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The advancement in technology has brought noteworthy transformation in the delivery of financial services and retail banking services in particular. The banking sector has been using information systems not only to run internal business activities and to promote products, but also to provide main services to their customers. Among these technological advancements, internet banking seems to be the more promising, since customers will benefit from the convenience, speed and 24-hours availability of Internet banking services, while banks will also benefit by lowering their operational cost, decreasing their dependence on branch network expansion, extending business territory, supporting customer relations, offering 24-hours trading and saving time and money (Shih & Fang, 2004). Accordingly, it has evolved as one of the most cost effective e-commerce applications (Lee, 2009).
The Internet users have been rapidly growing, in Tunisia. According to Internet World Stats (2019), there are 7,898,534 Internet users in December 2019 approximately, 66.8 per cent of the population, which created opportunities for Tunisian banks to expend to wider customers. Nowadays, a majority of Tunisian banks are choosing internet banking as a delivery channel and a strategic tool for their business development and important financial and technical resources have been devoted in this regard to implement mobile banking applications within their systems and start marketing them. Despite the fact that Internet banking is useful to the customers, the adoption rate of such technology is somewhat low and short of expectations in Tunisia. Most clients perform their banking operations inside the bank or by using the automated teller machine (ATM) or telephone, To enhance internet banking adoption, banks in Tunisia, therefore, need to have a clear understanding of their internet banking users in terms of their behavioral intentions in using such technology, which will permit banks to offer solutions and appropriate strategic plans to increase this service usage in the future. In this regard, this study will attempt to identify the key factors influencing customers’ behavioral intentions to use internet banking services in developed countries, such as, Tunisia.
Several models have been used in the studies of Internet banking to investigate factors that influence users’ behavioral intention to use technologies. These studies used single model, such as technology acceptance model (TAM) by Davis (1989), theory of reasoned action by Fishbein & Ajzen (1977), theory of planned behavior (TAR) by Ajzen (1991), Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by Venkatesh et al. (2003). Other researchers used variables from these models and validated in different context. According to Tarhini et al. (2016), UTAUT and UTAUT2 are the most frequently used models in recent times to investigate behavioral intention to use information technologies including Internet banking context. However, it is evidently clear that most of these models are extensively tested in developed countries and their findings and implications apply only to situations in those countries. The very limited and restricted research on Internet banking services adoption and use indicated that only some studies have utilized TAM models, especially the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model (Al-Gahtani et al., 2007; Dajani, 2011) in developing countries such as Arab countries. To this date, there has been very limited research work that examines the validity of the UTAUT and the UTAUT2 models in developing countries such as Arab countries in general (Al-Hajri & Tatnall, 2008; Abu-Shanab & Pearson, 2009; Al-Ajam & Nor, 2013; Kamoun & Almourad, 2014; Zhao et al., 2012) and Tunisia in particular (Alsajjan & Dennis, 2010; Tarhini et al., 2014). In Tunisia, to the best of our knowledge one study exists to test the UTAUT model, specifically in the context of e-governance technology acceptance and not in the context of Internet banking use (Nasri, 2014). The current research reveals that the proposed extended model (UTAUT2), which was originally proposed and tested in developed countries, can also explain Internet banking services adoption in developing countries such as Tunisia.