Search Results (6)

This paper expands the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) to include four additional constructs (security, risk, institutional trust, and technology trust), providing a more comprehensive understanding of mobile banking applications (m-banking apps) adoption. It also highlights the significant role of demographic factors in moderating the impact of these constructs, offering practical insights for promoting the use of mobile devices to access and manage banking services. Data were collected using an online survey from 315 mobile banking users and analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM). Most constructs of the baseline UTAUT2 were validated in the m-banking context, with the additional constructs confirmed to affect user intention to adopt m-banking apps, except perceived risk. The model explained 79% of the variance in behavioural intention (BI), and 54.7% in use behaviour (UB), achieving higher fit than the baseline UTAUT2. Age, gender, experience, income, and education moderated the impact of perceived security and institutional trust on BI; age, education, and experience moderated technology trust on BI; and age, gender, and experience moderated perceived security on UB. The guarantee of enhanced security, advanced privacy mechanisms, and trust should be considered paramount in future strategies aimed at promoting m-banking app adoption and use. Overall, the paper advances scientific knowledge by providing a more nuanced and comprehensive framework for understanding m-banking app adoption, validating new constructs, and offering practical recommendations for promoting m-banking usage. Full article

Effective security support remains a challenge, even for mobile banking applications; this is leading to the loss of many customers due to limited protection of customer data and privacy. Cyber threats include everything from identity theft to malware threats and email and online fraud. Thus, businesses and individuals should use risk assessment methods and countermeasures to protect their m-banking apps. With this in mind, a new model using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been proposed. The model has been broken down into six main countermeasure categories, namely: perceived risk, perceived security, perceived trust, ease of use, usefulness and service quality. To test this model, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used. Our findings reveal that perceived security, perceived trust and service quality play key roles in improving the adoption of mobile banking apps. In addition, the findings indicate that perceived risk had a negative impact on both clients’ trust and their attitudes toward the use of mobile banking services. The proposed model could increase the adoption of m-banking apps by enhancing their defenses against security risk issues. The model enhances the risk reduction (63.0%), data protection (75.0%), trust (32.1%), quality of service (74.0%), ease of use (44.0%) and usefulness (45.3%) ratios. Full article

Payment apps and digital wallets are powerful tools used to exchange e-money via the internet. However, with the progressive disappearance of cash, there is a need for the digital equivalent of physical banknotes to guarantee the same level of anonymity of private payments. Few efforts to solve the double-spending problem exist in P2P payments (i.e., in avoiding the possibility of a payer retaining copies of digital coins in absence of a trusted third party (TTP)), and further research efforts are needed to explore options to preserve the privacy of payments, as per the mandates of numerous central bank digital currency (CBDC) exploratory initiatives, such as the digital euro. Moreover, generic programmability requirements and energetic impacts should be considered. In this paper, we present a sustainable offline P2P payment scheme to face the double-spending problem by means of a one-time program (OTP) approach. The approach consists of wiping the business logic out of a client’s app and allowing financial intermediaries to inject a certified payment code into the user’s device, which will execute (asynchronously and offline) at the time of payment. To do so, we wrap each coin in a program at the time of withdrawal. Then the program exploits the trusted execution environment (TEE) of modern smartphones to transfer itself from the payer to the payee via a direct IoT link. To confirm the validity of the approach, we performed qualitative and quantitative evaluations, specifically focusing on the energetic sustainability of the proposed scheme. Results show that our payment scheme is energetically sustainable as the current absorbed for sending one coin is, at most, ~1.8 mAh on an Apple smartphone. We advance the state-of-the-art because the scheme meets the programmability, anonymity, and sustainability requirements (at the same time). Full article

