Religious feeling, morality and ethical feelings: the case study on Indonesia

Indonesia is a country with the largest Muslim population in the world. However, since the Islamic banks were being established in Indonesia for about 20 years, their market share only accounts for about 5% in the Indonesian banking system. Muslim participations in using Islamic bank are relatively low. This study expands the Theory of Planned Behavior by adding the variables of religiosity and self-efficacy. Previous studies have not examined this new expanded model to analyze customers who participated in using the saving Islamic bank’s products and services. Based on 220 Islamic bank consumers who participated in the study, the study indicated that questionnaires about religiosity and self-efficacy had good external validity and could be adapted for the Indonesian culture context. The most interesting finding was that the religiosity variable strongly enhanced the use of Islamic banks. Similarly, this study found that the self-efficacy variable improved an intention of customers to participate in the Islamic banking system. This paper also discusses the implications of the findings and recommendations for future studies.

Although mobile banking is one of the online banking services that makes it easy for consumers to conduct financial transactions, research on Islamic mobile banking in developing countries with a Muslim majority is still relatively insignificant. Not all Muslim consumers are interested in or intend to use conventional mobile banking services. Therefore, the aim of this study is to integrate the TAM theory and the construct of religiosity to examine consumer intentions to use Islamic mobile banking services. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire of 482 Muslim consumers in Indonesia using convenience sampling techniques. The collected data were then analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM-AMOS). The results of this study showed that perceived ease of use cannot influence the perceived usefulness and attitudes of variables towards Islamic mobile banking. While perceived usefulness has been proven to influence attitudes toward Islamic mobile banking and may be the largest contributor to increased intentions to use Islamic mobile banking. On the other hand, this study reveals that the influence of religiosity can positively and significantly foster consumer sensibility and intention to use Islamic mobile banking.

Religiosity is one of many essential aspects that stands as the motivation of people’s behaviour. Its importance expands to the field of banking, especially Islamic banks that take Islamic teaching as their backbone. This study aimed to seek religiosity motivation among Islamic bank depositors by exploring the possible asymmetric effect of interest rates on the type of deposits. By using the NARDL approach, this study investigates the relationship between the conventional deposit interest rate on the type of depositors and deposit maturity by using monthly data from April 2015 until March 2020 of Indonesia’s Islamic banks. The results show that government deposit in Islamic bank is not affected by the raise of interest rate. In addition, all deposits that showed the possibility of asymmetry effect indicated that the increase of interest rate (LIR+) has a positive coefficient. In general, Indonesian Islamic bank depositors’ are religiously loyal and not attracted to the fluctuation of interest rates. The result also found that short-run asymmetric dynamics show convergent to long-run asymmetry after an average of 15 months. As for the policy implications, stakeholders must ease the regulation of Islamic banks such as the conversion of conventional banks to Islamic banks, since it is proven that customers are mainly religiously driven.