Adoption intention towards e-kronan - An exploratory mixed-methods study of the Swedish public

Sammanfattning: Sweden is quickly heading towards becoming the first-ever cashless society. Partially fuelled by a payment market evolving at a staggering rate, along with shifted consumer trends towards newly introduced digital service suppliers Swish, iZettle and Klarna to name a few (Berg, 2017). Riksbanken is therefore evaluating the possibility of introducing a new form of digital central bank money (a CBDC), called e-kronan (Julin, 2017). In 2014, Ecuador launched their equivalent to e-kronan, the e-peso. Only shortly after to revoke the currency due to an insufficient volume of end-users adopting the system (H. White, 2018). This certainly provides "food for thought" when conceptualising about the degree of adoption intention towards e-kronan in Sweden? Therefore, the overall purpose of the present study is to explore the adoption intention towards e-kronan of the Swedish public. More specifically, to explore the degree of predictive power for a selected group of variables in a constructed research framework inspired by TPB and TAM, in potentially influencing adoption intention towards e-kronan. Carried out through an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach, combining aggregated regression findings with qualitative data in a cross-over fashion. Through the construct of eight variables, the findings showed predictive power for seven out of eleven hypothesised relationship. In that, the constructed research model gained favourable exploratory power, proving its scientific capacity. Perceived benefit and attitude attained strong influential power for intention adoption. Perceived usefulness also showed a positive power for impacting attitude and intention, potentially stemming from high levels of alignment with Swedish social and cultural values. Perceived ease of use was regarded as primarily acting through the intermediate variable perceived usefulness. Subjective norm and perceived behavioural proved no significant effect. Lastly, perceived security risk on intention was the only negative relationship significantly impacting adoption intention towards e-kronan. Although the negative relationship could potentially be diminished, due to Riksbanken seemingly favourable role in ledgering e-kronan.