Determinants influencing the adoption of mobile banking by women in Bangladesh

Abstract

Women’s mobile banking adoption is linked to several advantages, including empowering women, enhancing investment in women-owned businesses, and decreasing extreme poverty.This study explores the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics that affect women’s mobile banking adoption in Bangladesh using Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS; 2020) data. In this study, 12,147 ever-married women aged 15-49 are included in the analysis. The chi-square test is used to examine the effect of socioeconomic and demographic factors on women’s mobile banking adoption. Then, the enter method of a binary logistic regression model is applied to identify the factors most strongly affiliated with it. The result shows that 14.8% (urban = 15.1% and rural = 14.6%) of women have adopted mobile banking services. The regression model reveals that women’s mobile banking adoption is significantly related to their age, education and occupation, husband’s education and occupation, livestock ownership, media exposure, and region. Women’s mobile banking adoption increased gradually with the increasing educational attainment of women. The study mentions that the Chi-square test of independence depicts a significant association between socioeconomic status and women’s mobile banking adoption, but the regression model shows an insignificant relationship between them. Respective banks should design their products and services to be more customer-friendly for people of different ages, education, professions, and geographical locations, especially women, and design push-pull services in the local Bengali language so that different levels of people, especially women, can understand. A future study can be done to address all demographic and socioeconomic characteristics that affect women’s mobile banking adoption.