To Continue or Discontinue Use? An Empirical Assessment of Users' Intentions Toward E-Levy Policy Anchored on the Theory of Reasoned Action

Abstract

Electronic payment systems have become increasingly innovative avenues to generate revenue while fostering financial inclusion and creating employment. These benefits notwithstanding, Ghana's institution of the electronic levy legislation in the year 2022 erupted mixed reactions—of support and dissent among its residents. Though this has forefronted a hybridity of behavioral and policy discussions, the latter appears to have received little research attention. Therefore, on the back of this observation, to fill the research gap, the current study probes empirically the nuanced behavioral factors underlying residents' disposition toward the electronic levy payment policy. This research, which is anchored on the theory of reasoned action, engages the structural equation modeling technique to analyze a cross-sectional data (n = 422) drawn from Ghana. Alongside the negative effect of the electronic levy policy, this research revealed attitude and subjective norm as significant predictors of behavioral intention toward mobile money service use. Uniquely, this study foregrounds the differential effects of demographic variables on behavior, with empirical evidence of younger users exhibiting greater resilience to policy changes compared to the older and rural populace. The results of this research taken together confirm the appropriateness and predictive viability of the research model, which contributed 36% to residents' explained variance in intention to use mobile money service. While these furnish a robust predictive model for future research, the study implications, on the back of the results, are discussed accordingly.