Information Systems and e-Business Management

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-019-00449-0

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention

to adopt mobile payments

Yong Liu1 · Meng Wang1 · Danyu Huang1 · Qiang Huang1 · Hua Yang1 ·

Zhigang Li1

Received: 3 April 2019 / Revised: 28 August 2019 / Accepted: 9 October 2019

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
With the development of mobile communication technology and the wide applica-
tion of intelligent devices, mobile payments with great commercial potential have
been born. However, the penetration rate of mobile payment is not satisfactory. In
order to explore user acceptance of mobile payments, this study proposes a new
research model based on the technology acceptance model, which integrates the
characteristics of mobile payments (i.e., mobility) and inhibiting factors (i.e., risk
and cost). Partial least squares was performed to analyse measurement and struc-
tural models on the data collected from 245 survey samples. The results indicated
that perceived mobility has a positive and direct impact on perceived ease of use
and perceived usefulness, as well as an indirect impact on adoption intention; how-
ever, perceived risk and perceived cost negatively affect a user’s intention to use
mobile payments. Finally, the research provides empirical evidence for practitioners
to enhance the adoption of mobile payments.

Keywords  Perceived mobility · TAM model · Perceived risk · Perceived cost

* Yong Liu
523849711@qq.com
Meng Wang
346147960@qq.com
Danyu Huang
550572775@qq.com
Qiang Huang
370010343@qq.com
Hua Yang
1558224873@qq.com
Zhigang Li
1095378856@qq.com
1
College of Management Science, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059,
Sichuan, China

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1 Introduction

With the rapid development of mobile communication technology and the wide-
spread application of smart devices, mobile payments—a new payment method—
have penetrated every corner of people’s lives. People can now conduct payments,
transfer money, and manage their finances anytime and anywhere through mobile
payments (Dahlberg et al. 2008; Yu et al. 2018). According to a report issued by
Statista in February 2016, the mobile payment industry is expected to grow from
$450 billion in 2015 to over $1 trillion in 2019 (Statista 2016). The immense
mobile payment business potential has received significant attention from inves-
tors and entrepreneurs. Many companies have joined the mobile payment industry
and released their own mobile payment tools, such as AliPay, WeChatPay, Apple-
Pay, and AndroidPay (Johnson et al. 2018; Zhou 2013). However, the worldwide
adoption of mobile payments has been slow and presents an uneven distribution
in terms of market penetration. According to Statista (2018), 27% of internet
users in North America have used a mobile payment service in the last month
of 2017, while, in China, 45% of users had done so. The 22% mobile payment
usage rate in Europe is the lowest in all statistical regions and the global aver-
age mobile payment usage rate is only 33%. Thus, understanding the mobile pay-
ment adoption behaviour of users is important for both academic researchers and
practitioners.
From the users’ perspective, a mobile payment would be regarded as a new infor-
mation system (IS). Over the years, a considerable number of models have been
developed to explore the consumers’ intention to adopt certain information system.
Among them, the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis 1989) is the model
most commonly employed as a theoretical bases for exploring the consumers’ inten-
tion to adopt certain information system (Dahlberg et al. 2008; Hoehle et al. 2012;
Luna et  al. 2017; Zhang and Benyoucef 2016). Thus, this study takes the TAM
model as a basic theoretical framework in order to explore the users’ mobile pay-
ment adoption behaviour. Although the TAM model was deemed to be more par-
simonious and robust, it was not enough to explain the consumers’ intention to use
mobile payments, because the original TAM theory lacked effective methods for
reflecting mobile payment characteristics (Kim et al. 2010; Tan et al. 2014). Davis
(1989) argued that some external variables, such as the characteristics of a system,
could be involved in the TAM model to explain the particularities of new informa-
tion systems (Davis 1989; Kim et al. 2010). Some researchers deemed that mobility
is the most significant characteristic of mobile technology (Dahlberg et  al. 2008;
Kim et al. 2010; Luna et al. 2017; Yen and Wu 2016). However, perceived mobil-
ity, as an external factor, was rarely added to the TAM model in previous studies.
Although Kim et  al. (2010) tried to integrate mobility into the TAM model as an
important external variable, their findings show that the relationship between per-
ceived mobility and perceived ease of use is not significant. Thus, the effect of per-
ceived mobility needs to be further verified in the context of mobile payments.
In addition, previous studies primarily added positive factors into based TAM
model to investigate the users’ mobile payment behaviour (Dutot 2015; Kim et al.

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2010; Oliveira et al. 2014; Pietro et al. 2015; Zhou 2011). However, the inhibit-
ing factors received little attention. According to the technology resistance the-
ory, inhibiting factors play a vital role in preventing individuals from adopting
a given information system (Hoehle et al. 2012). Hoehle et al. (2012) suggested
that future research should pay more attention to these inhibitors. Some research-
ers noted that risk and cost are two major obstacles for adopting a new technol-
ogy (Lee 2009a; Lu et al. 2011; Tan et al. 2014). Although Tan et al. (2014) tried
to add perceived cost and perceived risk to the TAM model to examine the users’
mobile payment using behaviour, their findings showed that there is no significant
relationship between the perceived risk and the intention to adopt mobile pay-
ments. Thus, the role of perceived risk and perceived cost still needs to be further
explored in the mobile payment context.
To fill these nicks, this study tries to propose a comprehensive research model
that includes both enablers (perceived mobility, perceived ease of use, perceived
usefulness) and inhibitors (perceived risk and perceived cost) in order to understand
the users’ mobile payment adoption behaviour.
This study makes some important contributions to enrich the existing literature.
First, it proposes a new research model for mobile payment user behaviour. Sec-
ond, it identifies the role of perceived mobility as an important external variable
that motivates the perceived ease of use and usefulness. Third, it also identifies the
inhibiting roles of perceived risk and perceived cost, which prevent users from using
mobile payments. Finally, this study provides some empirical evidence for practi-
tioners with the aim to improve the utilisation rate of mobile payments.
The remainder of this article is arranged as follows. First, we present the theoreti-
cal background regarding users’ mobile payment behaviour. Then, we propose our
research model and draw hypotheses. Next, we describe the research methodology
and present the result findings. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and managerial
implications of the study and directions for future research.

