ABSTRACT
Financial inclusion is a process that enables the ease of access, availability and usage of formal financial services for all members of an economy. It is a United Nations Sustainable Develop Goal (SDG) earmarked to alleviate poverty and income inequality. As such, financial inclusion has attracted the attention of many researchers and policymakers. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the whole world to a standstill. It has impacted many facets of the economy. The pandemic has reshaped the financial services sector. Financial inclusion is one facet of the economy that has been affected positively and negatively by the pandemic. This chapter explores the literature on financial inclusion and its challenges and opportunities induced by COVID-19. The chapter further explains the challenges and prospects of financial inclusion due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes by illuminating future research directions. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to predict the intention to continue online learning post the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic among students in the two largest universities of higher learning in Botswana. Furthermore, the purposes of this study are to elucidate the nexus between performance expectancy and continuance intention to establish the effects of efforts expectancy on continuance intention to investigate the relationship between social influence and continuance intention to determine the relationship between facilitating conditions and continuance intention and to examine the relationship between satisfaction and continuance intention using the extended unified theory of acceptance and usage technology (UTAUT) model postulated by Venkatesh et al. (2003). Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on the descriptive research design, using a structured questionnaire to collect quantitative data from 509 undergraduate and postgraduate students at Botswana's two major Universities using convenience sampling strategy. An online survey was used to gather primary data due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed correlation and regression analysis in testing the five hypothesized relationships. Findings: Using the extended theory of UTAUT as a theoretical lens, the study found that: performance expectancy, social influence and satisfaction predict continuance intention of online learning services. These factors have shown to be good predictors of intention in previous research. Expectancy effort had no influence on intention. Research limitations/implications: The current study covered on only university students from two tertiary institutions;therefore, results cannot safely be generalized to the student population in the country. Therefore, future research should consider enlisting more universities to be more representative, focusing on lecturers, which is an important group in fostering online teaching that could have a spill-over effect on the students' continued online learning. Practical implications: Implications for online technology selection: These findings suggest that although most universities temporarily adopted online teaching as an emergency solution, students appear to have felt that the outcomes delivered by the system improved their performance. This implies that academic institutions need to consider adjusting the curriculum to promote online learning in the future, whether there is pandemic or no pandemic. Implications for teaching and learning: First, the concept of social influence suggests that lecturers can make use of online chat discussion boards and rooms to foster student collaboration and a sense of community. Second, and finally online service providers should foster a close relationship with students to understand their expectations and extend the performance of their applications to satisfy their users. Originality/value: This study contributes to literature on online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic period by including satisfaction and continuance intention to the original UTAUT model thus extending the practical value of the model. This study extends knowledge on the factors that determine continuance intention by incorporating satisfaction in addition to the four factors of the traditional UTAUT. The study provides evidence for the predominance of satisfaction over the four traditional factors in predicting intention to continue online learning among students. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.