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1. Introduction
Over the last few years, internet technologies have dramatically transformed financial industries, giving rise to e-finance. E-finance is the provision of financial services and markets via the internet (Claessens et al., 2002). For example, in the brokerage market, it is now common for customers to trade online; bank customers are also able to conduct banking activities electronically. The internet allows users to have access to financial services without temporal and spatial constraints. With advancements in mobile, cloud and big data technologies, e-finance will continue to grow and penetrate to different areas of the financial industry in the future. However, because of the huge market potential, new entries from financial and non-financial entities have intensified the competition in e-finance, and users can easily switch to other e-finance platforms. Therefore, user retention is a crucial issue for e-finance providers to stay competitive.
Previous literature has covered extensively user’s continuance and customer retention in information technology adoption and e-commerce (Chiu et al., 2009, 2014; Lin and Lekhawipat, 2014); yet limited attention has been paid to the context of e-finance. E-finance heavily relies on information technology platforms; thus, the use of e-finance services can be similar to the adoption of related technology. Meanwhile, the consumption of e-finance services involves online transaction, and thus is closely related to e-commerce. Sharing the characteristics of information technology, e-commerce product and financial services, e-finance is a unique phenomenon where the factors that influence its users’ continuance intention remain unclear. Therefore, this study aims to understand what factors influence users’ continuance intention of an e-finance platform.
Previous literature has referred to Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in explaining user’s adoption of information technology and has used Expectations Confirmation Theory (ECT) to explain consumer’s repurchase in e-commerce (Gefen et al., 2003; Benbasat and Barki, 2007; Brown et al., 2014; Bhattacherjee, 2001). However, few studies have explored their combined effects in shaping user’s continuance intention. Considering that e-finance incorporates the characteristics of information technology and e-commerce product, it is necessary to combine both theories. Moreover, trustworthiness is a crucial element for financial services, especially for e-finance which involves internet-related technologies. Although existing works have studied trust and its effects on consumer repurchase intention (i.e. Gefen, 2000; Kim and Benbasat, 2010; Fang