2 Theoretical background and literature review

2.1 Mobile payments

A mobile payment is an alternative payment method for goods, services, and bills/
invoices (Kim et al. 2010). With the help of mobile networks (such as 3G/4G, pub-
lic WIFI), mobile devices (such as a mobile phone, smart-phone, laptop, or PDA)
can be utilised in a variety of payment services, such as checking account balances,
transferring money, paying bills, and conducting financial management anytime,
from anywhere (Zhou 2013). At present, there are three principle mobile payment
models in China (Lu et  al. 2011). The first is the mobile network operator-centric
model, which is led by the main mobile operators, including China Mobile, China
Unicom, and China Telecom. They also cooperate with some financial institutions.
The second is the financial institution-centric model, which is led by the main finan-
cial institutions, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China
Construction Bank, and China Unionpay, etc. The last is third-party operator-centric

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 Y. Liu et al.

model, which is led by the internet service providers like Alipay, Tenpay, and
99Bill, etc. China’s mainstream banking institutions and mobile network operators
are monopolies and lack an effective cooperative mechanism. Thus, they tend to
overemphasise their leading status in the payment industry and do not naturally form
“powerful alliances” (Lu et al. 2011). They would rather provide services for large
enterprise customers than numerous small consumers, who are the main users of the
third-party mobile payments—thus making the third-party mobile payments more
popular in China (Lu et al. 2011).
In China, there are mainly two types of third-party payment providers: the non-
independent providers and the independent providers (Lu et  al. 2011). The major-
ity of the non-independent third-party payment providers originated from e-com-
merce. The current credit system in China is imperfect. Users and vendors distrust
one another: the vendors worry that they would not receive payment after the deliv-
ery of goods or services, while the users are concerned that they would not receive
their goods after making payments (Huang et al. 2014). To overcome the drawbacks
of this distrust between the users and the vendors, a third-party payment system—
which initially evolved from their internal e-commerce platforms—was introduced.
In this model, when purchasing goods and services online, the user first pays a third-
party account; then, this third-party informs the vendor to deliver and, when the user
receives the goods or services, the third-party sends the user’s payment to the ven-
dor. This process protects both the user and the vendor and the transaction proceeds
smoothly. With the boom of e-commerce, third-party payments developed quickly
and gradually extended their payment services to provide a wide range of exter-
nal services as the latter grew, independently. Third-party mobile payment systems
(such as AliPay and WeChatPay) play an important role in China, facilitating the
collaboration between technology and business among mobile operators and finan-
cial institutions and provide an efficient and economical solution for conducting
mobile payment service transactions (Lu et al. 2011). According to iiMediaResearch
(2018), AliPay had a 49.9% market share and WeChatPay had 40.7% in the first
quarter of 2018, indicating that third-party mobile payments dominate the market
in China. Thus, it is appropriate to take third-party mobile payments as the research
object, aiming to understand the users’ behaviour towards mobile payments.
For researching mobile payment user behaviour, six theoretical models are mainly
adopted: (1) the task-technology fit (TTF) theory (e.g., Oliveira et al. 2014; Upad-
hyay and Chattopadhyay 2015; Upadhyay and Jahanyan 2016), (2) the theory of rea-
soned action (TRA; e.g., Mu and Lee 2017; Otieno et al. 2018; Phuah et al. 2018),
(3) the theory of planned behaviour (TPB; e.g., Mu and Lee 2017; Ting et al. 2016),
(4) the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT; e.g., Khalilza-
deh et al. 2017; Pietro et al. 2015; Slade et al. 2014, 2015), (5) the diffusion of inno-
vation (DOI; e.g., Apanasevic et al. 2016; Garrett et al. 2014; Shao et al. 2019; Su
et al. 2017), and (6) the technology acceptance model (TAM, e.g., Anthony 2018;
Lwoga and Lwoga 2017; Matemba and Li 2018; Park et al. 2019; Ramos-De-Luna
et  al. 2016; Shankar and Datta 2018). Among them, TAM is the most commonly
used theoretical basis for studying the users’ willingness to use mobile payments due
to the advantages of using a concise and robust model, with good explanatory and
predictive power, good expansibility, and strong adaptability (Dahlberg et al. 2008,

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2015). However, the original TAM theory also has some defects, such as its inabil-
ity to reflect the characteristics of specific information systems (Kim et  al. 2010;
Tan et al. 2014). Therefore, it is necessary to improve the existing TAM model in
accordance with the mobile payment characteristics.

2.2 Modified technology acceptance model (TAM)

TAM, as proposed by Davis (1989) for analysing and explaining individual accept-
ance behaviour towards information technology, is derived from the Theory of Rea-
soned Action (TRA) (Hill 1975). Davis (1989) argues that the adoption of a new
technology depends on two belief variables—perceived usefulness and perceived
ease of use. Perceived usefulness is defined as “the degree to which a person per-
ceives that adopting the system will boost his/her job performance” (Davis 1989).
And perceived ease of use is defined as “the degree to which a person believes that
adopting the system will be free of effort” (Davis 1989). Perceived usefulness has a
direct effect on adoption intention, while perceived ease of use has both an imme-
diate effect and an indirect effect on adoption intention via perceived usefulness
(Davis 1989). Because TAM is one of the first and most influential research mod-
els to explain users’ IS adoption behaviour—providing a framework through which
effects of external variables on system usage can be assessed—it has been recog-
nised as a useful model for studying technology acceptance behaviours in a variety
of IS contexts (Kim et  al. 2010). Many researchers also noted that both perceived
usefulness and perceived ease of use can explain the users’ intention to use mobile
payments (Dutot 2015; Kim et al. 2010; López-Nicolás et al. 2008; Lai 2017; Tan
et  al. 2014). They only employed perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use
as key factors for exploring the users’ mobile payment use behaviour. Int his vein,
these two factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) are appropriate
for evaluating the acceptance of mobile payments by their users.

