Internet Banking Adoption in Developing Countries: A Meta-Analysis of the findings so

far

Introduction

With the rapid penetration of internet in the developing countries, a plethora of services are delivered through this medium. According to James (2009), the digital divide or the differences in penetration rate of the internet in developing versus the developed countries have fallen in the first half of the last decade and hence more and more self-service technologies are delivered through the internet. The availability of banking services is a case in point. According to Bhattacharjee (2001), Internet banking is a banking channel that allows consumers to perform a wide range of financial and non-financial services through a bank's website. Over the years, numerous studies have looked at the phenomenon of adoption of internet banking services by customers. These studies have looked at a host of variables and issues. Most of these studies have however been carried out in the developed countries. A meta-analysis carried out by Hoehle, Scornavacca and Huff (2012) on electronic banking channels, indentified 247 different studies, predominantly among customers in developed countries. Here we attempt to look at empirical studies which focus on customer adoption and related variables in developing countries. In the next sections we explain our methodology as well as the results of our analysis.

Internet Banking Adoption in Developing Countries

Internet banking has picked up in the developing countries very recently. According to a Mc Kinsy study published in 2011, roughly 18% of all people who patronise banks in China, now use internet banking channels while in India 7% of banking customers use the Internet (Lam and Pant, 2011). However, these figures are quite poor compared to the situation in developed countries where the online banking penetration is between 30 and 50%. (Comscore datamine, 2012). Consequently, research studies which consider internet banking adoption in developing countries is relatively scarce and the extant knowledge in this domain is limited. The process of internet banking adoption in developed countries has almost reached the saturation phase. Almost all the banks rely heavily on the internet to offer services and almost all the customers who are interested to use internet banking channels have adopted them. The problems faced by internet banking channels in developing countries like lack of trust, lack of knowledge about services, etc. are therefore not prevalent in the developed world. As far as the developing countries are concerned, the level of adoption of IB services has hardly crossed the early adopter segment and hence basic problems remain. This is well acknowledged by the study conducted by Malhotra and Singh (2010) among banks in Inida. The study showed that even in 2008, a large number of Indian banks just provide basic internet services. Research in this area is therefore still very nascent. However, in the recent past, several studies have attempted to understand the dynamics of the adoption of internet in developing countries. In the present study, we conduct a basic meta-analysis of these studies. The main aim is to bring together the evolving literature in this field and compare the different theoretical approaches followed in these set of studies as well as the main factor considered. The meta-analysis also attempts to provide directions for future research in this area.

Methodology

To generate the set of studies that presently constitute the crux of the literature in this field, the main electronic databases like EBSCO, Proquest and Google scholar were searched using key phrases like internet banking adoption in developing countries, internet banking adoption in emerging economies, internet banking adoption etc. The same procedure was followed by previous studies which adopted a meta-analytic procedure (eg. Hoehle, Scornavacca and Huff, 2012). In order to reduce the likelihood of missing out crucial studies, a rigorous cross-referencing exercise was carried out from the initial set of studies that emerged from searching the database. These procedures resulted in a list of about 20 different studies. During the initial stage of the process we deliberately eliminated studies which did not include internet banking adoption or an associated variable (like use of internet banking channels, attitude to use internet banking etc.) as the dependent variable. Hence studies which looked at interent banking satisfaction, trust etc. were not included in the initial set. Further we used the per-capita national income as the main criterion to decide between developing and developed countries. Using this criteria we did not include countries with a per-capita national income of more than $10,000 in the list. Hence we eliminated studies from countries like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Finally we also eliminated studies that did not follow a causal design in the analysis. A few studies were descriptive in nature and looked at the main characteristics of internet adopters rather than exploring causal relationships between the independent and dependent variable. After the elimination process we located 12 studies which consider this domain. The list of studies is shown in Appendix-1. Of the twelve studies considered two are from Turkey, two from Saudi Arabia, and one each from India, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, UAE, Thailand, Brazil and Estonia.

Theoretical Approaches Followed

The three predominant theories used to understand adoption of Internet Banking are (1) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by Davis (1989) (2) Diffusion of Innovations Theory developed by Rogers (1995) and Theory of Reasoned Action developed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975). Almost all the studies listed in this meta-analysis follow one of these approaches or a combination of these approaches. Three of the 12 studies considered (Mansumitrchai and Chiu, 2012; Eriksson, Kerem and Nilsson, 2008 and Hernandez and Mazzon, 2007) follow a combination of DOI and TAM frameworks while eight other studies follow a combination of TRA and TAM. While one of the studies (Zhao et al, 2010) follows an entirely different framework.

