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This paper investigates the factors crucial for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in establishing business relationships with banks in Pakistan.

To investigate how SMEs select banking relationships using criteria, such as decision factors, decision-makers, and decision processes, a comprehensive literature review was used to classify SMEs' decision factors for bank selection. A survey questionnaire was distributed to 200 SMEs, randomly selected from the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority database in Pakistan. Probit/Tobit model is estimated to explain the behavior of SMEs.

The results reveal that SMEs consider a bank's Reputation, Price, and Location essential while establishing bank relationships. SMEs tend to terminate relationships with banks when the Price and Location of the bank are considered essential factors in the relationship with the banks. Price and Location are necessary for SMEs to reduce banking relationships. The SMEs also tend to reduce if they get attractive offers, or the SMEs are recommended to make a banking relationship. This study also provides intuitions for bank policymakers to design policies to retain SME customers and attract new business relationships.

The research emphasizes the importance of competitive and transparent pricing strategies in designing products for SMEs. Banks must prioritize their Reputation and credibility to attract and retain relationships with SMEs.

The study attempts to provide evidence on the SME-Bank relationship focusing on the factors that are crucial for SMEs to decide while establishing business relationships with banks. Also, most of the related literature focuses on developed countries; this research adds to the literature on SMEs' behavior, particularly in a developing country's context.

Financial access is key to achieving several economic goals in developing countries. This paper aims to construct a longitudinal village-level measure of financial access in India and understand the role of RBI's policies and village characteristics in influencing the access.

The authors adopt a spatial approach in developing a metric of financial access. In particular, they measure the distance of each unbanked village in India to the nearest banked-centre from 1951 to 2019. The authors use this measure to conduct two exercises. First, a descriptive study is undertaken to assess how RBI's policies on bank branch expansion from 1951 to 2019 influenced the proximity to bank branches. Second, the authors conduct regression analyses to investigate how socio-economic and demographic characteristics of villages influence their proximity to bank branches.

The average distance of an unbanked village to the nearest banked-centre has declined from 43.5 km in 1951 to 4.2 km in 2019. The gain in bank access has varied geographically and over time. In 2001, bank branches were relatively distant from villages with under-privileged caste groups and proximate to areas with better infrastructure. This relationship worsened after 2005 when RBI introduced liberalized branch expansion policies. By 2019, proximity responds much more adversely to the presence of underprivileged groups. At the same time, banks have moved closer to economically better-off villages and villages with workforce in non-farm enterprises rather than agriculture.

First, studies in the Indian context focus on state-level determinants of bank branching, this is the first study to develop a longitudinal measure of financial access at the village level. This helps to understand spatial heterogeneity in bank branch access within states, which other studies are unable to do. Second, the paper analyses the role of village-level socio-economic and demographic characteristics in proximity to bank branches. This analysis helps in discovering micro-foundations of growth of bank branch network. The granularity of the approach adopted here overcomes the confoundedness problems that the studies at a more aggregate level face.

This study aimed to explore the importance of various factors considered in the bank selection decisions of micro- and small-sized enterprises (MSEs) in Ethiopia.

The study used a structured questionnaire to collect data from 300 MSEs selected through a convenience sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and linear regression analysis methods are used to identify the most important factors determining bank selection by MSEs.

The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that the availability of credit at a reasonable interest rate, lower service charges and the availability of better automated teller machine (ATM) services are the priorities of MSEs in their bank selection decisions. In addition, the results of regression analysis indicated that price competitiveness is the most important factor determining bank selection decisions of MSEs.

This study has two major limitations: first, due to resource constraints, the samples included in this study were taken only from the capital city of the country, Addis Ababa. As customer preferences are likely to vary from region to region, future studies could be carried out by including samples from other cities and rural areas of the country. Second, the study relied on a single data collection instrument. The use of additional data collection instruments, such as interviews and focus group discussions, could provide additional insights into the topic.

Commercial banks need to devise a flexible lending policy and set affordable interest rates and collateral requirements to meet the credit needs of MSEs. MSEs, on the other hand, need to improve their bankability by improving their operating and financial reporting practices. Further research can be conducted by covering other cities and the rural parts of the country.

The topic of bank selection has not been explored with a specific reference to MSEs in Ethiopia. The present study addressed this gap by investigating the factors influencing bank selection decisions of MSEs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of religiosity on banks’ lending behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA.

This study uses the evidence from the issuance of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to relate local religiosity to banks’ participation in the PPP loan program and to banks’ loan portfolio performance during the pandemic.

