A benefit–cost perspective of the consumer adoption of the mobile banking system

The present research adopts a benefit-cost perspective to study consumer adoption of the mobile banking services. It is suggested that because of the specific product context of the mobile banking service, such as the difficulty to assess some experiential qualities like the ease of use due to a low trial rate of mobile banking and the inherent risk factor involved in a new financial service technology, models complementary to the technology adoption model may be needed to accommodate these product contexts. In the present research, the benefit-cost framework was employed as an example of the complementary framework to study consumers' adoption of the mobile banking system. The key benefit of mobile banking is convenience, while the key cost is security. A set of ability and risk factors were modelled via structural equation model (SEM) as the antecedents of the benefit and cost of adopting the mobile banking system. The results showed that the empirical data supported most hypothesised relationships among the factors. It is concluded that consumers' new technology adoption behaviour is a complicated phenomenon which may require different models in different product contexts. It is suggested that future research should address the issue of the preconditions and product contexts under which a certain class of models may be most suitable to explain the adoption behaviour.