User stickiness to facial recognition payment technology: insights from Sako’s trust typology, privacy concerns, and a cross-cultural context

People remain concerned about using facial recognition payment (FRP) technology because of risks such as biological information and data leakage. Therefore, promoting individuals’ continual use behavior of FRPs is critical for their successful deployment. However, the majority of FRP studies emphasize individuals’ intentions. A discrepancy between intention and actual use may exist, but few or no studies have explored and investigated the factors affecting people’s sustained use behavior. To fill this gap, we use the concept of user stickiness to reflect continuous use behavior and develop a research model by considering the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and Sako’s trust typology (competence, contractual and goodwill trust) and privacy concerns to explain and predict user stickiness to the FRP. We examined this model via partial least squares (PLS) on samples from 1278 users (648 from China and 630 from the USA) with FRP experience. In both countries, competence, contractual, and goodwill trust are positively related to users’ attitudes and perceived behavioral control and negatively related to privacy concerns. Our study also highlights cultural differences in the model, showing the distinct impacts of privacy concerns on user attitudes and FRP stickiness between the Chinese and American samples. This study contributes to the literature by revealing and clarifying the different mechanisms of competence, contractual, and goodwill trust on user stickiness to FRP through the constructs of the TPB and privacy concerns in the context of China and the USA.