Platform-Embedded Activation of Stablecoin Payments in Electronic Commerce Ecosystems

Stablecoins are increasingly viewed as interoperable settlement layers within electronic commerce, yet the mechanisms through which they become activated as payment instruments remain underexplored. Extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with platform interoperability and regulatory perception, this study develops a sequential adoption-to-activation framework in which technological evaluation, ecosystem compatibility, and institutional legitimacy jointly shape adoption intention and behavioral activation likelihood (BAL). Survey data from 400 digitally experienced Korean consumers with prior experience in digital payments and/or crypto-asset–related transaction environments were analyzed using hierarchical regression with HC3 robust standard errors and bias-corrected bootstrapped mediation testing. The findings show that platform interoperability exerts the strongest influence on adoption intention and also has a significant direct effect on BAL, while social influence exhibits both direct and indirect effects. By contrast, facilitating conditions and regulatory perception operate primarily through adoption intention, and performance expectancy and effort expectancy show no significant direct or mediated effects once ecosystem-level and institutional determinants are incorporated. These results identify a boundary condition of UTAUT in ecosystem-integrated payment environments: in digitally mature multi-sided commerce ecosystems, ecosystem compatibility and institutional legitimacy can operate as structurally prior conditions of activation, suggesting that stablecoin payment activation is better understood as a sequential process shaped by platform-level coordination than as a conventional intention-to-use decision centered on marginal functional gains.