Antecedents of consumers' acceptance of central bank digital currency: The role of technology perceptions, social influence and personal traits

Abstract

Central bank digital currency (CBDC) has recently been a hot topic in both theory and practice. However, previous studies have focused minimally on consumers' CBDC acceptance behavior, which is the precondition of CBDC's successful implementation. This study aims to investigate antecedents of consumers' CBDC acceptance behavior. To this end, this study constructs a holistic conceptual framework that considers consumers' technology perceptions, social influence, and personal traits based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). Survey data on 621 potential CBDC consumers were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and deep learning-based artificial neural networks (ANN). The PLS-SEM results indicate that perceived compatibility, perceived ease of use, perceived security, perceived usefulness, and absorptive capacity all positively influence consumers' CBDC usage intention. Subjective norms indirectly affect consumers' CBDC usage intention via perceived usefulness. Personal innovativeness does not affect consumers' CBDC usage intention. The ANN results demonstrate that technology perceptions (perceived compatibility, perceived ease of use, perceived security, and perceived usefulness) are more important than personal traits (absorptive capacity) and social influence (subjective norms). This study extends the TAM to comprehensively comprehend consumers' CBDC acceptance behavior and furnishes major implications to promote CBDC applications.