The objective of this study is to test how five theory-driven adoption barriers and three key consumer demographics influence consumer adoption versus rejection decisions in two seemingly similar service innovations. The earlier literature on innovation diffusion recognizes two streams of research: one focusing on innovation adoption and acceptance of innovations, and the other stream, though less traveled, calling attention to innovation resistance. All innovations face a certain degree of resistance among consumers depending on consumer characteristics and the innovation itself. The literature argues that consumers can simultaneously express views that are both favorable and unfavorable towards the innovations (Ferreira, da Rocha, & da Silva, 2014) and thus both resistance and adoption can coexist during the lifetime of an innovation (Ram, 1987). Thus it is reasonable to explore how innovation resistance influences consumer decisions in different service innovations. Initially scholars explained resistance to innovations through two constructs, habit or satisfaction with an existing behavior and perceived risks associated with innovation adoption (Sheth, 1981). Ram and Sheth (1989) provide a more comprehensive view to the phenomenon by explaining consumer resistance through functional and psychological barriers that they further divide into five distinct barriers, namely usage, value, risk, tradition and image. This study tests how these five adoption barriers as well as three consumer demographics, gender, age, and income, influence consumer adoption versus rejection decisions in Internet and mobile banking. An effective total sample size of 1,736 consumer responses were collected from Finland. Logistic regression analysis finds that the value barrier is the strongest inhibitor of Internet and mobile banking adoption. In addition, while the image barrier slows down mobile banking adoption, the tradition barrier explains the rejection of Internet banking. In addition, age greatly explains this behavior and the results show that younger segments have a significantly greater likelihood of Internet banking adoption than their older counterparts. Contrary to Internet banking, it appears that gender significantly contributes to mobile banking adoption and the intention to use it. The results predict that males have nearly two times greater likelihood towards adoption compared to females.

Despite the rapid growth and potential for technology-based services from a technology and productivity perspective, the biggest challenges that managers often face are gaining customer acceptance and increasing usage of these new innovative services. In the B2C field, studies of self‐service technology show that the perceived risk is an important factor influencing the usage of service technology. Whereas research has explored different risk types that emerge in consumer settings such as functional and psychological risk, research on risk perception in B2B setting still lacks a detailed examination of the different facets risk can take on in technology-based service adoption. Some studies indicate that there might be different views and perceptions of the risk involved in technology-based services between customers and providers. Our study addresses this gap and aims to develop a holistic understanding of the types of risk customers perceive when using a technology-based service. We investigate what types of risk are emergent in technology-based service encounters and whether customers and providers perceive these risks differently. We conducted 49 qualitative interviews with providers and customers in two industries in four countries. Our study emphasizes the importance of functional and financial risks as expected in a B2B context, but also sheds light on the fact that business customers have personal and psychological fears that hinder them from using technology-based services. Most importantly, we show that gaps in the perception and evaluation of risk exist between customers and providers: customers doubt the functionality of technology-based services; they emphasize privacy risk as a main hindrance and worry about their own role in a service, whereas only few providers are aware of the customers’ fears.