I am not sure whether it is safety. I think banks are perceived safe enough.

I am also not sure whether any conspiracy related premise is strong enough - blockchain as more moral and free than reserve banks controlling money. Perhaps.

it may simply be cost and quality of service, compared to banks

The questions are far to open ended for a study like this.

You need to narrow the whole structure of this initial survey.

Perhaps think of implementing a Likert scale method.

The only incentive is the presence of government guarantee to support blockchain. If the government (or regulators) do not trust blockchains, the regulators will not allow banks to use blockchains in managing depositors' money

Brian Barnard at first I also thought that the absence of a third party is one of the main reasons for people to use cryptos. Third parties, in general, are responsible for safety and data storage, where blockchain is already successful in these areas. The idea of being able to complete financial transactions without anybody recording, storing and selling data is for some people a good enough of a reason to use blockchain.

Personally, from the very beginning of my research, I thought that trust is the key to answering this question. Some may avoid using cryptos since there is no central authority they trust in case of fraud or scam, that will catch the thieves and return the money. Nevertheless, this is the price for a trusted distributed blockchain that is not owned by anyone and transactions happen directly between the two parties.

I do agree with Peterson K Ozili that one of the first steps is for governments and regulators to trust the public blockchain, or at least trust its potential. There are banks that successfully use private and centralized blockchains and even introduce their own tokens. I believe that first the technology must progress and more organizations should invest in blockchain research before actually talking about regulatory frameworks and public acceptance. European Central Bank in their latest report mentioned that cryptocurrencies do not meet the predefined function of money and the popularity of the platform is not that high to influence national economy, thus advising to monitor the blockchain development closely and not take serious regulatory, political or economic actions yet.

Basically, to summarize, I think first the user base of the public blockchain and the academic research should significantly increase and only then talk about some type of unified common public acceptance similar to the one that banks have gained over the decades. After that when different businesses and organizations accept the technology it will allow people to pay their daily expenses with Bitcoin hence already affecting the economy.

One last thing, it is safe to say that people look for the most cost-effective ways to live their lives. Nobody will adopt cryptocurrency unless issues like long transaction time or high fees are not fixed.

"one of the first steps is for governments and regulators to trust the public blockchain, or at least trust its potential. "

in a sense, it sounds counter-intuitive.

There is a paper I was reading to define trust.

Generally, there are two types of trust. One is in terms of expectancies or beliefs.

The other one is behavioural trust.

(here is the link if you want to read more http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=88FDFB93D384A7AD23D611C993219021?doi=10.1.1.155.1213&rep=rep1&type=pdf )

Expectancy or belief trust in relation to blockchain, is the expectation that the system will provide security, fast services, anonymity and transparency.

Behavioural trust takes time to build since it requires some observations from the past or a very narrowed guideline that will reveal a behavioural pattern. Until now we can see that Bitcoin is very volatile, so as many scams through ICOs and many other issues. This can lead to behavioural distrust, even though you expect that the security algorithm will protect the user.

Brian Barnard in relation to counter-intuitive I can say that governments expect the technology to be applied in many different sectors, thus monitoring and building trust connections by supporting blockchain organizations. As an example the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) or the USA that already enforced some tax and regulatory changes. However, they do not trust its behavioural pattern because the technology still needs some fixing.

Building trust takes time and energy. This is why there are steps in doing so.

"governments expect the technology to be applied in many different sectors, thus monitoring and building trust connections by supporting blockchain organizations. As an example the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP)...

is EBP predominantly gov led or private led?

it might move faster if blockchain has more of its own governing bodies and lobby groups etc - leading itself as much as possible.

put differently, how strong is private leadership of blockchain, and is it stronger than public (gov) leadership thereof?

I think that is slightly off topic here.

I mentioned the EBP just to show an example of public and private sectors working together to assure a positive growth environment for the blockchain platform. Later on, when this partnership and many others, do enough research and utilize the technology to its full potential, the regulators will join the game since they will have a better understanding of the technology.

First, it should be researched and invested in. Then, after its full potential is discovered, the regulators will know what exactly they should regulate.

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