Driving Inclusive Economic Growth Through Generation Z's Cryptocurrency Adoption

To leverage the possibilities of driving inclusive economic growth through generation Z’s cryptocurrency adoption, understanding the challenges to cryptocurrency adoption plays a key role in building effective, relevant, and sustainable policies and strategies to increase its acceptance among the generation Z. Despite the potential benefits and increasing exposure of cryptocurrency, a Kaspersky survey showed only 10% of 13,434 people understand how cryptocurrency functions. This high-lighted a significant knowledge gap regarding cryptocurrency and how it impacts users use behavior. This study investigates the influencing fac-tors of Generation Z’s intentional behavior to adopt cryptocurrency, guided by an extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. The proposed research model incorporates social influence, awareness, perceived security, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, and financial literacy. Data were collected from 364 eligible Indonesian citizen born between the year 1998 to 2013, else known as Gen Z, using purposive sampling via distributed online questionnaire in May 2025. In result, two hypotheses in particular stand out. (1) Gen z’s familiarity with the high-risk, high-reward system of the internet may lead to desensitization to risk. (2) Counterintuitively, individuals with better financial literacy exhibit skepticism and more caution in adopting cryptocurrency, demonstrating less likeliness intention to adopt cryptocurrency. Future research should consider longitudinal design, and mixed method approaches to facilitate a deeper investigation and better comprehension of the evolving perceptions of digital assets.