Effect of information content and form on customers’ attitude and transaction intention in mobile banking : Moderating role of perceived privacy concern

Purpose Although research on mobile banking (M-banking) is an emerging field, the current understanding of the information characteristics of M-banking, such as information content and form and its impacts on customers’ attitude and transaction intention toward the same is limited. Furthermore, no study to date has examined how users’ privacy evaluation regarding the use of M-banking (i.e. users’ perceived privacy concern) influences their processing of information to create attitude and subsequent transaction intention. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to narrow this research gap by investigating the process through and conditions under which the customers’ evaluation of M-banking information content and form contributes to the development of transaction intention. Design/methodology/approach A self-administered survey on the users of M-banking was performed to collect the response. Mediation analyses followed by conditional process analyses were carried out to test the proposed set of hypotheses. Findings The results show that users’ favorable evaluation of M-banking information content and form creates transaction intention through favorable attitude toward M-banking. However, this relationship is found to be moderated by their perceived privacy concern, as users with high privacy concern do not process information content and form favorably, i.e., their attitude and transaction intention are found to be less, as compared to users with low perceived privacy concern. Originality/value Drawing on literature from areas, such as information processing, internet banking, marketing and psychology, the paper develops an understanding of the role of information characteristics of M-banking in determining users’ transaction intention via user attitude. Furthermore, this is the first study that shows how information characteristics differently influence users’ attitude and transaction intention based on their perceived privacy concern.