Factors Influencing Smartphone Owners' Acceptance of Biometric Authentication Methods

Abstract

Smartphones are the world's most widely used personal computing devices. PINs and passcodes have long been the most popular authentication methods in smartphones and even in the pre-smartphone era. Due to the inconvenient nature of PINs and passcodes, a new biometric authentication method for smartphones was developed and has been gaining traction in terms of adoption, beginning with flagship devices and progressing to some mid-range devices. This article aims to investigate the factors influencing smartphone owners' acceptance of biometric authentication methods by developing a new model based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). It also validates the data with survey data from 233 Indonesian smartphone owners via an online survey and analyzed it using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results from the SEM analysis show that all nine hypotheses in the proposed model are supported. In other words, all six factors in the proposed model (i.e., attitude toward the use, perceived usefulness, perceived the ease of use, perceived enjoyment, perceived security, and social influence) have significant effects on the behavioral intention of adopting biometric authentication methods among smartphone owners. More specifically, the findings indicate that most Indonesian smartphone users have a favorable attitude toward biometric authentication, which is why they are willing to adopt it. Furthermore, it is discovered that the perceived usefulness of a biometric authentication method on smartphones outweighs its perceived ease of use. It reveals that the user's belief in the intrinsic value of biometric authentication methods in the form of perceived security outweighs both the internal user motivation of perceived enjoyment and the external user motivation of social influence in terms of their acceptance of biometric authentication methods.