Social acceptance of central bank digital currency: insights from the digital euro

Digital currencies are gaining increasing attention. A current initiative led by the European Central Bank is the introduction of the digital euro, a central bank digital currency (CBDC). As with many large European projects, the success of the digital euro will depend largely on its social acceptance among European citizens. Based on Information Systems theories of technology acceptance and trust, this study examines how social acceptance depends on specific CBDC design choices and to what extent this acceptance varies across major countries in the heterogeneous currency union. To measure social acceptance, we surveyed 1724 respondents and utilised the discrete choice experiment variant SADR (Separated Adaptive Dual Response), which is well-suited if a high degree of heterogeneity in acceptance is possible. Anonymity, merchant acceptance, and monthly fees are the most influential CBDC design attributes. Social acceptance highly depends on the CBDC design choices, which can be as high as 71.6% under favourable conditions, falling to only 21.5% when least favourable conditions are implemented. This paper makes a design-informed, empirically grounded, and policy-relevant contribution by highlighting that CBDC design choices shape social acceptance and that these choices must be evaluated not only for technical soundness but also for their public resonance.