User Intensions towards Mobile Money Service Adoption in Ethiopia

In recent times, mobile money services have become a fashioned services following to the rapid development of mobile technologies and increasing demand for cashless business transactions. Such demand has also ushered a new era to the banking industry and bank users. However, the bank users’ intensions to adopt the services, particularly in Ethiopia, were not studied yet. To fill this study gap, data was collected from 384 users of banks branching in Addis Ababa and analyzed by integrating the modified extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) and with the structural equation model. According to the path analysis, the study found performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitation conditions (infrastructure), hedonic motivation and price value to be a positive and strong predictor of the bank user’s behavioral intension to adopt the mobile money services followed by the exogenous predictors such as perceived security and trust on the technology. Another interesting finding is that the users’ behavioral intention to adopt such services is significantly transformed in to actual behavior. But, none of the moderating variables have significant effect on the users’ behavioral intension to adopt the services and they are excluded from the path. Based on the finding, the study advices the mobile money service providers to use an aggressive approach to strengthen positive trust drivers, eliminate insecurity dimensions, and design aesthetically appealing services with a state-of-the-art technology which have multi-purpose operational interfaces. Keywords: Mobile money, UTAUT2, Users intension, Banking in Ethiopia DOI: 10.7176/IKM/12-5-01 Publication date: September 30 th 2022