2.3 Perceived mobility as an external variable of TAM

Legris et  al. (2003) argued that the original TAM model could explain approxi-
mately 40% of behaviour intention for accepting a new technology (Legris et  al.
2003). Several scholars suggested that TAM needs additional variables to increase
its explanatory power (Jang and Mi 2011; Legris et al. 2003; Taylor and Todd 1995).
Davis (1989) argued that some external variables can be incorporated into the TAM
model to explain the particularities of new information systems. He also defined
these external variables as the constructs that are characteristics of a system, com-
puter self-efficacy, objective usability, and direct experience (Davis 1989). Kara-
hanna et  al. (1999) noted that the external variables can include comprising com-
patibility, trainability, visibility, and result demonstrability. Similarly, some scholars
believed that perceived mobility is an important external variable, which can reflect
the mobile payment characteristics and enhance TAM’s explanatory power (Kim
et al. 2010; Zhou 2011).

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Several scholars defined mobility as the ability to access services ubiquitously,

on the move, and via wireless networks and a variety of mobile devices, such as
a mobile phone, smart-phone, laptop, or PDA (Clarke 2001; Dahlberg et al. 2008;
Kim et  al. 2010). In comparison with conventional online services, a significant
quality of mobile services is their mobility, which allows users to access time-criti-
cal information and services via wireless networks and mobile devices regardless of
time and place (Kim et al. 2010). Mobility can help enhance the users’ perceptions
of convenience, expediency, and immediacy when they use mobile services (Sep-
pälä and Alamäki 2003). Thus, perceived mobility is employed as a vital antecedent
in studies of mobile services, such as mobile learning (Huang et al. 2007), mobile
commerce (Anckar and D’Incau 2002), and mobile financial services (Yen and Wu
2016). Mobile payments, a new type of mobile service, offer a new way of to pay for
services via mobile devices, freeing users from temporal and spatial constraints and
enabling them to conduct payments anytime, from anywhere (Zhou 2011). Thus,
mobile payments are valuable because of their mobility. Accordingly, this study
added perceived mobility to the original TAM model as an external variable that
influences mobile payment adoption.

2.4 Inhibiting factors

Since the 1960s, the theory of perceived risk has been used to explain customer
behaviour and define factors that affect their decision-making (Taylor 1974). With
the changes in the shopping environment and shopping mode, the definition of per-
ceived risk has also been changed. Initially, perceived risk was defined as a kind of
subjective, expected loss (Peter and Ryan 1976) and as a possible loss when pur-
suing a desired result (Featherman and Pavlou 2003). The definitions of perceived
risk were mainly limited to fraud or product quality (Hanafizadeh et al. 2014). Fur-
thermore, in order to study online trading behaviour, perceived risk was defines as
having two dimensions: security/privacy risk and financial risk (Lee 2009b). Lee
(2009b) noted that security/privacy risk refers to potential loss due to Internet fraud
or hacker intrusion and that financial risk refers to potential monetary loss due to
transaction error or stock account misuse. Exploring the adoption of online trad-
ing in Taiwan, he also found that perceived risk is a major resistance factor in user
adoption behaviour (Lee 2009b). Given the similarity between mobile payments and
online transactions, this study adopts perceived risk as an inhibiting factor to under-
stand the intention towards mobile payments. Perceived cost is another vital barrier
for adopting mobile services (Hoehle et  al. 2012; Lee 2009a; Lu et  al. 2011; Tan
et al. 2014). In the mobile service context, perceived cost includes a handset (hard-
ware/software) cost, subscription cost, service cost, and communication cost (Luarn
and Lin 2005). Previous studies have shown that perceived cost has a significant
negative effect on the users’ intention to use wireless financial services (Kleijnen
et  al. 2004), mobile banking service (Hanafizadeh et  al. 2014), and mobile com-
merce services (Yap and Hii 2009). Because mobile payments are a new mobile ser-
vice, it is appropriate to employ perceived cost in this study to explore users’ mobile
payment behaviour.

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3 Research model and hypotheses

The conceptual model of current research is shown in Fig.  1. It depicts that per-
ceived mobility is an antecedent of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness,
that the intention to use mobile payment is determined by perceived ease of use and
perceived usefulness, and that it is also negatively impacted by perceived risk and
perceived cost. In addition, the gender, age, and education control variables have
different impacts on the users’ intention to adopt mobile payments. The definitions
of and interrelationships between these factors, in the conceptual model, are listed as
follows.

3.1 Perceived mobility

Perceived mobility refers to a user’s perception of the mobility value of the mobile
payment system or service (Kwon et  al. 2014). The most significant characteris-
tic of mobile technology is its mobility, which provides certain benefits, including
immediacy, convenience, and affordability (Lin 2011). On the one hand, these ben-
efits of mobility permit users to conduct transactions more easily than other online
payment services and provide more opportunities for users to use mobile payments
and to increase the number of operations. The more users operate, the more they
would know about mobile payments and the higher their perception of mobile pay-
ment ease of use would be. When users use mobile payments for the first time, they
would think that mobile payments are complicated and not easy to use; however, by
increasing the number of times this action is repeated, their initial difficulty percep-
tion would decline or even disappear (Zhou 2011). On the other hand, the benefits of
mobile payment mobility free users from temporal and spatial constraints and enable
them to conduct payments anytime, from anywhere (Zhou 2011). In other words,
perceived mobility encourages users to perceive the substantive benefits (usefulness)
of mobile payment services (Yen and Wu 2016). Users who perceive the value of

Gender Age Educaon

Perceived Ease of
Use
H1
H4
Intenon to Use
H3 Mobile Payment
Perceived
Mobility
H5
H6 H7
H2

Perceived Perceived
Perceived
Usefulness
Risk Cost

Fig. 1  Research model

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 Y. Liu et al.

mobility have a strong perception of usefulness when it comes to mobile payment

use (Mallat et al. 2009). In addition, in comparison with online payments, in which
transactions are commonly bound to a fixed location, mobile payments provide users
with more freedom, allowing them to conduct transactions easily via wireless net-
works and mobile devices regardless of time and place (Kim et al. 2010). Similarly,
Yen and Wu (2016) argued that perceived mobility has a positive effect on both per-
ceived ease of use and perceived usefulness in a mobile financial service context.
Kim et al. (2010) and Kwon et al. (2014) confirmed that perceived mobility has an
effect on the perceived usefulness of mobile payment and social networking ser-
vices, respectively. Dutot et al. (2019) noted that perceived mobility has a positive
impact on the perceived ease of use of smartwatches. Kalinic and Marinkovic (2016)
believed that perceived mobility impacts the perceived ease of use of m-commerce
positively. Thus, we assumed that perceived mobility can motivate perceived ease of
use and perceived usefulness for mobile payment users. Accordingly, the hypotheses
of this study are as follows:

H1:  Perceived mobility will have a positive effect on the perceived ease of use of
mobile payments.

