SA retail investors: digital investment adoption, confidence, risk -a quantitative study

Abstract

Digital investing is reshaping how South Africans participate in capital markets, but uptake depends on whether platforms feel easy, credible and safe. This study examines adoption drivers in a high-stakes context where assurance cues (security, reliability, transparency) and risk perceptions are salient. The purpose was to extend the Technology Acceptance Model by incorporating Trust and Perceived Risk (PR) and to test how these beliefs influence Digital Investment Adoption (DIA) and downstream Investor Confidence (IC). A cross-sectional online survey of South African retail investors (N=120) captured validated reflective constructs. Data were analysed using PLSE-SEM with 5000 sample bootstrapping and out-of-sample predictive checks. Results support an ease and trust activated TAM. Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) increased both Perceived Usefulness (PU) and DIA. Trust directly increased DIA, improved ease beliefs and lowered PR; however, PR did not directly suppress DIA in this sample. Perceived Usefulness did not add incremental explanatory power beyond ease and trust. DIA strongly predicted IC, indicating that actual adoption strengthens investors confidence. The findings suggest platforms should prioritise usability, reliability signals and trust building measures over feature expansion alone. Limitations include cross sectional design and non-probability sampling. Future work should test longitudinal mechanisms and richer antecedents of trust and assurance.