Positive and negative valences, personal innovativeness and intention to use facial recognition for payments

Purpose Facial recognition payment (FRP) has been attracting attention as an alternative payment mode. This research aims to investigate the future use of FRP for both mobile payment and point of sale payment. Design/methodology/approach The body of information on this topic is promoted by proposing the valence framework, where the authors used relative advantage, initial trust, perceived playfulness and need for uniqueness as positive valence, and perceived risk, technophobia and perceived complexity as negative valence. This study also investigated the moderating effect of personal innovativeness on consumers' behavioral intention to use FRP-based payments. The authors collected data from 392 FRP users from China to test the model. The authors used structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the significant determinants influencing FRP use. Findings The authors found that relative advantage and privacy risk are the two most influential predictors of FRP use. The findings indicate that personal innovativeness acts as a moderator between negative valence and behavioral intention. This study provides valuable policy guidelines for the mobile or point of sale (POS) payment companies for adding FRP service into their default payment method. Originality/value FRP is a relatively new technology that has not received much research attention in information system (IS) literature. Most studies on payment investigated enablers, and less effort has been given to study both enablers and inhibitors together. Furthermore, the authors employed SEM-based analysis to identify the most important factors influencing consumers' future use decisions.