H2:  Perceived mobility will have a positive effect on the perceived usefulness of
mobile payments.

3.2 Perceived ease of use

Ease of use is considered to be a key factor during the first use of a new technol-
ogy (Davis 1989). The perception that a technology is easier to use helps facilitate
its acceptance and use (Yen and Wu 2016). In general, users would initially think
that mobile payment technology is complex, high-tech, and difficult to learn. At the
same time, they would have a demand for this kind of quick and convenient pay-
ment method. Consequently, users would expect that they can learn and use mobile
payment services easily. For example, a mobile payment App can be downloaded,
installed, and configured in a user’s smartphone conveniently, the mobile payment
operational process is simple and easy to learn, and the payment transactions are
conducted easily. The less effort required, the more users perceive the technology
as useful, enhancing their willingness to use it (Hsu et al. 2013). If users think that
learning to use mobile payments is easy and that the operation process is simple,
then their perception of mobile payment usefulness will improve and they will be
more inclined to adopt this technology. Similarly, previous studies have also con-
firmed that perceived ease of use positively affects both perceived usefulness and
usage intention in mobile financial services (Yen and Wu 2016), mobile payment
services (Humbani and Wiese 2019; Kim et  al. 2010; Rizkyandy et  al. 2018; Tan
et  al. 2014), mobile commerce services (Kalinic and Marinkovic 2016), mobile
learning services (Baby and Kannammal 2019; Chavoshi and Hamidi 2019), fitness
tracking devices (Naglis and Bhatiasevi 2019), and online grocery shopping services
(Driediger and Bhatiasevi 2019). Thus, the following hypotheses are proposed:

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The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention…

H3:  Perceived ease of use will have a positive effect on the perceived usefulness of
mobile payments.

H4:  Perceived ease of use will have a positive effect on the users’ intention to use
mobile payments.

3.3 Perceived usefulness

One of the purposes for consumer use of mobile payments is to make payments and
conduct transaction management conveniently, quickly, and in a timely fashion. In
comparison to online payments, mobile payments free users from temporal and spa-
tial constraints and enable them to conduct payments anytime, from anywhere (Zhou
2011). This mobile payment feature meets consumers’ expectations and improves
the efficiency of payments. If the users realise this mobile payment feature, then they
will have a positive perception in relation to mobile payment use. The higher the
users’ perception of mobile payment usefulness is, the stronger their intention to use
them would be. Similarly, previous studies have found that there is a strong relation-
ship between perceived usefulness and the intention to use mobile payments (Hum-
bani and Wiese 2019; Kim et al. 2010; Rizkyandy et al. 2018; Tan et al. 2014; Zhou
2011). Driediger and Bhatiasevi (2019) argued that perceived usefulness impacts the
users’ intention to adopt online grocery shopping services. Baby and Kannammal
(2019) and Chavoshi and Hamidi (2019) also believed that perceived usefulness has
an impact on the users’ intention to use mobile learning. Thus, the following hypoth-
esis is proposed:

H5:  Perceived usefulness will have a positive effect on the intention to use mobile
payments.

3.4 Perceived risk

In this study, perceived risk is defined as a type of subjective expected loss, includ-
ing security/privacy loss and financial loss (Lee 2009b; Peter and Ryan 1976). Imma-
ture mobile technology increases trading risks, credit ratings, and bank balances and
financial data during mobile transactions could be changed without the owner knowing
(Wu and Wang 2005). This situation would cause users to worry about the risk. On
the one hand, users are required to provide sensitive information, such as usernames,
passwords, and credit card details when registering. This leads them to fear that their
sensitive information will be stolen by hackers illegally, risking leaking their personal
information. On the other hand, they would also think that there is a potential for mon-
etary loss as a result of transaction errors or stock account misuses via wireless transac-
tions (Lee 2009b). In general, in comparison to wired communication technology, users
tend to believe that wireless communication technology is more vulnerable to attacks
and that mobile payment methods based on wireless communication technology may
have greater risks. The higher their risk perception of mobile payment is, the less will-
ing users would be to use mobile payments. Similarly, Wu et al. (2017) confirmed that

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perceived risk has a negative effect on the intention to adopt mobile payments. Lee
(2009b) noted that perceived risk is a major obstacle to the adoption of online trading
in Taiwan. Natarajan et al. (2018) found that there is a negative relationship between
perceived risk and the intention to use mobile shopping applications. Thus, the follow-
ing hypothesis is proposed:

H6: Perceived risk will have a negative effect on the intention to use mobile
payments.

3.5 Perceived cost

Perceived cost is defined as the extent to which a person believes that using mobile
payments will cost money (Luarn and Lin 2005). If users want to use mobile payments,
they have to pay two additional fees. On the one hand, users need to pay for new mobile
devices, such as smartphones, iPADs, and WIFI devices. On the other hand, users also
need to pay certain fees, such as subscription cost, service cost, and communication
cost. In comparison to online payments, the fees generated by mobile payments are
additional for users. Users would evaluate this additional expense. If these fees exceed
their expectations, they may deem that using mobile payments is not cost-effective. The
more expensive users feel mobile payment services are, the less willing they would be
to use them. Similarly, Chong et al. (2012) argued that perceived cost has a significant
and negative relationship with consumer decisions to adopt mobile commerce in China
and Malaysia. Abrahão et al. (2016) and Lu et al. (2011) noted that the users’ perceived
cost of mobile payment services negatively affects their intention to use them. Hanafi-
zadeh et al. (2014) confirmed that perceived cost has an adverse effect on the adoption
of m-banking services. Ahmad and Khalid (2017) also believed that cost is a major
resistance factor for user adoption of m-government. Thus, the following hypothesis is
proposed:

H7: Perceived cost will have a negative effect on the intention to use mobile
payments.

