Institutional policy and behavioural factors associated with post-adoption cashless payment commitment among informal businesses in Southern Peninsular Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to examine the institutional policy and behavioural factors associated with post-adoption cashless payment commitment among informal businesses in southern Peninsular Malaysia. The study focuses on street vendors and unregistered small-scale traders in Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, and Johor who have already used cashless payment platforms. The proposed model integrates institutional policy mechanisms, namely policy awareness and promotion campaigns, with selected behavioural constructs from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), namely social influence and facilitating conditions, in explaining continued cashless payment commitment among existing users who were also aware of the Cashless Society Programme, since programme awareness was itself an eligibility criterion for the survey. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted using purposive sampling, and 76 valid responses were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. The results indicate that social influence is the strongest factor associated with post-adoption cashless payment commitment, followed by policy awareness and facilitating conditions, while the promotion campaign was not significantly associated with cashless payment commitment. Because discriminant validity between cashless payment commitment and both social influence and facilitating conditions was not established, these two associations may partly reflect construct overlap rather than fully distinct relationships. The study highlights the importance of social and enabling conditions in supporting continued cashless payment commitment among informal businesses. It also contributes to the literature by distinguishing post-adoption commitment from initial adoption and by integrating institutional policy and behavioural perspectives in the informal business context.