Internet banking usage among academic staff at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

Internet banking has become an important e-service, offering benefits to both customers and banking institutions. In spite of these benefits, many customers continue to resist the use of Internet banking for many reasons. In order to increase their customer base, it would be prudent for banks to ascertain factors that have a positive association with existing customers’ Internet banking usage. In this study, the researcher determined whether four factors (constructs), namely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model are associated with academics’ Internet banking usage. Furthermore, the model was modified to include perceived risk (security risk) and trust as explored in previous studies, to explore their association with academics’ behavioural intention to use Internet banking. Primary data was collected through a Web-based questionnaire from 272 academics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the primary data collected. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to address the research objectives comprising frequencies, percentages, Fisher’s exact tests, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that, while performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions had a positive association with academics’ Internet banking usage, it was not possible to find support for an association for social influence with academics’ Internet banking usage. Secondly, while trust had a positive association with academics’ behavioural intention to use Internet banking, it was not possible to reject the null hypothesis that perceived risk had no association with academics’ behavioural intention to use Internet banking. The results from this study will likely provide valuable information to banks that are planning their Internet banking strategies.