Digital Pathways to Empowerment: The Role of E-Service Quality in Rural Women’s Adoption of E-Banking

Despite the expansion of digital financial services in India, e-banking adoption among rural women remains limited due to socio-cultural constraints, low digital literacy, and trust deficits. Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model, this study conceptualises e-service quality as a higher-order construct and examines attitudinal mediation. Data were collected from 182 rural women in Odisha, India, and analysed using PLS-SEM. The findings show that ESQ influences behavioural intention primarily through attitude, highlighting the central role of experiential service quality in technology adoption. The study contributes to service and digital inclusion literature by theoretically integrating ESQ and TAM in an underexplored context.