IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oaefxx/v9y2021i1p1913857.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Alfred Kechia Mukong
  • Lwanga Elizabeth Nanziri
  • Stephanos Papadamou

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Alfred Kechia Mukong & Lwanga Elizabeth Nanziri & Stephanos Papadamou, 2021. "Social networks and technology adoption: Evidence from mobile money in Uganda," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 1913857-191, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:1913857
    DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2021.1913857
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2021.1913857
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/23322039.2021.1913857?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:1913857. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/OAEF20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.