The influence of religion on Islamic mobile phone banking services adoption

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects religious affiliation and commitment have on Southeast Asian young adults' intention to adopt Islamic mobile phone banking. Design/methodology/approach - An online self-administered survey was distributed to Southeast Asian young adults through convenience and snowball sampling and a total of 135 responses obtained. Findings - The study found Islamic mobile phone banking to be a novelty service, with little consumer awareness and experience, especially among non-Muslims. Religious affiliation and commitment were both effective segmentation strategies, as differences in adoption intention were found between Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as devout and casually religious Muslims. Overall, devout Muslims were socially-oriented with their adoption criteria whereas casually religious and non-Muslims relied upon the utilitarian attributes. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the existing mobile banking adoption literature by providing evidence of consumers' adoption intentions toward Islamic mobile phone banking. It also uses religious commitment in addition to affiliation as segmentation tools, an approach which has not been used in previous Islamic mobile banking research.