The Effect of Self-Efficacy on Trust and Customer Performance in Unmanned Stores: Moderating Role of Untact Orientation*

Purpose: The rapid proliferation of unmanned stores in the retail and food service industries has accelerated in the post-pandemic era due to the expansion of contactless consumption (e.g., untact consumption) and the advancement of digital technologies. While unmanned stores offer convenience and cost-efficiency—particularly through KIOSK-based payment systems—they also require consumers to accept and trust technology-driven service environments in the absence of human interaction. In such contexts, users’ psychological traits, perceived technological competence, and emotional responses play a critical role in shaping service evaluations and behavioral intentions. The purpose of this study is to examine how self-efficacy influences satisfaction and intention to reuse unmanned stores through cognitive trust and emotional trust as mediating variables. Furthermore, this study investigates whether consumers’ untact orientation moderates the effects of self-efficacy on these trust constructs, thereby influencing the overall structural relationships. Research design, data, and methodology: Based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and trust-based adoption frameworks, this study proposes an extended research model that integrates both cognitive and affective dimensions of trust, as well as individual psychological characteristics such as untact orientation. A structural model connecting self-efficacy, cognitive trust, affective trust, satisfaction, and repurchase intention was developed, with untact orientation incorporated as a moderating variable. Data were collected from 300 adult consumers across South Korea who had prior experience using unmanned stores. The survey was administered online through Macromill Embrain, a professional market research agency. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test the hypothesized relationships, assess model fit, and evaluate the significance of mediating and moderating effects. Results: The empirical results demonstrate that self-efficacy exerts a significant positive influence on both cognitive trust and affective trust toward unmanned store systems. In turn, each type of trust positively affects user satisfaction, although affective trust shows a stronger effect compared to cognitive trust, highlighting the critical role of emotional stability and comfort in technology-based, non-face-to-face service environments. Satisfaction was also found to significantly increase consumers’ intention to repurchase unmanned stores. The moderation analysis revealed that untact orientation significantly strengthens the relationship between self-efficacy and affective trust. Consumers with a high untact orientation tend to develop higher levels of affective trust even when exhibiting similar levels of self-efficacy, indicating that individual preferences for non-contact service environments meaningfully shape trust formation. Conclusions: This study emphasizes the importance of psychological factors—particularly self-efficacy, cognitive and affective trust, and untact orientation—in driving satisfaction and repurchase intention of unmanned store services. From a managerial perspective, this study suggests that the strategy for unmanned stores cannot be achieved solely through technological improvements or UI advancements. The findings indicate that the key question for enhancing the performance of unmanned stores should shift from “How good is the technology?” to “What kind of technology is provided to which consumers and in what way?” In particular, the fact that the path from self-efficacy to trust varies depending on untact tendency implies to practitioners that users of unmanned stores are not a homogeneous group, but rather diverse in nature. Academically, the study extends existing technology acceptance frameworks by empirically validating the structural relationships between self-efficacy, multidimensional trust, and customer performance outcomes, thereby contributing to the theoretical advancement of unmanned service research. The findings also underscore the need to incorporate affective trust and individual psychological dispositions when examining consumer behavior in technologically mediated service contexts.