With the Internet revolutionising the banking industry, customers nowadays expect much more from their banks, demanding more convenient, flexible, and easy-to-use financial products and services that could not be easily offered by traditional retail banking. Consequently, several new banking applications have emerged in order to cope with this demand, Internet banking (IB), as an example of these applications, is considered to revolutionise the traditional way of thinking about banking services. Despite the potential benefits offered, Jordanian bank customers are reluctant to adopt IB services. In response to this issue, this study aims to enhance the general understanding concerning the factors that affect customers’ adoption of IB in a developing country of the Middle East, namely Jordan, where the results can be also applied to other developing countries in general. The main objective of this research was to investigate factors influencing the adoption of IB services by Jordanians. Two technology acceptance models, namely the Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DIT) developed by Rogers (1983), and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by Davis (1989), were integrated with external variables in order to synthesize a new exploratory model; the synthesized model was then tested empirically for its predictive power. Two data collection phases were utilised: (1) quantitative data was collected in the first phase to test the research model and confirm related hypotheses using a survey questionnaire (463 respondents); and (2) qualitative data was gathered in the second phase via a semi-structured interview exercise (six participants). This phase was incorporated in order to explore bank customers’ perceptions of IB influencing factors identified in the first phase, and to provide further confirmation for the research model and hypotheses. Results showed that eight factors directly determine customer intentions to adopt IB services. Those factors are: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trialability, compatibility, observability-result demonstrability, innovativeness, government support, and information about Internet banking. Accessibility and perceived financial cost were found not to be direct predictors of intention; however, the latter has emerged to affect intention indirectly through perceived ease of use. While results indicated that personal innovativeness was found to be the most influential predictor of intention to use IB, both directly and indirectly through perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, perceived financial cost was the least influential factor to affect intention since it only exhibited indirect influence through perceived ease of use. Gender, age, education, occupation, and income, all proved to be influential in determining customers’ intentions to use IB services. Moreover, results revealed that users of IB were significantly different from non-users in terms of their attitudes relating to all investigated variables. Overall, the results of the current study showed that the proposed model has a good explanatory power and is therefore robust in predicting customers’ intentions to adopt IB in the Middle East and in other developing countries in general. This research contributes to the identification theory and practice of technology acceptance for Internet banking in five ways. Filling the gap in IB adoption literature in developing countries through examining the factors that might impede or encourage the adoption of these services among customers; developing and validating an integrated technology acceptance with a good explanatory power in predicting and explaining the potential users’ behavioural intentions towards technology adoption in non-Western contexts; developing a valid and reliable instrument to measure individuals’ intentions to use IT innovations; providing valuable insights into how to enhance customers’ acceptance of IB services in a developing country context by indicating the relative importance of the identified influencing factors and providing a set of specific strategies in a form of practical recommendations designed to overcome the low adoption rate of IB in developing countries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:702853 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Al-Azzam, M. K. A. |
| Contributors | McClelland, R. ; Kelly, P. ; Otaye, L. |
| Publisher | Liverpool John Moores University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/5164/ |
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