Is Religion Important in Predicting Attitude and Intention towards Adopting Islamic Banking? Evidence from Mauritania

This study aims to explore the influence of religion on attitude and intention of individuals towards adopting Islamic banking in Mauritania. Mauritania is one of the countries with 100 percent Muslim population, and 31% of this populace is under the international poverty line. Moreover, the Mauritanian financial system is a bank-based system that is still functioning under financial conventional law. Thus, it is imperative to explore the potential avenue for Islamic banking, which is still in its infancy stage. In efforts to explore the role of religion and factors influencing the intention towards adopting Islamic banking in Mauritania, a data of 583 Mauritanian households were successfully collected through self-administered questionnaires based on random sampling method. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is adopted to determine the effect of religion on attitude as well as predictors of intention towards adopting Islamic banking. The results from the Structural Equation Modeling analysis using AMOS show that religion factor was found to be significantly influencing attitude and intention. Further, the results indicate that the attitude, perceived behavioural control and subjective norms are proved to have significant impacts on households’ intention towards adoption. The findings of this study afford valuable insights into designing effective strategies to adopt and develop the Islamic banking system in Mauritania.