Ina Uswatun Nihaya, Achmad Kautsar, Nadia Asandimitra Haryono, Nunik Dwi Kusumawati, Z. N. Sefrimel Anggriani, Anang Kistyanto
The digital transformation of Indonesia's banking sector presents an important area of study, especially regarding factors influencing user preferences for digital banking. This research examines the effects of financial literacy, digital literacy, and service quality on preferences for using digital banks, with trust operationalized as a single-dimensional construct, examined as a moderating variable. Using an explanatory research approach, the study focuses on East Java the province with the highest digital transaction growth in Indonesia. Purposive sampling was applied to select respondents from Surabaya, Malang, Sidoarjo, Jember, and Lamongan, which represent regions with high levels of digital banking adoption. A total of 400 respondents were determined using the Slovin formula, and the data were analyzed using SmartPLS 3.0 to examine the relationships among variables and the moderating effect of trust. The results indicate that trust, service quality, digital literacy, and financial literacy have significant positive effects on preferences for using digital banking services. Among these, digital literacy has the most dominant effect, showing that understanding technology and digital security strongly shapes user preferences. Trust significantly moderates the model by strengthening the impact of digital literacy on preferences while weakening the link between financial literacy and preferences, and showing no moderating effect on service quality. These results highlighting that trust and literacy are essential in promoting secure, confident, and sustainable digital banking adoption in Indonesia. These findings extend the TAM and UTAUT frameworks by showing that trust not only supports technology acceptance but also moderates the role of cognitive evaluation, leading to habitual digital banking usage. © Copyright (c) 2026 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia; Department of Digital Business, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia; Department of Business Education, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Indonesia
