Impact of Fintech Sustainability Dimensions on Fintech Acceptance: An Empirical Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) Approach

Abstract

The supply of financial services in the developing economies has brought a paradigm shift for increasing the use of financial technologies, popularly called as FinTech. However, the longevity and sustainability of Fintech platforms are increasingly dependent on their ability to align with the goals of sustainable development. Despite this, there is limited empirical research on the incorporation of sustainability dimensions into models of Fintech acceptance. The paper investigates how the dimensions of Fintech sustainability affect Fintech acceptance through a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) framework.The questionnaire was carried out in a structured form and designed for 512 participants who are using Fintech in the urban and semi-urban regions of Karnataka, India. The conceptualisation of sustainability in the study incorporates five dimensions of sustainability, which are economic, social, environmental, technological, and governance sustainability, and explores the enduring effects of all these dimensions on the acceptance of Fintech, mediated by its perceived usefulness, trust, and financial inclusion. SmartPLS was utilised to confirm the structural and measurement models with the help of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and SEM. The results show that economic and technological sustainability have the best positive effect on the Fintech acceptance, whilst governance sustainability has a significant positive impact on trust, and, consequently, upon Fintech acceptance. Financial inclusion is positively affected by social sustainability and also mediated by Fintech acceptance, whereas environmental sustainability has a noteworthy indirect effect via perceived usefulness. The model is highly explanatory and has good goodness-of-fit indices.