Why would microentrepreneurs continue using mobile payments? An entrepreneurial perspective with evidence from India

Over the past decade, business activities have advanced electronically with mobile phones emerging as a significant channel for commercial transactions. How consumers are embracing mobile payments has received major attention in the literature. We shift focus to the microentrepreneurs, including small merchants and informal retailers, who constitute a bulk of developing economy markets. With the recent popularity of mobile payments among microentrepreneurs due to the demands of the Covid-19 pandemic, we now enquire about its long-term continuity. To acknowledge the entrepreneurial mindset driving microentrepreneurs to continue using mobile payments, we draw from the Entrepreneurial Orientation framework (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996) and develop a model that captures entrepreneurial characteristics of the technology like autonomy, innovativeness, competitive externalities, and customer expectations. Using the findings from a survey of 208 microentrepreneurs operating from an urban marketplace in India, we propose how mobile payment can contribute to sustainable development through long-term financial inclusion

Climate Change and COP26: Are Digital Technologies and Information Management Part of the Problem or the Solution? An Editorial Reflection and Call to Action

The UN COP26 2021 conference on climate change offers the chance for world leaders to take action and make urgent and meaningful commitments to reducing emissions and limit global temperatures to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Whilst the political aspects and subsequent ramifications of these fundamental and critical decisions cannot be underestimated, there exists a technical perspective where digital and IS technology has a role to play in the monitoring of potential solutions, but also an integral element of climate change solutions. We explore these aspects in this editorial article, offering a comprehensive opinion based insight to a multitude of diverse viewpoints that look at the many challenges through a technology lens. It is widely recognized that technology in all its forms, is an important and integral element of the solution, but industry and wider society also view technology as being part of the problem. Increasingly, researchers are referencing the importance of responsible digitalization to eliminate the significant levels of e-waste. The reality is that technology is an integral component of the global efforts to get to net zero, however, its adoption requires pragmatic tradeoffs as we transition from current behaviors to a more climate friendly society