Consumers’ acceptance and resistance to virtual bank: views of non-users

Abstract

Convergence between technology and financial services is ubiquitous and widespread. Virtual banks represent an important aspect of financial markets that can generate value added for consumers and enhance the quality of financial services. This study explores the effect of innovation characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, and perceived risk), consumer characteristics (status quo bias), and social mechanisms (network externality: complementarity, numbers of peers) on consumers’adoption intention and resistance to virtual banks. This study adopted an innovation resistance model with two dependent variables: adoption intention and resistance to virtual banks. An online self-administered survey was conducted and 532 or non-users of virtual banks aged 20 to 69 years old were analyzed. Frequency analysis, descriptive analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression indicated that status quo bias, relative advantage, perceived risk, complementarity, and number of peers insignificantly influence the adoption intention regarding virtual banks. Furthermore, status quo bias, relative advantage, perceived risk, and number of peers insignificantly influence the resistance to virtual banks. Female respondents have a lower adoption intention and higher resistance to virtual banks than male respondents. The findings suggest that the innovation resistance model can be useful in understanding consumers’adoption and resistance behavior as well as reveal that innovation characteristics, consumer characteristics, and social mechanism are important antecedent variables of the innovation adoption decision.