Beyond Access: Cybersecurity Assurance and the Access–Assurance Asymmetry in Sustainable Digital Financial Participation—A PLS-SEM Study

Abstract

Digital access does not necessarily produce sustained digital financial participation when users remain uncertain about security, privacy and redress. This study compares the associations of Digital Financial Inclusion Readiness (DFIR) and Cybersecurity Assurance (CA) with Sustainable Digital Adoption Behaviour (SDAB) among 123 digitally active financial-service users recruited across six districts of Uttar Pradesh, India. A reflective PLS-SEM was estimated in SmartPLS 4 and assessed with 5,000-subsample, two-tailed BCa bootstrapping. Indicator loadings ranged from .748 to .910, composite reliability from .929 to .953 and average variance extracted from .685 to .772. Together, DFIR and CA explained 71.9% of SDAB variance. CA had a large, statistically supported association with SDAB (β=.667, t=5.143, p<.001), whereas DFIR did not make a statistically reliable unique contribution in the bootstrapped PLS model (β=.215, t=1.569, p=.117). A construct-mean regression reproduced the ordering but yielded a significant DFIR coefficient, making that smaller path method-sensitive. The CA–SDAB HTMT value of .910, evidence of invariant responding and same-source measurement further limit interpretation. The results therefore support cybersecurity assurance as the more consistent correlate of post-access participation in this sample, not as a universal or causal gatekeeper. The study develops a broadly applicable access–assurance perspective while identifying measurement and sampling requirements for confirmatory research in other populations.