This research makes an attempt to understand various factors that influence the adoption of mobile applications. Within the context of the “Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” (UTAUT) modified model, considering the upcoming demand and increase in demand for mobile-banking applications, the researcher tried to explore the theoretical concept between random people of various states in India. The primary data was collected by preparing a questionnaire and circulating it using Google Forms. The collected data was further coded into Smart PLS 4 to understand the model and structural equation with reference to mobile-banking technological adoption and factors that had a significant impact. The conclusions derived from the study is that social influence, “effort expectancy”, and “trust” factors had a very strong influence on the “purchase intention”, whereas “effort” and “risk” factors had a negligible impact on purchase intent. It was also found that the UTAUT model is appropriate for evaluating the technological adoption of mobile-banking applications. With the advent of many players in the market and their unique banking management applications on mobile platforms, consumers are moving towards different third-party app than their origin bank in which they hold account. This has forced banking institutions to up the pace in the competition, introducing a lot of new features. It is also important to understand that, as a customer, there are a lot of attributes that he would be looking into for adoption. This paper is an attempt to understand the advancements in various variables that consumers would look at in the area of mobile-banking applications. Full article

The banking sector has been considered as one of the primary adopters of Information and Communications Technologies. Especially during the last years, they have invested a lot into the digital transformation of their business process. Concerning their retail customers, banks realized very early the great potential abilities to provide value added self-services functions via mobile devices, mainly smartphones to them; thus, they have invested a lot into m-banking apps’ functionality. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out different ways for financial transactions and even more mobile users have taken advantage of m-banking app services. Thus, the purpose of this empirical paper is to investigate the determinants that impact individuals on adopting or not m-banking apps. Specifically, it examines two groups of individuals, users (adopters) and non-users (non-adopters) of m-banking apps, and aims to reveal if there are differences and similarities between the factors that impact them on adopting or not this type of m-banking services. To our knowledge, this is the second scientific attempt where these two groups of individuals have been compared on this topic. The paper proposes a comprehensive conceptual model by extending Venkatech’s et al. (2003) Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with ICT facilitators (i.e., reward and security) and ICT inhibitors (i.e., risk and anxiety), as well as the recommendation factor. However, this study intends to fill the research gap by investigating and proving for the first time the impact of social influence, reward and anxiety factors on behavioral intention, the relationship between risk and anxiety and the impact of behavioral intention on recommendation via the application of Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) statistical techniques. The results reveal a number of differences regarding the factors that impact or not these two groups towards m-banking app adoption; thus, it provides new insights regarding m-banking app adoption in a slightly examined scientific field. Thus, the study intends to assist the banking sector in better understanding their customers with the aim to formulate and apply customized m-business strategies and increase not only the adoption of m-banking apps but also the level of their further use. Full article

The gram-negative bacterium Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (APP) is an inhabitant of the porcine upper respiratory tract and the causative agent of porcine pleuropneumonia (PP). In recent years, knowledge about the proinflammatory cytokine and chemokine gene expression that occurs in lung and lymph node of the APP-infected swine has been advanced. However, systematic gene expression profiles on hilar nodes from pigs after infection with Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae have not yet been reported. The transcriptional responses were studied in hilar nodes (HN) from swine experimentally infected with APP and the control groupusing Agilent Porcine Genechip, including 43,603 probe sets. 9,517 transcripts were identified as differentially expressed (DE) at the p ≤ 0.01 level by comparing the log2 (normalized signal) of the two groups named treatment group (TG) and controls (CG). Eight hundred and fifteen of these DE transcripts were annotated as pig genes in the GenBank database (DB). Two hundred and seventy-two biological process categories (BP), 75 cellular components and 171 molecular functions were substantially altered in the TG compared to CG. Many BP were involved in host immune responses (i.e., signaling, signal transmission, signal transduction, response to stimulus, oxidation reduction, response to stress, immune system process, signaling pathway, immune response, cell surface receptor linked signaling pathway). Seven DE gene pathways (VEGF signaling pathway, Long-term potentiation, Ribosome, Asthma, Allograft rejection, Type I diabetes mellitus and Cardiac muscle contraction) and statistically significant associations with host responses were affected. Many cytokines (including NRAS, PI3K, MAPK14, CaM, HSP27, protein phosphatase 3, catalytic subunit and alpha isoform), mediating the proliferation and migration of endothelial cells and promoting survival and vascular permeability, were activated in TG, whilst many immunomodulatory cytokines were suppressed. The significant changes in the expression patterns of the genes, GO terms, and pathways, led to a decrease of antigenic peptides with antigen presenting cells presented to T lymphocytes via the major histocompatibility complex, and alleviated immune response induced APP of HN. The immune response ability of HN in the APP-infected pigs was weakened; however, cell proliferation and migration ability was enhanced. Full article