Social networks and technology adoption : evidence from mobile money in Uganda

Innovative financial technologies are becoming a pathway to inclusive economic participation for individuals and firms. This paper presents evidence on how individuals' decisions to adopt such technology, particularly mobile money, relate to the adoption choices of their network of family and friends. Using the Uganda Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) Tracker Survey for 2013, we find that mobile money adoption decisions are closely linked to the network of an individual's family and friends. Networks are defined in two ways: by the source of information on mobile money services and by the average number of adoptions in one's neighbourhood. Like many other studies, we find a positive correlation between mobile money adoption and the adoption decisions of one's network. The correlation persists across the different measures of networks and even when we control for unobservable (neighbourhood fixed effects) characteristics. However, the magnitude of the point estimates decreases as the model becomes saturated. Despite having more mobile money users than adopters in our sample, we do not find evidence that networks can stifle technology adoption due to the possibility of piggybacking on early adopters within the network.