The Factors Influencing the Adoption of Wireless Application Protocols Banking in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Former studies, such as by Bhattacherjee (2001); Yuen (2013) have concluded that a 1% expansion of e-banking adoption should result in an 18% drop in bank’s operational costs. Consequently, the present paper aims to enhance banks’ abilities with regards to retaining and expanding e-banking usage among their customers, which can be achieved by advancing the existing understanding of the critical antecedents of e-banking acceptance behaviour of both current and potential customers. Accordingly, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) has been adapted by this study as a reliable and validated theoretical framework to empirically assess possible elements that influence individuals to use wireless application protocols banking (WAPB). A survey was designed in accordance with the theoretical framework, then piloted and distributed to a sample of 336 e-banking users from the three largest cities in Saudi Arabia. It was found that effort expectancy accounts for the most influencing factor in users’ intentions to use WAPB, which is inconsistent with former studies such as (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Also, performance expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions variables were observed to be impacting users’ intention to use WAPB, which is similar to previous studies (e.g. Mohammadi, 2015; Yu, 2012). The findings of this study represent the distinctiveness of the examined context (Saudi Arabia). This study is among the very early studies considering WAPB antecedents and employing the UTAUT framework.

Keywords: Banking Apps, Mobile Banking, Innovation Adoption, Age, Gender, Saudi Arabia.