Resumo

The so-called Covid-19 “new normal” arises from the perspective that we will be living with the coronavirus pandemic into 2021, behavior change will be more permanent and measures such as physical distancing will need to stay in place even after lockdowns are lifted (Ghosh, 2020; Lacina, 2020). The disruption of social activity and the threat to livelihood and life in pandemics differ from adaption and resilience to other disruptors such as economic downturns and natural disasters.

One of the emerging global challenges in combating infectious diseases is to deal with the new coronavirus (Covid-19), that is a highly contagious disease firstly identified in Wuhan, Central China in December 2019 (Ahorsu et al. 2020; Mahato et al. 2020). As a research problem we have: Has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted on consumer behavior in the use of food delivery applications? To answer this question, this research aims to analyze the effect of perceived infectability and the fear of Covid-19 on the acceptance and use of delivery applications during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The context of food delivery and consumer behavior were considered suited to this research because of the enforced substitution of personal relationship among consumers and restaurants due to the social distancing. In a consumer context, UTAUT2 explained 74% of the variance in consumers’ behavioral intention to use technology and 52% of the variance in consumers’ technology use (Venkatesh et al. 2012; 2016). For Ducan et al. (2009), infectious diseases have imposed a threat to human well-being for a long time.

A questionnaire consisted of the (a) UTAUT2 questions (Venkatesh et al. 2012), (b) Perceived Infectability scale (PINS, Duncan et al. 2009), (c) The FCV-19S (Ahorsu et al. 2020), and (d) a question asking which food delivery application one uses (if any) was sent to a convenience sample in theree different Brazilian regions: southeastern, northern and southern. The technique adopted is the partial least squares structural equations modeling (PLS-SEM) carried out in the SmartPLS 3.3.2 software. Adequacy and validity of the model were verified.

This study sought to investigate the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on customer behavior toward using delivery applications to order food. By adding the PINS and FCV-19S to the UTAUT2 model as latent variables, we have found that Perceived Infectability and the Fear of COVID-19 have direct causal relationships with Use Behavior. Besides, the results add to previous studies (Pigatto et al. 2017) by reinforcing the evidence that online delivery services in Brazil have been expanding over the past two decades and constitute convenient options for consumers.

The main objective of this article was to analyze the impact of perceived infectability and fear of Covid-19 on the acceptance and use of delivery applications during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results point to evidence of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the use behavior of the delivery application. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated that there has been a change in consumer behavior regarding the use of food delivery applications, as both constructs added to the model had a direct causal relationship in the use behavior.

Ahorsu, D.K., Lin, C., Imani, V. et al. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Development and Initial Validation. Int J Ment Health Addiction (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00270-8 Duncan, L. A., Schaller, M., & Park, J. H. (2009). Perceived vulnerability to disease: Development and validation of a 15-item self-report instrument. Personality and Individual Differences, 47(6), 541–546. Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y. L., & Xu, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: Extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. MIS Quarterly, 36(1), 157–178.