FROM VOLUNTARY ADOPTION TO COMPELLED ACCEPTANCE: REFRAMING DIGITAL PAYMENT BEHAVIOUR THROUGH INDIA'S UPI ECOSYSTEM

Abstract

India's UPI ecosystem processed 185.8 billion transactions in FY2024-25, representing 48.5% of global real-time payment volume. However, this scale may partly reflect structural necessity alongside voluntary preference, particularly in a post-demonetisation environment where digital payments have become deeply embedded in everyday commerce. The 2016 demonetisation withdrew 86% of currency in circulation, displacing cash-dependent users into digital payments without alternatives. Subsequent platform concentration within two dominant providers institutionalised this dependency into everyday commerce architecture. This study theorises compelled acceptance, sustained platform use driven by structural obligation rather than voluntary trust, a phenomenon that has received limited theoretical attention within digital payment adoption research.

Existing adoption models (TAM, UTAUT) presuppose voluntary choice and cannot explain post-demonetisation UPI dynamics. This research develops a Dual-Factor Reliability–Trust Framework integrating three pathways: enabling (availability → reliability → institutional trust), inhibiting (fraud anxiety and resistance to use), and contextual (perceived necessity → compelled acceptance). Structural equation modelling on 550 Chennai-based high-frequency UPI users confirmed all hypotheses and mediation effects. Institutional trust emerged as the central mechanism linking enabling and inhibiting forces to acceptance. Recovery assurance proved the strongest enabling antecedent, while fraud anxiety independently suppressed trust. Critically, the perceived necessity to use significantly predicted acceptance independent of trust and resistance, confirming compelled acceptance as a theoretically distinct phenomenon. The study extends IS adoption theory by operationalising compelled acceptance as a post-adoption condition, distinguishing availability from reliability as sequential antecedents of trust, and integrating enabling-inhibiting pathways in mandatory digital payment contexts.