3.6 Control variables: gender, age, and education

Since the number of studies using gender, age, and education have been sparse and
limited (Chong et  al. 2012; Leong et  al. 2013; Yu et  al. 2018), it would be interest-
ing to include all the above as control variables in our proposed research framework.
We hypothesise that gender, age, and education will lead to different intention to adopt
mobile payments.

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4 Research methods

4.1 Construct measurement

The research model consists of five factors (see Fig. 1). Each factor was measured
using multiple items, where each item was measured on a 5-point Likert scale
from 1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 5 = “Strongly Agree.” The questionnaire items
in this survey instrument were obtained from existing literature to strengthen
the reliability and validity of the research (Straub et  al. 2004). All items in this
survey were originally developed in English. As this study was performed in
China, all construct items were first translated into Chinese by two native Chinese
Ph.D. students who are fluent in English and followed the translation committee
approach (Vijver and Leung 1997). The initial Chinese questionnaire was pilot-
tested among some of our peers and friends. Thirty-five useful questionnaires
were collected. Subsequently, we revised some items to enhance their clarity and
understand ability in accordance with the comments we received. The final ver-
sion survey items are as follows.

4.1.1 Items of perceived mobility

Perceived mobility (PM) was measured using the following three items (Kim
et al. 2010): (PM1) I believe mobile payments are independent of time; (PM2) I
believe mobile payments are independent of place; (PM3) I can use mobile pay-
ments anytime, anyplace.

4.1.2 Items of perceived ease of use

Perceived ease of use (PEOU) was measured using three items (Davis 1989), as
follows: (PEOU1) Learning to use mobile payments is easy for me; (PEOU2)
Skilfully using mobile payments is easy for me; (PEOU3) I find that mobile pay-
ments are easy to use.

4.1.3 Items of perceived usefulness

Perceived usefulness (PU) was measured using three items (Davis 1989), as fol-
lows: (PU1) Mobile payments enable me to conduct payments quickly; (PU2)
Mobile payments enable me to conduct transactions conveniently; (PU3) I feel
that mobile payments are useful.

4.1.4 Items of perceived risk

Perceived risk (PR) was assessed using the following three items (Lee 2009a):
(PR1) I would not feel totally safe providing personal private information over
mobile payment systems; (PR2) I am worried about using mobile payments

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because other people may be able to access my account; (PR3) I would not feel
secure in sending sensitive information across mobile payment systems.

4.1.5 Items of perceived cost

Perceived cost (PC) was estimated using the following two items (Luarn and Lin
2005): (PC1) It would cost a lot to use mobile payments; (PC2) There are financial
barriers (e.g., having to pay for a handset and communication time) to my using
mobile payment services.

4.1.6 Items of intention to use mobile payment

Intention to use mobile payments (IMP) was measured using three items (Davis
1989), as follows: (IMP1) Given the chance, I intend to use mobile payments;
(IMP2) I expect my use of mobile payments to continue in the future; (IMP3) I
intend to use mobile payments.

4.2 Data collection and sampling technique

The purpose of this study is to investigate the roles of perceived mobility, perceived
ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived risk, and perceived cost for determining
the users’ intention to use mobile payments. In order to achieve this objective, the
target population for this study was identified as all users who know about or have
used mobile payments. Determining an appropriate sample size is very important
for ensuring the quality and rigor of any study. According to Hair et al.(2014) and
Barclay et al. (1995), there is a 10 times rule that stipulates that a minimum sam-
ple should be 10 times the largest number of structural paths directed at a particu-
lar construct in a structural model. The structural model in this study involves six
constructs (i.e., three independent, two mediating, and one dependent variable) and
seven structural paths. According to the 10 times rule criterion, our minimum sam-
ple size should be 70 respondents.
A survey was implemented between November 5 and 30, 2017. It was distrib-
uted in densely-populated public areas in Chengdu, the economic centre of west-
ern China, in places such as malls, parks, squares. The respondents were randomly
invited and asked whether they knew about or had used mobile payments. If the
answer was positive, then the respondents were invited to complete the survey. The
respondents received a souvenir pen for participating in the survey. A total of 245
completed questionnaires were received and all responses were examined carefully,
with the responses that had too many missing values being eliminated. As a result,
we obtained a total of 230 valid questionnaires. Among them, 55.2% were from
male respondents and 44.8% were from female respondents. The majority of the
respondents (80.1%) were between 18 and 40 years of age. Over half of the respond-
ents (80.0%) held a bachelor’s degree.

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The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention…

5 Results

The structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was performed to examine the
research model in this study. There are two different types of SEM: a covariance-
based approach and a variance-based approach. In comparison with the covariance-
based structural equation modelling tools (SEM), partial least squares (PLS) is a
variance-based method, which is very suitable for predictive applications and theory
building, as well as small sample studies without normal distribution (Chin 1998).
PLS is also a better technique for dealing with both formative and reflective mod-
els (Akter et al. 2013; Barnes 2011). In this study, (1) the data is not divided nor-
mally (p < 0.01), which is based on the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, (2) the sample
(n = 230) is small; (3) the focus is on the prediction of the dependent variables, and
(4) the research mode is reflective. For these reasons, the PLS approach is fitting for
this study. The research model was validated via two-step analysis procedures of the
measurement and structural models (Hair et al. 2006).

5.1 Common method variance

The issue of common method deviation might influence the validity of research for
its perceptual and single-source data (Podsakoff et al. 2003). In our study, common
method deviation was examined using Harman’s single-factor test (Podsakoff and
Organ 1986). The analysis ultimately indicated that all items can be classified into
six factors and that the first factor explains only 15.25% of the variance (“Appen-
dix”). Thus, no one factor can explain the majority of the variance. These results
suggested that common method deviation was not an important concern in this
research.

