Doing Good or Avoiding Evil? An Explorative Study of Depositors’ Reasons for Choosing Social Banks in the Pre and Post Crisis Eras

Abstract

The global financial crisis is expected to be of great relevance for social banks’ growth of deposits. However, it is still unclear why depositors choose social banks in general, and how the global financial crisis has affected depositors’ choice of social banks. The present paper thus explores a comprehensive set of reasons for choosing social banks, the individual relevance of reasons, as well as differences before and after the global financial crisis. Data was collected through a survey of five social banks, interviews with nine industry experts, and an online survey with 108 social and 413 conventional depositors. Using content analysis, a multi-level system of reasons for choosing social banks was identified, which refers to the social banks’ “good” and conventional banks’ “evil” characteristics. Based on a frequency analysis of codings per category, reasons with potential superior relevance for depositors’ decision-making were explored. A comparison with reasons for choosing conventional banks imply that depositors’ reasons for choosing social banks differ from those for choosing conventional banks in general. The results also indicate that the global financial crisis might have helped social banks’ growth by attracting new customer target groups, who chose social banks because of conventional banks’ “evil” characteristics.

Social Finance and Banking Research as a Driver for Sustainable Development: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…This research gap has recently been highlighted by Rizzi et al (2018) [9], which in its conclusions calls for the convergence of the two models in order to advance the development of the sector concerning commercial finance. Additionally, also the recent publications highlight the importance of sustainable financing tools for social purposes [12][13][14].…”