Most Important Independent Variables

Since the studies considered here followed a combination of popular theoretical frameworks, the independent variables were also derived from these theoretical frameworks. Table.1 gives the frequency of the independent variables appearing in these studies.

Independent variable Frequency of Appearance

Perceived Usefulness 7

Perceived Ease-of-use 7

Trust in the bank 7

Perceived Risk/security 4

Subjective Norm 3

Governmental Support 3

Relative Advantage 2

Self Efficacy 2

Technology Support 2

Website-quality/design 1

Internet Experience 1

Compatibility 2

Difficulty/lack of complexity 2

Need for Human Contact 2

Manageability 1

Resistance to Change 1

Social Influence 1

Awareness of Services 1

Result Demonstrability 1

Trial ability 1

Income 1

Compared to the Hoehle, Scornavacca and Huff (2012) [HSH] study, which has a sample

highly dominated by studies from developed countries, the meta analysis of studies from

developing countries show some similarities as well as differences. While the HSH study

show Ease of Use and Usefulness as the most important independent variables in explaining

electronic banking adoption accounting for 97 and 58 out of 247 studies several important

independent variables featured in developed country studies are not given much importance

in studies conducted in developing countries. For instance costs associated with use, habit,

loyalty to the bank, etc. have not featured very highly in developing country studies.

Similarly since a large portion of the studies in developed countries followed a DOI

framework (35 out of 130), the DOI related independent variables like relative advantage,

trialiability, complexity etc. have been considered more in the context of developed country

studies rather than in developing countries.

Interestingly, compared to studies in developed countries, developing country studies feature

variables like governmental support, technology support etc. Another interesting contrast

is the variable trust, which features prominently in developing country studies (7/12 studies)

is not such a major factor in developed country studies (31/247 studies).

Conclusion and Discussion

As customers in developing countries are slowly adopting internet banking, several important

dimensions of the evolving phenomena remain under researched. The systematic review of

extant literature in this field is aimed at encapsulating what is already known and also to

provide new ideas for future studies. For instance very few studies have looked at social and

cultural issues in the developing countries that impact the adoption of internet banking

services. Many of the existing studies rely on student samples or otherwise a very restrictive

profile of respondents, there is scope to broaden this sample profile by looking at low income

consumers.

Appendix-1 List of studies considered

Study Country Methodology Independent Variables Dependent

Variables

Nasri, Charfeddine (2012)

Tunisia survey among 284 bank users of Internet Banking services

Ease-of-use, usefulness, subjective norm, self-efficacy, governmental support, technology support

Intention to use internet banking

Mansumitrchai and Chiu (2012)

United Arab Emirates

Survey among 330 online-banking users

Compatibility, Difficulty, Security, Trust, Third Party Concern, Status, Human Contact

Internet Banking Adoption

Kesharwani and Bhist (2012)

India A survey among 619 university students

Trust, behavioural control, web-site design, social influence, risk, usefulness, ease-of use

Behavioural intention

Chong et al (2010) Vietnam Survey among 103 internet bank users

Ease of use, trust, usefulness, governmental support

Intention to use internet banking

Zhao et al (2010) China Survey among 504 College students

Perceived risk, trust in Bank, IBS Competence

Intention to use Internet Banking

Alsajjan and Dennis (2010)

Saudi Arabia

Survey among 386 students

Perceived Usefulness, Trust, Perceived Manageability, Subjective Norms

Attitudinal Intentions

Al-Solami, Golami and Clegg (2009)

Saudi Arabia

A survey among 202 bank customers

Resistance to Change, trust, self-efficacy, social influence, awareness of services, usefulness, ease-of-use, quality of Internet connection

Attitude to use, intention to use, actual use

Ozdemir and Trott (2009)

Turkey 155 users of Internet Banking services

Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, Internet Experience, Income

Internet Banking Adoption.

Prompattanapakdee (2009)

Thailand Survey among 618 users of Internet Banking services

Internet Banking Experience, Trust, Personal Relationships Perceived Ease of Use

Intention, Actual Use

Celik (2008) Turkey Survey among 161 customers

Ease of Use, usefulness Behavioural control

Attitude towards use, intention to use internet

banking

Eriksson, Kerem and Nilsson (2008)

Estonia Survey among 1810 banking customers

Relative advantage, lack of complexity, Perceived risk, Compatibility

Use of internet bank

Hernandez and Mazzon (2007)

Brazil Survey among 600 users and non-users of Internet Banking

Relative Advantage, Visibility, Result Demonstrability, Ease of Use, Trialability, Subjective Norm, Self-Efficacy, Technology Support, Government support

Intention to Use, Actual Use of Internet Banking

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