Designing Last-Mile Trust: Behavioural Nudges and Community Agents for First-Use Intention/Experience

Introduction: Last-mile adoption of digital finance often stalls at the first transaction because first-time users face uncertainty, cognitive load, and thin interpersonal trust. This study investigates whether behavioural nudges and perceived usefulness, combined with locally credible community agents, convert intention into first use of digital finance. Methods: A community-based field survey (n = 250) was used for the data collection using a structured Likert-scale questionnaire measured on a 5-point scale. The participants were recruited using a random sampling approach, and the z-probability formula was applied to calculate the adequate sample size. The direct effects and moderating effects were analysed using PLS-SEM on SmartPLS. Results/Findings: The findings of the study indicated the positive and statistically significant effect (β = 0.198, p = 0.010) of Behavioural Nudges, which implies that prompts that increase salience and simplified prompts are effective in transforming intention into first digital finance use. The direct effect of Community-Agent Trustworthiness is significant and strongly positive (β = 0.474, p < 0.001). Perceived Usefulness also exhibits a positive and significant direct relationship with first-use intention/experience (β = 0.073, p < 0.001). Community-Agent Trustworthiness plays a significant moderating role between Behavioural Nudges and first-use intention/experience (β = 0.021, p = 0.001). Likewise, Community-Agent Trustworthiness Interaction and Perceived Usefulness (β = 0.002, p = 0.003) have statistically significant results. Conclusion/Implications: The findings suggest that the initial adoption of digital finance does not rely solely on the technological value or behavioural cues, but more importantly on locally based trust-based mechanisms. It is only by reinforcing behavioural nudges and perceived usefulness by trusted community agents that mitigate uncertainty at the point of initial implementation that behavioural nudges are effective. It underscores the importance of adoption policies that combine behavioural design with human relays, and proposes that scalable digital finance projects should focus on trust infrastructures in addition to technological innovation in order to obtain inclusive adoption.