Beyond continuance: how FinTech app experiences shape user well-being

Abstract

Purpose This study examines how users' everyday experiences with digital wallet apps, as a major category of FinTech applications, shape their well-being rather than focusing only on continued use. Using real user reviews from Saudi Arabia, it identifies four key experiential factors: complaint handling effectiveness, perceived system reliability, information ambiguity, and user autonomy. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the study explains how these factors shape user well-being. Design/methodology/approach We applied a sequential mixed-methods design guided by Computational User Feedback Analytics (CUFA) to Arabic and English reviews collected from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. CUFA integrates hierarchical clustering, Latent Dirichlet Allocation( topic modeling, sentiment analysis, multi-model classification, human validation, and regularized regression. We interpreted the review-derived constructs through SDT and tested them using Ridge and Lasso regression. Findings Our findings indicate that complaint handling effectiveness, perceived system reliability, and user autonomy positively shape user well-being. In contrast, information ambiguity negatively affects user well-being. Originality/value Unlike prior studies that rely predominantly on structured surveys and predefined adoption models, this study applies CUFA to derive, validate, and test theoretically meaningful constructs using large-scale, unsolicited user feedback. It also extends SDT into the fintech context by showing how specific digital wallet experiences support or frustrate users' psychological needs.