5.2 Inspecting the measurement model

A measurement model was estimated to ensure the appropriate use of psychological

instruments, including reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity.
First, we used Cronbach’s alpha to inspect reliability. Reliability is the extent
to which observed variables can test the ‘‘true” value and whether they are ‘‘error
free.” As shown in Table  1, Cronbach’s alpha (reliability) ranges from 0.777 to
0.899. The overall reliability of the measurement was above 0.7 and the measure-
ment instrument shows enough internal consistency (Bagozzi and Yi 1988; Premku-
mar and Roberts 1999).
Second, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) can be used to measure validity,
which includes convergent validity and discriminant validity. Convergent validity
measures whether items can reflect their corresponding factors effectively and dis-
criminant validity measures whether two factors are different statistically. Table  1
shows the standardised item loadings, the average variance extracted (AVE), and
the composite reliability (CR). As shown in Table  1, all item loadings are greater
than 0.7. The T values illustrate that all loadings are significant at 0.001. All AVEs

13
 Y. Liu et al.

Table 1  Standardised item loadings, AVE, CR, and alpha values

Factor Item Standardized AVE CR Cronbach’s alpha
loading

Perceived mobility PM1 0.899 0.811 0.928 0.883

PM2 0.918
PM3 0.884
Perceived ease of use PEOU1 0.905 0.832 0.937 0.899
PEOU2 0.908
PEOU3 0.924
Perceived usefulness PU1 0.864 0.692 0.871 0.777
PU 2 0.837
PUE3 0.793
Perceived risk PR1 0.867 0.762 0.906 0.845
PR2 0.909
PR3 0.841
Perceived cost PC1 0.951 0.889 0.941 0.876
PC2 0.934
Intention to use mobile payment IMP1 0.902 0.771 0.909 0.850
IMP2 0.930
IMP3 0.769

PM perceived mobility, PEOU perceived ease of use, PU perceived usefulness, PR perceived risk, PC
perceived cost, IMP intention to use mobile payments

exceed 0.5 and CRs exceed 0.7. Thus, the scale shows well convergent validity
(Gefen et al. 2000). To measure discriminant validity, we compared the square root
of AVE with factor correlation coefficients. As shown in Table 2, the square root of
AVE is significantly greater than its correlation coefficients of other factors for each
factor. Hence, it reflects a well discriminant validity (Gefen et al. 2000).

Table 2  The square root of IMP PC PEOU PM PR PU

AVE and factor correlation
coefficients IMP 0.878
PC −  0.467 0.943
PEOU 0.577 −  0.401 0.913
PM 0.511 −  0.336 0.511 0.901
PR −  0.254 0.190 −  0.169 −  0.181 0.873
PU 0.527 −  0.355 0.589 0.577 −  0.103 0.832

Diagonal elements are the square roots of the average variance

extracted for each construct; Pearson correlations are shown below
the diagonal
PM perceived mobility, PEOU perceived ease of use, PU perceived
usefulness, PR perceived risk, PC perceived cost, IMP intention to
use mobile payments

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The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention…

5.3 Investigating the structural model

The investigation results for the structural model are shown in Table 3 and illustrated
in Fig. 2, providing the integrated explanatory power, assessed path coefficients (all
significant paths are asterisked), and associated t-values of each path in this model.
Bootstrapping re-sampling procedures were employed to test path significance. All
hypotheses are supported. The relevant explanations of these outcomes are further
provided in the upcoming discussion section.
The results show that perceived mobility has a direct positive effect on both
perceived ease of use (β = 0.511, p < 0.001) and perceived usefulness (β = 0.373,
p < 0.001). Therefore, H1 and H2 are supported. Furthermore, perceived ease of use
has a direct positive impact on both the perceived usefulness (β = 0.399, p < 0.001)
and the intention to use mobile payments (β = 0.325, p < 0.001). Thus, H3 and H4

Gender Age Educaon

PEOU
R2=0.262
0.325*** ns

0.511***
IMP
0.399*** R2=0.458
PM
0.246**
-0.229**
*** -0.134*
0.373

PU
PR PC
R2=0.450

Fig. 2  Results of the research model tests. Notes: ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05; PM perceived
mobility, PEOU perceived ease of use, PU perceived usefulness, PR perceived risk, PC perceived cost,
IMP intention to use mobile payments

Table 3  Results of hypotheses testing

Hypotheses Structural path Path coefficients T statistics Supported

H1 PM → PUOU 0.511 7.519 Yes

H2 PM  → PU 0.373 5.602 Yes
H3 PEOU → PU 0.399 5.964 Yes
H4 PEOU → IMP 0.325 4.088 Yes
H5 PU → IMP 0.246 2.903 Yes
H6 PR → IMP −  0.134 2.534 Yes
H7 PC → IMP −  0.229 3.028 Yes

PM perceived mobility, PEOU perceived ease of use, PU perceived usefulness, PR perceived risk, PC
perceived cost, IMP intention to use mobile payments

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 Y. Liu et al.

are supported. Perceived usefulness also has a direct positive effect on the intention
to use mobile payments (β = 0.246, p < 0.01); however, perceived risk (β = − 0.134,
p < 0.05) and perceived cost (β = − 0.229, p < 0.01) affect the intention to use mobile
payments negatively. Therefore H5, H6, and H7 are supported. This research model
explains that 26.2% of variance is related to perceived ease of use, that 45.0% of var-
iance exists in perceived usefulness, and that 45.8% of variance exists in the inten-
tion to use mobile payments. In addition, the results of this study indicate that there
are no confounding effects of the control variables—age, gender, and education—on
the intention to adopt mobile payments.

