Abstract
Personal safety has had a renewed focus throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to behavioral change. The adoption of E-wallets facilitates social distancing and thereby helps prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This paper aims to investigate the potential for consumers’ continued usage of an E-wallet service through an integrated framework based on two established models: the Health Belief Model (HBM) and Technology Continuous Theory (TCT). An electronic survey was distributed to a sample of 1080 individuals from academic society in three different Hungarian universities who had used an electronic wallet during the pandemic COVID-19. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied in the study and explained the 55.9% variance in consumers’ continuous intention towards E-wallet usage. This study found that while the COVID-19 pandemic strongly influenced the current use of e-wallets; the pivotal factor affecting their continued use is based on consumer self-efficacy. The study has both short and long-term implications; in the short-term, decisionmakers should utilize health threat constructs (as an element of the protective behaviors taken during the COVID-19 pandemic) to motivate consumers to use E-wallets; in the longer-term, banks should develop further strategies that encourage consumer loyalty regarding E-wallets by reassuring customers that these financial services achieve the value and benefits that they expect, resulting in self-efficacy.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic affected almost every aspect of human life
The digitization of banking and financial services has played an important role in implementing safety and preventive measures to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and save people’s lives
A study by Zhao and Bacao found that direct and indirect contact restrictions imposed by the pandemic influenced consumers’ attitudes toward using contactless payment systems regarding the benefits of using this payment method during the pandemic [25]. To address this theoretical research gap, this study aims to introduce an integrated framework model based on established theories such as the Health Belief Model (HBM) and Technology Continuous Theory (TCT) to investigate consumers’ continued usage behavior of electronic wallets
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic affected almost every aspect of human life. People had to adopt new behaviors in their daily activities to meet the constraints of the pandemic, and such changes in human behavior may persist even after the pandemic is over. Governments were forced to adopt non-pharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 [1]. These interventions led to significant imbalances in countries’. Economies, and a slowing down of global economic development [2]. This pandemic has emerged at a time when our planet is more interconnected than ever, thanks to information and communication technologies, the Internet. The digitization of banking and financial services has played an important role in implementing safety and preventive measures to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and save people’s lives. The e-wallet, known as digital wallet or m-wallet, uses electronic means such as a computer or smartphone to
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