This study aims to determine the factors that influence the behavior of muslim community to use the Islamic banking services in Surakarta. Data collection was done by distributing questionnaires. A total of 220 questionnaires were distributed and the total of 198 questionnaires were returned (return rate 90%). Analyses were performed with hierarchical regression method. The results of inferential analyzes showed that attitude shows a very significant influence only. Social influence is significant in the early stages of testing, but it lost at a later stage, as well as the price and knowledge included. Both variables are taken as moderation couldn’t explain the relationship between attitudes and social influences on intention to use the Islamic banks. Knowledge variable became a significant variable in influencing intention to use Islamic banks, to replace the social influence as independent variable.
In recent years, Indonesia Islamic banking has been named "the fastest growing industry." Total assets
of Islamic banks are able to grow on average by 36.2% per year in the last 5 years, higher than the
global Islamic finance industry growth in the range 15-20% [1]. Unfortunately, the portion of the
current Islamic banking has achieved total assets amounting to Rp.104 trillion only 3.39% of total
national banking assets. This means that public participation in developing Islamic banking is still very
small. It is very worrying, considering that the nearly 90% of Indonesia's population consists of 237.6
million people are Muslims now [1]. Why are the majority of the Indonesian Moslem people less
interested in using Islamic banking services? This study wanted to find an answer to that question.
Community participation in the use of sharia banking service involves attitudes, decision
making process and behavior. There has been mach research on attitudes and behavior that have been
produced including the sharia banking access. Survey by [2] of 300 post graduate student at three
universities in in the Klang Valley, namely the International Islamic University Malaysia, Universiti
Teknologi MARA and University Putra Malaysia, found that the attitudes and social influence of a
valid construct in explaining individual acceptance of Islamic financial products. Much earlier, the
study [3] indicates that customers who choose Islamic banks are not influenced by the bonds of religion
only but also the pricing of Islamic banking products. These results are supported by research [4] and
[5]. By using quantitative methods, analysis of 141 bank customers in Labuan, Malaysia, [5] found that
the principles of sharia, the payment per month lower, transparency, and interest-free practice is a very
important criteria in considering the decision of the selection of financial services Islamic household.
More than ten years earlier, [4] also showed evidence that one of the Islamic banking products are albay
'bithaman ajil (purchasing products through the bank by installments) dominate banking in
Malaysia.
Latter study of Amin, conducted with Abdul Rahim Abdul Rahman, Stephen Jr. Sondoh
Laison., and Ang Magdalene Chooi Hwa [6] to assess the determinants of customer intention to use the
Islamic personal financial services. Through the sample consisted of 150 customers who are drawn
from two Islamic banks in Malaysia, namely Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad and Bank Muamalat
Malaysia Berhad, they want to see the effects of attitude, social influence, the bonds of religion,
government support, and pricing, on the intention to use the Islamic personal finance services.
Research model is derived from a model developed by Fishbein and Ajzen [6] is known as TRA
(Theory of Reasoned Action). In this model placing three variables, the religious obligation,
government support, and pricing as a moderating variable, to explain relationship between attitudes and
social influences on customer intention to use the Islamic personal financial services. But in the
analysis and results, the effect of moderation was not detected. The results obtained show that among
the five variables were studied, two of them, the religious obligation and government support is not
significant. It means that, the intention of Malaysian community to use the Islamic financial services is
influenced by attitude, social influence, and pricing of Islamic banks. The religion obligation and
government support don’t encourage them to use Islamic bank. This study wanted to know the factors
that influence individuals to use the services of Islamic banking in Indonesia. By using the framework
of the study TRA like [6], who had already been researching Islamic banks, modification done through
moderation effect of knowledge and pricing as [7].
Through several stages of analysis, the effect of the attitudes toward intention to use Islamic banks
remains significant (H1 supported). This is in contrast to social influence. This variable is only
significant when the analysis include the attitude and social environment as the independent variable of
intention to use Islamic banks. When added another variable, namely knowledge and pricing in the
relationship, the significance of social influence is lost. That it emerged as a significant independent
variable is knowledge. This means that social influence is really not strong.
Knowledge variables influence is stronger than social influence. Positive and significant
relationship between knowledge and intention to use Islamic banks shows that the Muslim Ummah
with better knowledge has greater intention to use the Islamic banks. These results also indicate that the
knowledge variable must be considered in building a model of the behavior of a selection or use of
products, including Islamic banks.
The relationship between attitudes and social influences on intentions to use Islamic banks are
not moderated by the knowledge and prices. These results indicate that differences in the findings of
previous research on the relationship between attitudes and social influence with the intention of using
Islamic banks cannot be explained by the variables of knowledge and prices. Positive relationship
between intention and real behavior using Islamic banks are going very significant.
