Acceptance of e-cash and usage implications of associated system : the case of mobile-online gaming services

This research explores the possible relationship between e-cash acceptance of end-users and their usage of associated end-of-supply-chain services. This information is invaluable to system designers at different stages of the supply chain, and especially to logistics information system designers. We investigate factors influencing the willingness to pay for and consume mobile-online gaming services given varying levels of availability and usage of electronic cash technology. A sample of 9299 cases was surveyed and collected in Hong Kong comparing the influence of electronic cash availability on the willingness to pay for and consume mobile-online gaming services controlling for gender, age and education level. Our research found that electronic cash technology had almost no influence on men's' game usage while for women, the availability of electronic cash was a significant enabler of online game usage, and that age affected the degree of influence - electronic cash technology use among children and adolescents had almost no influence on game usage, but was influential in motivating more game usage in older gamers. Differences in educational level also impacted the effect of electronic cash availability on game usage, with those at the extremes, gamers with a primary only, or post-graduate education responding that electronic cash had almost no influence on their game usage; while gamers with secondary or college education tended to have electronic cash usage profiles closer to the average across all users.