Internet banking diffusion: A country-level analysis

• This study examines country-level factors that influence Internet banking diffusion.
• Direct and mediating effects of economic and technological factors are modeled.
• National culture is used to explain diffusion levels across different country groups.
• PLS and cluster analysis provide support for mediating and moderating relationships.
• Findings yield implications on how to promote Internet banking for policy makers.

In the last decade, Internet banking technology has made remarkable progress. However, there is a huge disparity across different nations all over the world in the diffusion of Internet banking services. This leads to the research question of this study: why different countries exhibit different levels of Internet banking adoption? Previous studies provide limited insight as they were mostly conducted at the individual user level with single-country samples. At the country level, this study proposes an Internet banking diffusion model that examines the impact of economical, technological and cultural factors on Internet banking diffusion. The hypothesized relationships in the research model were statistically tested with the secondary data collected from a sample of 33 European countries. The results indicate that the effects of socio-economic and technology-related factors on Internet banking diffusion are fully mediated by Internet access. Furthermore, the findings suggest that national culture is an important moderator as it make differences in Internet banking diffusion as well as Internet access across different country groups. The country-level analysis contributes to the advancement of Internet banking theory and practice, and provides some useful insights to researchers, practitioners and policy makers on how to enhance Internet banking diffusion.

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