Internet shopping and Internet banking in sequence

This paper presents an empirical investigation into the factors that shape the propensity to use the Internet for shopping and banking through application of bivariate probit regression techniques to data sourced from a survey of 259 respondents in Athens, Greece. Based on the observation that Internet banking usage typically requires familiarity with Internet shopping, we estimate the marginal effects of the determinants of Internet banking use conditioned on the determinants of Internet shopping use. Our results suggest that not controlling for this conditioning will bias estimates and could lead to incorrect policy-recommendations. For instance, personal capacity is found to be an important determinant of the propensity to use Internet banking in a non-sequential approach but it is found to have no significant effect after conditioning. In particular, our results suggest that policy-makers should emphasise usefulness attributes of computer-based innovations when attempting to increase the use of the Internet for banking by people who already use the Internet for shopping.