Consumer Behavior Toward Adoption of Mobile Payment: A Case Study in Indonesia During the COVID-19 Pandemics

The purpose of the research was to investigate the characteristics of technology users, their knowledge about the technology and whether that affected technology adoption, and, through the measurement utilitarian value as a mediator, to find out whether the behavior toward mobile payment technology adoption is considered most effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially at this research locus, Central Java Province, Indonesian Batik SME consumers. The research methodology was quantitative with data processing using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with the final sample of 294 respondents’ answers. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this was an initial attempt toward a holistic and integrative approach to explain the adoption of mobile payment in Indonesia with different consumer characteristics in each region of Indonesia and varying levels of knowledge about mobile payment applications. The results show that the utilitarian value as a mediating variable only affected the relationship between the characteristics of technology users and adoption behavior. The findings of this study suggest that the stronger the knowledge of technology users, the more influential the adoption behavior of the mobile payment technology for Indonesian Batik small-, and medium-sized enterprise (SME) consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the new normal era.