Determinants of the Intention to Adopt Digital-Only Banks in Malaysia: The Extension of Environmental Concern

Digital-only banks have not achieved adoption expectations despite being one of the latest innovations in fintech. Several digital-only banks in the United States and Japan have gone bankrupt, and others continue to operate at a loss. Therefore, it is imperative to conduct this study in Malaysia to understand customers’ behavior, particularly regarding the adoption of digital-only banks. With climate change, environmental-friendly behavior, which has been ignored in digital-only bank literature, is becoming increasingly pertinent. This study addresses the lack of an integrated model that investigates the effect of external factors (i.e., critical mass, number of services, and environmental concerns), customer self-determination factors (i.e., trust), and mental perceptions of technology adoption (i.e., convenience, economic efficiency, functional and security risks, as well as perceived value) on the intention to adopt digital-only banks. Data were collected through an online survey targeting Klang Valley residents in the prime age range of 25–54 years old using stratified random sampling. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling by performing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and SEM path analysis in AMOS.v26 software. The results show that convenience, economic efficiency, number of services, trust, perceived value, and environmental concern all have positive significant relationships with the intention to adopt digital-only banks. Further, environmental concern is the strongest indicator of behavioral intention. In contrast, functional and security risks have a negative but non-significant relationship with the intention to adopt digital-only banks. Finally, critical mass has a positive but non-significant effect on the behavioral intention. This study is among the first to examine the influence of environmental concern on behavioral intentions in a digital-only banking context. It also contributes to an expanding body of research investigating environmental sustainability by presenting empirical results in the context of digital-only banks.