Green Beliefs Drive Gen Z Toward Financial Technology, Indonesian Study Finds

Financial technology has swept through Indonesia at remarkable speed, transforming how millions of people pay for coffee, send money to relatives, and invest their savings. But a new study suggests that the generation most eager to embrace these digital tools may be doing so for reasons that go far beyond convenience. Research published in Discover Sustainability indicates that university students from Generation Z are more likely to adopt financial technology, or FinTech, when they believe it delivers genuine sustainability benefits, particularly economic and environmental ones.

The study, led by Hasan Mukhibad of Universitas Negeri Semarang and colleagues at institutions across Indonesia, surveyed 319 Generation Z university students and analyzed their responses using structural equation modeling with partial least squares, a statistical technique widely used in behavioral research to test how multiple factors interact to shape outcomes. The team’s central question was deceptively simple: does believing that FinTech supports sustainability actually make young people more inclined to use it?

The answer, in broad terms, is yes. The researchers found that sustainability-benefit beliefs, taken as a whole, increase the behavioral intention to use FinTech. In the framework the authors employed, rooted in the theory of technology use behavior, behavioral intention is the psychological stepping stone between what people believe and what they actually do. When users perceive that a technology contributes to a more sustainable world, that perception strengthens their resolve to adopt it, and adoption tends to follow.

What makes the study more interesting than a single confirmation is the way the authors dissected the concept of sustainability. Rather than treating it as one undifferentiated attitude, they split sustainability-benefit beliefs into three distinct categories: economic, environmental, and social. This decomposition reflects a long-standing convention in sustainability science, often summarized as the triple bottom line, which holds that genuine sustainability requires simultaneous progress on prosperity, planetary health, and human welfare.

When the three categories were tested separately, a clear pattern emerged. Economic-benefit beliefs, the conviction that FinTech improves financial efficiency, access, and affordability, positively influenced students’ intention to use these services. Environmental-benefit beliefs, the sense that digital finance reduces paper consumption, physical travel, and resource waste, had a similarly positive effect. Social-benefit beliefs, however, the expectation that FinTech advances community welfare and social equity, showed no measurable influence on adoption intentions at all.

That null result for the social dimension is arguably the most provocative finding in the paper. It suggests that young Indonesian consumers may view FinTech primarily through a personal and practical lens, asking whether it saves them money and whether it lightens their environmental footprint, while remaining largely indifferent to claims about broader social impact. For FinTech companies that have invested heavily in marketing their products as engines of financial inclusion and social good, the finding is a caution: those messages may not be what actually moves the youngest cohort of users.

The theoretical scaffolding behind the study draws on ecological modernization theory, the idea that technological innovation and environmental protection can reinforce rather than contradict each other. Under this view, digital finance is not merely a neutral convenience but a potential instrument of sustainability, since cashless transactions eliminate the material costs of printing and transporting currency, and app-based services reduce the need for branch offices and physical commutes. The study’s authors position their work as empirical evidence for this link, but from the user’s side of the equation rather than the corporate side. Much of the existing literature, they note, has examined how FinTech providers achieve sustainable performance; this research instead asks whether users’ sustainability perceptions shape demand.

Methodologically, the reliance on partial least squares structural equation modeling is standard for studies of this kind, allowing researchers to estimate relationships among latent constructs, such as beliefs and intentions, that cannot be observed directly but are inferred from questionnaire responses. The sample of 319 students represents a population that is unusually consequential for the future of digital finance. Generation Z, born roughly between the late 1990s and early 2010s, is the first cohort to grow up entirely in the smartphone era, and its members are simultaneously the most digitally fluent consumers and the most climate-conscious generation on record. Understanding what triggers their adoption of financial technology offers a preview of market dynamics that will dominate the coming decades.

Indonesia provides a particularly instructive setting for this research. As the world’s fourth most populous country and home to a rapidly expanding digital economy, it has seen explosive growth in mobile payments, peer-to-peer lending platforms, and digital banking. At the same time, its young population faces acute environmental challenges, from deforestation to urban air pollution, which may sharpen sensitivity to the ecological consequences of everyday choices. The convergence of a huge, tech-native youth market and heightened environmental awareness makes Indonesia a bellwether for how sustainability perceptions might shape financial behavior across the developing world.

The practical implications the authors draw are directed at two audiences. FinTech service developers are advised to innovate continuously in ways that improve perceived sustainability performance, embedding environmental and economic advantages visibly into their products so that users can recognize them. Financial institutions, meanwhile, are encouraged to raise public awareness of FinTech’s benefits, since fostering a positive perception of the technology’s ability to enhance sustainability performance is, in the authors’ framing, essential to growing the user base. In other words, the study treats sustainability perception not as a moral garnish but as a genuine driver of market expansion.

The research was approved by the ethics committee of Universitas Negeri Jakarta under protocol 1026/UN.14/PT.01.05/X/2024, with informed consent obtained from all participants, and it was funded by the Institute of Research and Community Service at Universitas Negeri Semarang. The authors declare no competing interests, and the article is published open access under a Creative Commons license.

For the broader conversation about sustainable finance, the study adds a missing piece: evidence that the demand side of FinTech is itself shaped by sustainability thinking. If digital finance is to fulfill its promise as a tool of ecological modernization, it will need users who believe in that promise. This research suggests that, at least among Indonesian Generation Z students, the economic and environmental dimensions of that belief are already at work, quietly steering a generation toward the digital wallet, while the social dimension still waits to be convinced.

Subject of Research: The relationship between sustainability-benefit beliefs and Generation Z university students' intention to use financial technology in Indonesia

Article Title: Sustainability-benefit beliefs, Generation Z’s intentions and actual use of financial technology university students in Indonesia

Article References: Sustainability-benefit beliefs, Generation Z’s intentions and actual use of financial technology university students in Indonesia. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-05019-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-05019-2

Keywords: financial technology, Generation Z, sustainability, behavioral intention, Indonesia, university students, SEM-PLS, ecological modernization, economic benefits, environmental benefits, social benefits, digital finance