Abstract
New private and digital means of payment and new forms of money are entering the payment market, gradually replacing cash payments and, thereby, the nominal anchor of current monetary systems. In order to maintain monetary autonomy and control over the nominal anchor, the European Central Bank (ECB) decided to introduce a digital euro in the near future. In the light of this development, we plan to conduct representative population surveys in France, Germany, and Italy to measure people’s attitudes towards and demand for the introduction of a digital euro. In these surveys, the size of which will be 2000 respondents per country, we will include four information treatments:
In the first treatment, we will randomly divide the survey participants into two groups: a treatment group that gets information about the difference between central bank money (cash) and private book money (bank deposits) and a control group that will not receive this information.
In the second treatment, we will randomly divide the respondents into four groups and provide each group with different information about hypothetical design choices of a digital euro. The first treatment group (control group) will receive no information; the second group will receive a definition of a possible digital euro; the third group will also receive this definition plus a hypothetical design of a deposit-like, account-based, hybrid-architecture digital euro; the last group will also receive this definition plus a hypothetical design of a cash-like, token-based, intermediated-architecture digital euro.
The third treatment aims to measure the demand for a digital euro conditional on different spreads between the interest rates paid on a digital euro account and a current account. The survey participants are randomly divided into three groups. Each group will receive a different interest rate spread (0.1, 0.25, and 0.5 percentage points less than the interest rate paid on a digital euro account). This procedure is repeated for a positive interest rate spread (0.1, 0.25, and 0.5 percentage points higher interest rates paid on a digital euro account).
In the final treatment, the survey participants are randomly divided into two groups: a control group that receives no information and a treatment group that receives information about a digital euro cap of €3000 per person.
As control variables, we will collect socio-demographic and attitudinal variables, such as gender, age, income, regional distribution of the population in each country, migration status, education, financial literacy, income, wealth proxies, household size, attitudes towards the EU, internet use, and political preferences. Some of the hypotheses we want to test are the following:
A) On average, the information about differences between central bank money and book money leads to higher subjective uncertainty about bank failures.
B) In general, the acceptance of a digital euro will depend on the design choice.
C) More information about the digital euro will lead to higher acceptance of a digital euro.
D) Participants who receive information about a cash-like, token-based, intermediated-architecture digital euro are more likely to find that a digital euro will improve their privacy than participants in the treatment group with a deposit-like, account-based, hybrid digital euro.
E) In general, the demand for a digital euro will depend on the choice of a specific design.
F) On average, the relative attractiveness of a digital euro compared to current means of payment will depend on the design choice.
G) The interest rate spread between interest rates paid on a digital euro account and a current account will be positively correlated with the demand for a digital euro.
H) A digital euro cap of €3000 per person will reduce the overall attractiveness of the digital euro.
I) The demand for a digital euro will depend on social-demographic characteristics of the respondents.
J) On average, people who spend more time on digital devices and internet activities will demand more digital euros.
In addition to the treatments analysis, the project will also examine people’s attitudes towards the ECB and the European Union (EU) and their payment behaviour. We expect that survey participants who currently pay digitally will be more likely to demand a digital euro. In addition, respondents with negative attitudes towards the ECB and the EU are more likely to reject the digital euro.