عنوان

Understanding Muslim consumers' acceptance of self-service technologies

Number

TLets640870

Title Proper

Understanding Muslim consumers' acceptance of self-service technologies

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Al Oraini, Badrea Saleh

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Strathclyde

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2014

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2014

Text of Note

Most individual technology acceptance models are based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), or the conceptualisation of TAM. Even though many researchers consider TAM to be a good model for predicting individual technology acceptance because it has good explanatory power across the population, context and time, and has a parsimonious structure, it has been criticised by several researchers. TAM has been criticised for what is called inherent 'cultural bias'. This 'cultural bias' is responsible for limiting the generalisability of TAM across cultures (from national to organisational levels). Therefore, in this thesis TAM has been extended to suit a developing country context. Numbers of variables related cultural aspects were added to the model to enhance its ability to predict consumers' technology acceptance, given their religious values and social influences. Results of the extended model are satisfying, as the proposed model was able to explain 56 percent of Muslim consumers' behavioural intentions compared to the original TAM, which was able to predict only 39 percent of their intentions. This thesis reports the findings related to the issues concerning the acceptance of Internet-only banking in one of the conservative Islamic countries, namely Saudi Arabia. Although the study was conducted at a specific site on a particular technology application, there is a justification for claiming that the findings are pertinent to the introduction of a wide range of Internet applications into other Islamic countries. Therefore the study makes a significant contribution to research across all areas of information technology adoption and to this practice in financial services. The thesis starts with an exploratory study involving some semi-structured interviews with religious scholars, in-depth interviews with bank consumers and a literature review in this study area. This led to the decision to base the study on integrating three of the recognisable models in technology acceptance. The models are TAM, innovation diffusion theory (IDT) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA), with extensions to enhance their predictability. The extension included religiosity, previous experience in technologies, human values, awareness, need for human interaction, perceptions of risk and trust. A mixed method approach was undertaken. An extensive empirical survey was undertaken to collect data. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was the analysis technique used to test the hypothesis in the quantitative study. At the same time, interviews were conducted as a part of the qualitative study with the aim of gaining an in-depth understanding of the factors that may enhance or hinder Internet banks in Islamic countries. The qualitative data was processed using thematic data analysis. The results of both the qualitative and quantitative studies are discussed in terms of their academic and practical contributions.

Al Oraini, Badrea Saleh

University of Strathclyde

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y