Investigating young adults' use of Internet credit services: A reflective-impulsive dual-process model

Abstract

While Internet credit services are proliferating fast, they bring serious debt problems, especially to young adults, and further result in negative psychological and social issues. The present study aims to investigate the influential factors underlying the usage of Internet credit services among young adults. Particularly, a dual-process model is proposed by integrating both the reflective and impulsive decision-making process. While the reflective process is modelled based on the theory of planned behaviour, the impulsive process is manifested by examining the antecedents of impulse to use Internet credit services, including immediate gratification, materialism, and self-control. A survey was administered among young adults and 992 valid questionnaires were collected. PLS-SEM methods were applied to analyse the data. It was revealed that the reflective decision-making process exerts significant influence on young adults' usage of Internet credit services, and the impulsive process plays important role in impacting people's usage of Internet credit services among the lower income group. In addition, immediate gratification and materialism were found to positively affect the impulse to use, whereas self-control was identified as an inhibitor of impulse to use Internet credit services. Implications of the finding are discussed at the end of the paper.