Disruptive innovation of cryptocurrencies in consumer acceptance and trust

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to become a disruptive innovation because they define a new paradigm: the decentralization of trust in secure electronic transactions without the need for a central control authority. Cryptocurrencies arouse interest in society because they reformulate the generation and transference of money. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of the disruptive innovation of cryptocurrencies in the acceptance and trust perceived by users with regard to the monetary transactions generated in e-commerce. This paper defines a model using constructs from the technology acceptance model, trust and perceived risk. This model is evaluated using partial least squares analysis. The findings affirm that perceived trust, perceived risk, and perceived ease of use are not strong predictors of the intention to use cryptocurrencies and that the strength of their effects on the intention to use is determined by the perceived usefulness of adopting the mentioned disruptive innovation. This preliminary study makes a significant contribution to consumer behaviour research by analysing a cryptocurrency acceptance model for C2C e-commerce. The theoretical and practical contributions are detailed in the final section of the paper.