Duan Nguyen Dien

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Online accounting services have become a financial innovation for Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) confronting tightening compliance requirements and limited internal accounting capacity. This study examines how perceived benefits, service quality, perceived risk, and technological factors relate to trust and continued use of online accounting services, and whether continued use is associated with non-financial operational performance. We analyzed cross-sectional survey data collected in 2025 from 362 Vietnamese SMEs already using such services using partial least squares structural equation modeling. All constructs met reliability and convergent validity thresholds (Cronbach’s α = 0.762-0.866; AVE = 0.616-0.713), and all heterotrait-monotrait ratios remained below 0.90. Perceived benefits showed the strongest positive association with trust (β = 0.403), followed by service quality (β = 0.303) and technological factors (β = 0.141), while perceived risk was negatively associated (β = –0.232). Trust was positively associated with continued use (β = 0.185) and transmitted significant specific indirect effects for perceived benefits (β = 0.074), service quality (β = 0.056), perceived risk (β = –0.043), and technological factors (β = 0.026); variance accounted for ranged from 14.7% to 22.2%, indicating complementary partial rather than full mediation. Continued use was positively associated with non-financial operational performance (β = 0.745). The model explained 68.1% of the variance in continued use, 66.2% in trust, and 55.5% in performance (all p < 0.01). Trust therefore complements rather than replaces direct evaluation in sustaining SMEs’ use of these services, although the cross-sectional, single-source design precludes causal inference.