6 Discussion

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that affect a user’s intention to
use mobile payments. To accomplish this, our work addresses six concepts and
explores their causal relationships based a modified TAM model in a mobile pay-
ment context. The research offers several findings. First, the current study states
that perceived mobility is an important antecedent of perceived ease of use and
perceived usefulness in a mobile payment context. Perceived mobility is found to
have a positive relationship with perceived ease of use (H1). This aligns with the
findings of prior studies (Dutot et al. 2019; Kalinic and Marinkovic 2016; Yen and
Wu 2016) but is inconsistent with a previous study by Kim et al. (2010), where it
was argued that perceived mobility has no significant effect on perceived ease of
use. This means that, like other mobile services, the most significant characteristic
of mobile payments is their mobility. It frees users from temporal and spatial con-
straints and enables them to conduct payments anytime, from anywhere, providing
more opportunities for users to use mobile payments and increase their number of
operations. As the number of operations increases, the users’ perception of the com-
plexity of mobile payments decreases and their perception of ease of use increases.
Furthermore, perceived mobility is found to have a positive effect on perceived use-
fulness (H2). This finding is consistent with prior studies (Kim et al. 2010; Kwon
et al. 2014; Yen and Wu 2016). This means that if users can conduct transactions
when they need to, they will perceive the real benefits of mobility. If users think
that mobility improves the efficiency of their payments, then their perception of the
usefulness of mobile payments would improve. In addition, the findings of this study
also confirm the current status of online payment in China. Due to the benefits of
mobility, mobile payment transactions accounted for 82% of the total transaction
volume in 2017, according to a report released by Alipay (2017). This means that
consumers prefer mobile payments over online payments.
Second, the findings of this study show that the users’ intention to use mobile
payments is positively determined by perceived ease of use and perceived useful-
ness. Perceived ease of use is found to have a positive effect on the intention to use
mobile payments (H4). This is similar to the finding of previous studies (Chavoshi
and Hamidi 2019; Humbani and Wiese 2019; Kim et al. 2010; Tan et al. 2014). If
users think that it is complicated to use a new technology, then they are unwilling
to spend more time and effort to learn how to do so. In contrast, if mobile payments

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The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention…

are simple to install and configure and are easy to operate, then users would be will-
ing to try to use them. Furthermore, perceived usefulness is found to have a posi-
tive effect on the intention to use mobile payments (H5). This result is consistent
with previous studies (Driediger and Bhatiasevi 2019; Kim et al. 2010; Naglis and
Bhatiasevi 2019; Tan et  al. 2014; Zhou 2011). One of the reasons users decide to
adopt a new technology is to consider whether it can bring substantial benefits to
their life or work. In comparison with traditional payment methods and online pay-
ments, mobile payments can be carried out anytime and are not limited by time and
space, which greatly improves the efficiency of user payments. Thus, if users per-
ceive the usefulness of mobile payments, their willingness to use mobile payments
would also increase. In addition, the ease of use of mobile payments also indirectly
affects the willingness of users to accept mobile payments by improving the users’
perception of their usefulness (H3). More importantly, the research results show that
perceived ease of use has more influence on intention than perceived usefulness.
This is consistent with a report released by the Payment and Clearing Association of
China (PCAC 2018). According to this report, 95.6% of users think that simplicity
of operation is the reason to choose mobile payments, while 52.2% of those who do
not choose mobile payments think that operating them is troublesome. This find-
ing reveals that users are more concerned about ease of use when choosing to use
mobile payments when users think that usefulness is their basic function.
Third, the findings of our study confirm that perceived risk and perceived cost
negatively affect the intention to use mobile payments. A negative relationship
between perceived risk and the users’ intention is found (H6). This is similar to
the findings of previous studies (Lee 2009b; Natarajan et al. 2018; Wu et al. 2017)
and confirms that users perceive more risk in wireless environments than in wired
ones. Users often think that the immaturity and uncertainty of mobile technology
will increase the risk of mobile payment transaction process and cause economic
and non-economic losses. The higher the users perceive the risk of mobile pay-
ments to be, the more this will hinder them from using mobile payments. In addi-
tion, this finding contradicts a previous study by Tan et al. (2014), who believed
that the reason why perceived risk is unrelated to the willingness to adopt mobile
payments may be that young users have a weak risk awareness. This study shows
that perceived risk is a major obstacle for adopting mobile payments and con-
firms the point made by the PCAC report (2018). According to the latter, privacy
disclosure and security risks are still the top user concerns, accounting for 73.8%
and 67.3%, respectively. That is, users of all ages are concerned about the mobile
payment risks, which creates a barrier to the use of mobile payments. Further-
more, perceived cost is found to have a negative impact on the intention to use
mobile payments (H7). This result is consistent with previous studies (Abrahão
et al. 2016; Ahmad and Khalid 2017; Chong et al. 2012; Lu et al. 2011) and veri-
fies that some users are reluctant to adopt new technologies because they perceive
additional costs. If users want to use mobile payments, they must pay extra fees,
such as those for mobile device, wireless communication, and services. If they
think that these costs are too expensive and unnecessary, they are less likely to
use mobile payments. This research also further confirms the point of BXFRT
(2018) and CNMO (2018). According to the report released by BXFRT (2018),

13
 Y. Liu et al.

China ranks 141st in Internet speed and 40th in Internet fee, globally. CNMO
(2018) argued that people in Zurich need only 38.2 h of work to buy an iPhoneX,
while New Yorkers need 54.1 h and those in Beijing need 314.3 h. This reveals
that low speed, high fees, and high smartphone costs may prevent Chinese users
from using mobile payments.

7 Implications and limitations

7.1 Theoretical implications

Overall, this study makes some important theoretical insights into several ways to
enrich the existing literature on user behaviour related to mobile payment. First, this
study integrates promoters and inhibitors to build a new research model for mobile
payment user behaviour, which is combined with mobile payment characteristics
and based on TAM. Previous studies primarily added positive factors to the TAM
model to investigate the users’ mobile payment behaviour (Dutot 2015; Kim et al.
2010; Oliveira et al. 2014; Pietro et al. 2015; Zhou 2011), while the inhibiting fac-
tors and the mobile payment characteristics’ factors received little attention. In order
to understand users’ adoption behavior of mobile payment from positive and nega-
tive aspects, this study constructs a comprehensive research model with mobility as
the characteristic of mobile payment, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness
as the promoting factors, and perceived risk and perceived cost as the inhibiting fac-
tors. It enhances the interpretation ability and adaptability of TAM model in mobile
payment context.
Second, this study identifies the role of perceived mobility as an important exter-
nal variable of TAM. Although mobility is the most significant characteristic of
mobile technology, previous studies have rarely integrated mobility as an external
variable into the TAM model to successfully explore the users’ mobile payment
adoption behaviour. This study attempts to integrate perceived mobility into the
TAM model and successfully verifies that perceived mobility is a vital predictor of
perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. In addition, this study also proves
that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness promote the users’ mobile pay-
ment adoption intention and that perceived ease of use has a stronger effect on
behavioural intention than perceived usefulness.
Third, this study identifies the inhibition role of perceived risk and perceived
cost in a modified TAM. Although some studies suggest that inhibitors (such as risk
and cost) are important factors for understanding the users’ non-adoption of cer-
tain information systems, it is rare of previous studies to integrate inhibitors into
TAM to explore the users’ mobile payment adoption behaviour. This study attempts
to integrate perceived risk and perceived cost into the TAM model and successfully
confirms that perceived risk and perceived cost have important negative effects on
the users’ intention to use mobile payments. In conclusion, this study enriches the
existing literature on user mobile payment adopting behaviour, thus providing a new
research perspective for those who are engaged in related research.

