The Adoption of Mobile Banking among College Students in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Although mobile banking platforms have in recent years become an established feature of banking services offered in developing countries, scholars in those resource-constrained contexts neglect to examine the determinants of the acceptance of the above-mentioned products in seldom explored customer segments. Results on the same topic from countries with auspicious macro-economic milieus may not reflect accurately the state of affairs in less encouraging situations. In response to this oversight, we explored some of the theoretically established predictors of mobile banking adoption to assess their applicability among students at a selected college in Zimbabwe, across-sectional survey of 376 college students, all of whom were customers of a particular bank, was conducted in the Midlands Province (Zimbabwe). The hierarchical regression test results revealed that only perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards use and lifestyle fit significantly predicted students' adoption of mobile banking. Risk perception and other demographic variables did not significantly affect the adoption of mobile banking. Based on these findings, providers and marketers of digital banking should emphasise issues like perceived usefulness, ease of use as well as product compatibility when pitching value propositions to college students. The significance of this lies in the study's quest to integrate different theoretical perspectives on innovation and technology adoption to understand the mobile banking services consumption behaviour of young adults in a hostile economic environment.