Information vulnerability in facial recognition payment: An explanation of technology threat avoidance and information boundary theory

As an emerging payment approach, facial recognition payment (FRP) offers superior user experience for cus-tomers and is changing our daily life. However, the sensitive information collected by the FRP service provider may create customers' information vulnerability which then hinders the use of FRP. Drawing on Technology Threat Avoidance Theory and Information Boundary Theory, this study focuses on how information vulnerability affects customers' FRP continuance usage intention. By collecting two samples of 397 (Alipay) and 372 (WeChat) online survey responses with using experience of FRP through snowball sampling, this study empirically ex-amines the conceptual model. The result shows that information vulnerability has positive impact on fear of financial losses and fear of reputational damage, which in turn reduce customers' FRP continuance usage intention. As two important boundary coordination mechanisms, information use fairness and information use transparency both can negatively moderate the positive impact of information vulnerability on fear of financial losses and fear of reputational damage. Despite this study has some limitations, it still extends the literatures related FRP and information vulnerability, and provides significant implications for practitioners and FRP industry.