Age, Gender and the Intention to Adopt Participatory Banks in Morocco: A PLS-SEM Multigroup Analysis

Abstract

Our study examines the determinants of adoption intention toward participatory banks in Morocco, and more specifically the role age and gender might play as moderating variables. The empirical literature explicitly testing these two variables as moderators of Islamic banking adoption remains limited; the most direct reference is Haque's (2010) study in Malaysia, where men show a more favourable attitude than women toward Islamic banks. We therefore tested this effect in the Moroccan context, using a PLS-SEM multigroup analysis carried out on a sample of 223 potential customers from the Souss-Massa region. We formulated two moderating hypotheses: H1 posits that age moderates the relationship between awareness and adoption intention, and H2 posits that gender moderates the relationship between perceived relative advantage and the same intention. The results show that neither age nor gender significantly moderates the relationships tested (p>0.05 in both cases), which contrasts with findings from more established markets such as Malaysia. This finding can be explained by the recent establishment of participatory banks in Morocco (2017), which exposed all age groups and both genders to this offering in an almost simultaneous manner. We draw implications from this for diffusion of innovation theory, as well as for the targeting strategy of Moroccan participatory banks.