The National Culture Effect on the Adoption of Internet-Banking

This paper analyses the relationship between the national culture (Hofstede’s cultural dimensions Individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance index and Power Distance index, as well as Minkov’s Indulgence vs Restrain index) and the adoption of Internet banking in 30 European countries. We presume, that if there is a strong correlation between them, some recommendations to the banking sector could be made to help them develop more effective marketing strategies to increase the adoption of e-banking, based on the cultural specifics in the particular country or clusters of countries. Our findings show that there is a strong correlation between those cultural dimensions and the adoption level of e-banking. In particular, it was found that the Individualism has a lead role in most of the cases. However, in the cases of a combination of high Uncertainty Avoidance and low Indulgence, the lead role of Individualism does not manifest.We also argue, that in the cultural combination of high Individualism, and high Uncertainty Avoidance index with low Indulgence vs Restrain index, the combination of Individualism and Restrain factors reduces the influence of Uncertainty Avoidance, no matter how high it is.We analyse and also discuss the influence of different other factors, which influence the adoption of Internet banking, looking for combinations which lead to specific effects.