderating effect of service innovation in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model – a mobile banking app perspective

Abstract

The retail banking sector is undergoing unprecedented business disruptions due to changing consumer patterns and increased competition from non-banking institutions. The most practical responses to these new risks are digitalisation of the retail banking services and sourcing pragmatic approaches to transform the business strategies and operating models. This study focuses on understanding customer behaviour intentions when new digital innovations are introduced by retail banks. The study centres on mobile banking apps as a use case, examining behaviour intentions of customers who have already registered for the mobile banking app, with the analysis conducted using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model. In addition to the constructs in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model, personal innovativeness was incorporated as an antecedent. The analysis includes service innovation as a moderator. A quantitative study was conducted based on covariance-based structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses. The main findings were that facilitating conditions and personal innovativeness have a positive and significant relationship with behaviour intentions, whilst effort expectancy has a negative but significant relationship with behaviour intentions. Service innovation moderates the relationship between all the antecedents and dependent variables, with the exception of social influence. The implications for retail banks are that the service provider’s role is significant in enabling behaviour intentions with the key indicators highlighted by facilitating conditions and service innovation. As a contribution, retail bankers must note that technology companies continue to gain competitive edge in the digitalisation of financial services offerings and may out-compete banks over time given their stronger disposition to service innovation.