A cross-cultural study of the intention to use mobile banking between Lebanese and British consumers: Extending UTAUT2 with security, privacy and trust

Abstract

This study aims to examine the key factors that may hinder or facilitate the adoption of mobile banking services in a cross-cultural context. A conceptual framework was developed through extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology UTAUT2 by incorporating three additional constructs, namely trust (TR), security (PS) and privacy (PP). Data were collected using an online survey and a self-administrated questionnaire from 901 mobile banking users who were either Lebanese or English. These were analysed using structural equation modelling based on AMOS 23.0. The results of this analysis indicated that behavioural intention towards adoption of mobile banking services was influenced by habit (HB), perceived security (PS), perceived privacy (PP) and trust (TR) for both the Lebanese and English consumers. In addition, performance expectancy (PE) was a significant predictor in Lebanon but not in England; whereas price value (PV) was significant in England but not in Lebanon. Contrary to our expectation, Social Influence (SI) and Hedonic Motivations (HM) were insignificant for both the Lebanese and English consumers. Overall, the proposed model achieved acceptable fit and explained 78% of the variance for the Lebanese sample and 83% for the English sample – both of which are higher than that of the original UTAUT2. These findings are expected to help policy makers and bank directors understand the issues facing mobile banking adoption in different cultural settings. Subsequently, they will help guide them in formulating appropriate strategies to improve the uptake of mobile banking activities. As the low mobile banking adoption rate in Lebanon can be attributed to the novelty of this technology, the Lebanese banking sector stands to greatly benefit from this study.