Mobile money adoption and spending behaviour: the case of students in Ghana

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the use of the mobile money technology among students affects their spending behaviour.

The study reports interesting findings by using a random sample of 506 students from the University of Ghana and applying ordinary least squares regression technique.

The findings suggest that active use of mobile money services has significant influence on students spending behaviour. On a monthly basis, students who use mobile money spend on the average 20 Ghana Cedis more than their colleagues who do not use mobile money. Students who use both mobile money and ATMs jointly spend nearly 13 Ghana Cedis more than their counterparts who use either of them.

The implication of this finding is that mobile money technology which provides easy access to money can increase spending behaviour of students and reduce the tendency of savings. The authors therefore conclude that although technological growth should not be curtailed given the numerous benefits technology accrues to society, its use must be controlled, in particular, when it comes to using it as a medium of exchange so as to minimize the negative influences (such as indiscriminate spending).

This paper studies the post-adoption behavioural responses of mobile money users particularly among students in Africa which is rare in the literature.