What Makes Romanians to Bank on Their Smartphones? Determinants of Mobile Banking Adoption

Abstract

Mobile banking is becoming a priority for the banks and an increasingly popular banking channel for the consumers as well. According to the literature, despite a growing number of the mobile banking adoption studies worldwide, little attention has been paid to testing adoption models in Central and Eastern European countries. The aim of the study is to investigate the factors affecting mobile banking adoption in a country with relatively low mobile banking penetration rate. Based on an extended Technology Acceptance Model the present study aims to reveal the antecedents of the mobile banking adoption in Romania, and provide insightful conclusion for financial service institutions in mobile banking applications development. Our paper proposes and tests an extended model of the adoption intention of mobile banking applications. Besides the original perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use variables we also incorporated the social norm and some barrier factors such as perceived risk and technology anxiety. The results show, that the banks should consider seriously the consumer technology interface development challenges, including drivers and barriers of mobile banking adoption, because there are many other emerging non-bank players on financial service market fighting to fulfil the consumers’ financial needs.