Subjective norms and behavioural intention of E-banking adoption: Mediating role of perceived usefulness

The study was planned to examine the impact of subjective norms on the behavioural intentions of Thai e-banking users. Additionally, the study has also examined the mediating role of perceived usefulness of e-banking in the relationship between the subjective norms and e-banking adoption. The subjective norms construct in this study was decomposed into societal descriptive and injunctive norms, and personal descriptive and injunctive norms. It is clear from the literature review that highly inconsistent findings were reported between perceived usefulness and subjective norms because of the contradiction in the findings obtained by the researchers. This occurred may be because trivial attention was given to the relationship between subjective norm and perceived usefulness. In current research, it is argued that there are many advantages of e-banking adoption which includes mobility, convenience and 24-hour accessibility anywhere anytime with no physical limitation of location as required in old-styled e-commerce. For that reason, it is hypothesized that people who believe that these advantages would result in the improvement in their performance are expected to create a positive environment for technology adoption. In the latest quantitative research development, the partial least squares (PLS) path modelling is considered to be unsuitable in determining the validity of the model. For this purpose, a two-step process is implemented in current research. The results of the present study, argued that e-banking is adopted voluntarily and the existence of high social norms in collectivist culture greatly influences the potential adopters' attitude and behaviour by the opinions of their significant others particularly in Thai context.