Usability-security trade-off: Quantifying swiftness-driven risk behaviors among mobile financial services (MFS) users in Bangladesh

Abstract

Mobile Financial Services (MFS) applications represent a critical intersection between security and usability, where extremely smooth user experiences can lead to overconfidence and hard security measures can lead to user frustration. Both conditions have the potential to affect risky behavior among users. Existing MFS studies focusing on general technology adoption and usage intention are not entirely empirical enough to understand the self-reported or anticipated risky behavior of users. In order to fill this gap, this research expounds the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to include two additional variables, namely Swiftness (SWF) and Risky Behavior (RB). A quantitative study was carried out on user speed, risk-related behaviors, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived security, and some supplementary variables like usage experience, confidence in identifying frauds, training, etc., exploring the idea of usability-security trade-off in the security-usability-functionality triangle. The empirically analyzed relationships are based on the results collected from 707 MFS users in Bangladesh through a cross-sectional survey. It determines how risk-taking propensity in high-frequency financial environments is influenced by the different variables mentioned above. The study uses Python to clean and pre-process the collected data and applies SPSS and JASP to statistically analyze the collected responses. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate and validate the relationships, our five hypotheses, and some other variables claims to have. The obtained results validates our four hypotheses and rejects one, findings like positive relationship between swiftness and risky behaviour suggests users who prefer swiftness tends to take risky actions more, additionally, negligible impact of training on reducing risky actions irrespective of what years of app usage experience a user holds then encouraging swiftness through making the app more easy to use etc indicates risky-actions are more impacted by situational-based decisions rather than being less-aware. Based on these reflections, the paper suggests a more dynamic security approach rather than the existing static ones. Some future research implications include a dynamic MFS user interface design based on risk-based authentication and context components of risk indicators at major points of interaction. This empirical solution is intended to develop secure-by-design MFS interactions that are usable and fast, and help to minimize risky user behaviors.