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The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention…

7.2 Managerial implications

Several practical implications can be drawn from the key findings of this study.
First, the government should attach importance to the role of mobility when
promoting the development of mobile economy. According to the Ministry of
Industry and Information Technology (MIIT 2018), by the end of November
2017, all townships had 4G networks coverage as did more than 94% of adminis-
trative villages in China; however, more than 30,000 administrative villages had
still not obtained 4G network coverage. Thus, more funds should be invested in
the construction of wireless communication infrastructure in order to improve
the effective coverage of the country’s wireless communication network in order
to meet the needs of more users and allow them to access wireless network any-
time, from anywhere.
Second, when launching a mobile payment service, managers of mobile pay-
ment firms could address perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness in their
business strategies. On one hand, this study shows that users think that mobile
payment ease of use is more important, with 95% of users hoping that mobile
payments would be simple to operate (PCAC 2018). Thus mobile payment firms
need to invest more effort into simplifying the operation of mobile payments
(e.g., app installation and configuration, registration process), providing a user-
friendly manual of operation, and designing mobile payment systems from the
user perspective. For example, simplifying mobile phone input by providing
a variety of input methods, such as voice and scanning. Simplifying payment
methods by offering a variety of them, such as QR codes, acoustic waves, face
recognition, fingerprints, etc. On the other hand, firms can use incentives and
free strategy to attract and encourage more users to experience mobile payments
in order to understand their real convenience and substantial utility.
Third, the inhibition of perceived risk and perceived cost should also be
emphasised. On the one hand, privacy breaches and security risks remain user
concerns. Hence, mobile network operators should increase their investments
into security technology and wireless network infrastructure to ensure the stabil-
ity and security of the wireless communication they offer. Mobile payment pro-
viders should invest more effort for ensuring payment and personal information
security and for publicising relevant mobile payment security knowledge to help
users improve their own awareness of payment security. Providers should also
promise to compensate users for losses. On the other hand, in comparison with
other developed countries, the price of smartphones in China is relatively high.
Thus, mobile device manufacturers need to provide diversified mobile devices,
especially smartphones at different prices, to meet the needs of different groups
and improve the utilisation rate of mobile devices. Additionally, the network
speed in China is slow but its fee is high. Mobile network operators should take
some measures to improve the network speed, reduce the wireless network com-
munication costs and encourage users to use these networks.

13
 Y. Liu et al.

7.3 Limitations and future research directions

However, this study also has some limitations. First, the research was conducted in
China, where mobile payments are developing rapidly. Thus, the findings need to be
examined further in other countries and regions. Second, even though our research
explored the hypotheses through a questionnaire, the survey only generated cross-
sectional results and did not examine the dynamic process of different periods.
Third, this study employs perceived risk to examine the users’ overall perception
of risk and the effects of different types of risk should be verified by further stud-
ies. Fourth, some researchers believe that trust plays an important role in the vir-
tual transaction environment (Lu et al. 2011; Slade et al. 2015; Yang et al. 2018).
Therefore, the trust variable is also worth considering in future research on mobile
payment user behaviour. In addition, the results of this study indicate that there are
no confounding effects of gender, age, and education on the users’ intention to use
mobile payments. This finding is similar to the findings of previous studies (Yu et al.
2018). However, Yu et al. (2018) also argued that gender and education have signifi-
cant effects on the continuance of the users’ intention to use mobile payments. Thus,
this point should be also explored in further research. Despite the above-mentioned
limitations, we believe that this study furthers understanding of the users’ mobile
payment use behaviour and provides a set of useful guidelines for practitioners.

Appendix: Total variance explained

Compo- Total Initial eigenvalues Extraction sums of squared Rotation sums of squared
nent loadings loadings
% of vari- Cumula- Total % of vari- Cumula- Total % of vari- Cumula-
ance tive% ance tive% ance tive%

1 6.848 40.285 40.285 6.848 40 285 40.285 2.592 15.248 15.248

2 2.204 12.963 53.248 2.204 12.963 53.248 2.456 14.447 29.695
3 1.419 8.346 61.594 1.419 8.346 61.594 2.339 13.761 43.456
4 1.199 7.052 68.646 1.199 7.052 68.646 2.263 13.312 56.768
5 0.984 5.790 74.436 0.984 5.790 74.436 2.085 12.266 69.034
6 0.900 5.295 79.731 0.900 5.295 79.731 1.818 10.697 79.731
7 0.587 3.454 83.184
8 0.474 2.788 85.973
9 391 2.300 88.273
10 0.363 2.137 90.410
11 0.342 2.013 92.423
12 0.280 1.648 94.071
13 0.246 1.449 95.520
14 0.229 1.346 96.866
15 0.212 1.248 98.114

13
The impact of mobility, risk, and cost on the users’ intention…

Compo- Total Initial eigenvalues Extraction sums of squared Rotation sums of squared
nent loadings loadings
% of vari- Cumula- Total % of vari- Cumula- Total % of vari- Cumula-
ance tive% ance tive% ance tive%

16 0.179 1.050 99.164

17 0.142 0.836 100.000

Extraction method: principal component analysis

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