The impact of influential factors on banking customers’ perceived ease of use and usefulness of internet banking acceptance in Pakistan

Abstract

The statistics reveal that internet technology in the banking sector has introduced the internet banking (IB) product/service in Pakistan during year 2001 but the majority of the banking customers are the non-users of IB. This highlights the research need for identifying and validating the factors responsible for IB adoption in Pakistan. The technology acceptance model (TAM) has detained the most attention in determining the acceptance behavior of Information technology (IT). Despite the TAM validity and maturity in various contexts, there are few studies which have strived to extend the TAM capability to identify the individuals’ acceptance behaviour about the online/IB technology. Therefore, the present study has proposed and integrated external factors, namely perceived security, trust, website design, and product knowledge in TAM which reflects the banking customers concerns in the acceptance of IB in Pakistan. The questionnaire was adopted from the existing literature and modified for the data collection from the representative sample of 1,050 banking customers (non-users of IB) of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan through convenience sampling. After preliminary data analysis, the sample size reduced to 886 with the final response rate of 84.38%. Primary data analysis was conducted through Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) whereas Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) through Analysis of a Moment Structures (AMOS) was employed to explore the inter-correlations of the proposed constructs. The study empirical results indicated that all hypothesized relationships of perceived security, trust, website design, and product knowledge with perceived ease of use and usefulness are true and significant in the extended form of the TAM. Theoretically, the present research has confirmed the applicability of the TAM in investigating IB adoption in Pakistan. The findings of the study emphasized banks' decision makers to formulate strategies that may boost the adoption of internet banking in Pakistan. Security strategic and proactive approach may address the security concern and improves the customers' trust. Moreover, redesigning of the internet banking product/service is required according to Pakistani social context and customer requirements for addressing the website concern. Effective advertisement and customer relationship management may enhance the product knowledge of the banking customers. Keywords: Perceived security, trust, website design, product knowledge, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, TAM, internet banking, Pakistan.