Predicting E-banking Tendency from Personality & Demographic Characteristics

Becoming one the important features of our lives, e-banking has brought us a more convenient and fast way to accomplish financial activities. Despite its growing role, it is considered a challenge for some individuals who prefer to still use traditional banking system. In order to obtain a better understanding of those customers, in the current study, two personality dimensions and four demographic variables were studied to find any relationship with using that kind of technology. A group of 329 banking customers including 197 male and 132 female individuals completed a three-section questionnaire containing a measure of banking style including traditional and available forms of e-banking, two personality factors (Neuroticism and Extraversion) scales from the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI Costa and McCrae, 1992), and four demographic questions including age, gender, education level, and marital status. In addition to descriptive statistics, multiple regression was utilized to investigate the relationships among the predictors and criterion. Results showed no significant difference in terms of the two personality factors comparing the two groups of customers including traditional and electronic banking. In conjunction with the banking style, investigating demographic variables revealed significant relationships between age, education levels and marital status with e-banking. Beside using the findings to meet individuals' needs, as traditional banking services impose more costs, determining the characteristics of that portion of customers would be important.