The Potentialities of Online Banking for the Australian Community

• Chief Investigators: Dr Kirsty Williamson and Associate Professor Sharman Lichtenstein, School of Management and Information Systems, Deakin University

• Funder: Monash Small Grant ($15,000)

Aims of the Project

• To explore the demographic characteristics of Australian users and non-users of online banking in the non-business community.

• To examine the reasons why some people have adopted online banking, while the majority have not.

• To investigate the effects which satisfaction or dissatisfaction with other forms of banking have on the adoption of online banking.

• To identify the benefits and disadvantages of online banking.

• To define concerns regarding security and privacy which form barriers to the adoption of online banking.

• To explore how less advantaged people, e.g., people with disabilities, can be encouraged to use online banking.

• To analyse the implications for other areas of e-commerce, as appropriate.

Research Plan

The field work for the pilot involved exploratory interviews with 13 users of online banking and 19 non-users. Some of the interviews were with individuals, and some were in focus groups.

Current Status

The project is completed. The following are the publications from the project:

Lichtenstein, S. & Williamson, K. (2006).  ‘Understanding consumer adoption of Internet banking: an interpretive study in the Australian banking context’.  Journal of Economic Commerce Research.

Williamson, K., Lichtenstein, S., Sullivan, J. & Schauder, D. (2006). ‘To choose, or not to choose: Exploring the reasons why Australians do or do not, use Internet banking’. International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction. 

Lichtenstein, S. & Williamson, K. (2005)‘Security, privacy and trust in Internet Banking adoption: Evolving Australian banking consumer attitudes.’ Proceedings of Sixth Australian Conference on Information Warfare and Security, Deakin University, Nov. 24-25.

Lichtenstein, S., Williamson, K. & Sullivan, J. (2004). ‘The road to Internet banking: Understanding emerging customer issues’. CISTM 2004 - 2nd Conference on Information Science, Technology and Management, 8-10 July, 2004, Alexandria, Egypt. Track: IS Culture and KM Development. http://www.information-institute.org/CISTM/

Short Report

'The Potentialities of Online Banking for the Australian Community'

This report is available in both pdf format and as a word document