For the sake of maintaining sustainable airport operations, biometric e-gates security systems started receiving significant attention from managers of airports around the world. Therefore, how to reduce flight passengers’ perceived resistance to the biometric e-gates security system became much more important than ever. In this sense, the purpose of this study is to analyze the factors which contribute to passenger’s resistance to adopt biometric e-gate technology within the airport security setting. Our focus lies on exploring the effects that perceived risks and benefits as well as user characteristics and propagation mechanisms had on causing such resistance. With survey data from 339 airport users, a support vector machine (SVM) model was implemented to provide a tool for classifying resistance causes correctly, and csQCA (crisp set Qualitative Comparative Analysis) was implemented in order to understand the complex underlying causes. The results showed that the presence of perceived risks and the absence of perceived benefits were the main contributing factors, with propagation mechanisms also showing a significant effect on weak and strong resistance. This study is distinct in that it has attempted to explore innovation adoption through the lens of resistance and in doing so has uncovered important complex causation conditions that need to be considered before service quality can be enhanced within airports. This study’s implications should therefore help steer airport managers in the right direction towards maintaining service quality while implementing sustainable new technologies within their current airport security ecosystem.