August Keshav, Ashish Ranjan Sinha
This study analyzes the effects of regulatory environment (RE), effort expectancy (EE), merchant acceptance (MA), and social influence (SI) on intention to use (ITU) Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), having attitude (ATT) and trust in central bank (TRCB) as mediating constructs and age as a moderating construct based on the TAM, SCT, and UTAUT frameworks. The cross-sectional data was collected by distributing structured questionnaires to the respondents across the cities of the second-phase CBDC pilot testing in India. A total of 630 valid responses were analyzed through employing the quantitative analysis of Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), for which Smart PLS 4 was utilized. The model showed satisfactory explanatory and predictive power, as the values of (R 2 ) and (Q 2 ) were in accordance with the thresholds and validated by utilizing PLS-predict in smart PLS. The results of PLS-SEM revealed that RE, EE, MA, and SI significantly affect ITU through serial mediation of ATT and TRCB. In addition, age moderated the association between TRCB and ITU. The findings provide practical recommendations for decision-makers to cultivate positive attitudes among individuals by addressing the factors identified as predictors in this study, while also fostering institutional trust across different age groups.