Unveiling Digital Wallets Adoption in Developing countries: A Dual-Factor Approach of Enablers and Inhibitors Impacting User Intentions

Digital wallets are widely adopted across many countries due to the numerous advantages they offer, particularly in terms of speed, convenience, and online payment capabilities. However, despite these benefits, existing literature indicates that their adoption in Iraq remains limited. The existing study investigates the important factors impacting individuals intention to adopt digital wallets by proposing a framework incorporating both motivational and inhibitory factors. The motivational factors are derived from the (UTAUT), in addition to trust, perceived security, and perceived privacy, each supported by relevant literature. The inhibitory factors include regret avoidance, drawn from the SQB theory, and technology anxiety, identified in previous studies. The proposed framework was tested using a quantitative research methodology. Data were collected via a structured questionnaire distributed to a sample of 605 individuals in Iraq. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed for data analysis using AMOS software. The findings indicate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, perceived privacy, perceived security, and trust all have a significant impact on the intention regarding the adoption of digital wallets. In contrast, regret avoidance and technology anxiety were determined to have no significant negative effects. Based on these results, several recommendations are proposed to enhance digital wallet adoption in Iraq. These include increasing public awareness and education, reinforcing the importance of security and privacy, and fostering positive social influence.