The Impact of Demographic, Socio-economic and Behavioral Characteristics on Attitudes toward Credit Cards in Macedonia

Abstract

Credit cards have become an important part of everyday life without which lot of people can not imagine their life. The aim of this paper is to reveal the demographic, socio-economic and behavioral differences in credit cards attitudes in Macedonia. First, attitudes toward payment cards were examined by employing factor analysis. The reliability of the scale was examined using the Cronbach’ alpha. The respondents were administered the 12-item version of the credit card attitude scale and asked questions regarding their demographic, socio-economic and behavioral characteristics. ANOVA test was used to reveal the gender and age (demographic) differences, income and household type (socio-economic) differences and behavioral (number of credit cards owned, period of ownership, payment of balance and usage frequency) differences in components of credit cards attitudes. The results of factor analysis identified three subscales of short credit card attitude scales while ANOVA showed significant gender and frequency of use differences on all three credit cards attitude components, whereas other demographic, socio-economic and behavioral factors showed significant differences on some of the components of the attitudes toward credit cards. Recommendations presented in this research may foster growth of Macedonian credit card usage and help banks, financial and non-financial institutions in designing their marketing strategies.