The results of this study show that banks located in more religious counties have a higher level of lending through the PPP, supporting the ethical and moral concerns cultivated by local religious beliefs. In addition, banks’ lending before the pandemic is more prudential in more religious areas, as reflected in lower losses and higher returns at the onset of the crisis, especially in areas where business activities were most disrupted, supporting the stewardship role encouraged by religiosity.

Thanks to the structure of the PPP loans programs, the authors are able to disentangle the conflicting effects of morality and prudence on banks’ behavior.

Branching is one of the crucial strategic non-price actions for banks. Previous studies on the impact of state ownership upon banks focus on bank lending behavior. This paper aims to offer a novel investigation of how state ownership affects bank branching behavior by examining state-controlled commercial banks (SCCBs) in the context of the largest developing and transitional country China.

The two-part model (TPM) is applied to analyze the branching decision process. In the first stage, the dependent variable is the choice of bank branching dynamics and in the second stage the dependent variable is the number of new branches or the number of closed branches. For robustness check, the ordered probit selection model allowing for interdependence of the two stage decisions is also employed.

Using a unique dataset of bank branches in China, this paper finds that the branching decisions of Chinese SCCBs are driven by both profit motivated factors including population size, population density, income level, financial development and banking competition and politically motivated factors as represented with the proportion of SOEs. As a comparison, branching decisions of joint-stock banks in China are fully determined by profit motivated factors.

First, this study is the first to explore the effect of state ownership on bank branching decisions, providing a new insight on the literature regarding to the impact of state ownership on bank decisions. Second, this study explores the potential effect of politically motivated factors on bank branching decisions, filling the gap in bank branching literature. Third, this study can contribute to bank branching literature by enriching the limited understanding of how SCCBs make branching decisions. Lastly, this study applies novel empirical strategies to analyze bank branching decisions, including the TPM and the ordered probit selection model.

Both branch and automated teller machine (ATM) are playing a crucial role in banking coverage expansion in India. People prefer to go to an ATM for withdrawal of money rather waiting in a queue for hours at a branch. Without the existence of a full-fledged brick-and-mortar branch, ATM also plays an important role by providing basic banking services. In India, a significant part of the population is excluded from banking access. The present study aims to investigate how the branch and ATM penetration influence financial inclusion.

The study covers the period from 2008–2009 to 2019–2020. With the application of Welch's t-test, a comparative study is being conducted between branch and ATM. Further, with the application of regression analysis, the study analyses how the branch and ATM network expansion influence financial inclusion.

Though in recent times customers prefers to visit an ATM and its growth rate is higher than branches, the study found no significant differences between the growth of branch and ATM. Further, results of regression show both branches and ATMs have significant impacts on financial inclusion.

In micro concept both have a common role in respect of service provided to customers. While in macro concept a list of specific services can be provided through branch level only. This study has a significant role, considering the importance of branches or ATMs and cost of installing a physical branch.

Banks' service failures are a major determinant of bank customers' switching behavior, which ultimately affects the profitability and stability of banks. Guided by the expectancy violation theory (EVT), this study aims to examine whether and how bank reputation influences the relationship between service failure and customers' switching behavior in the Malaysian banking industry.

By distributing questionnaires to Malaysian bank account holders, the authors gathered 320 usable responses, which were subsequently subjected to explanatory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Logit regression, Probit regression and independent-variables T-test to identify and elucidate the relationship existent between the dependent and independent variables.

This study discovered that bank reputation affects the bank customers' switching behavior directly and indirectly via banks' service failure, thereby verifying the application of EVT in the context of customer management.

Although the profile of respondents in this study presents a reasonable representation of the Malaysian population, the use of convenience (non-probability) sampling method via online survey may not provide generalizable results.

This study empirically revealed that bank reputation plays a moderator role between service failure in banks and customers' bank-switching behavior. This observation offers useful insights to bank managers into the role of bank reputation in managing customers' switching behavior.

Commercial banks are the financial powerhouses of a nation that can create a penetrating impact at the grassroots level. This study aims to investigate the demand-side drivers of green banking purchase intention by extending the popular theory of planned behavior (TPB) model.

This study used a mono-method research approach to collect customers’ cross-sectional responses using structured questionnaires. The data were further analyzed using CB-SEM.

This study points out that attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and environmental concern are demand-side factors that drive the intention of individual customers to adopt green banking services. The moderating roles of collectivism, age and gender are also discussed in this study.

The present study’s results suffer from mono-method bias as they are based on primary data analysis alone. This limitation can be addressed by incorporating a mixed-method approach.

Several policy suggestions are offered based on the findings on improving green banking adoption among individual customers. The proper incorporation of these guidelines will expedite a nation’s aspirations for sustainable economic growth.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the demand-side factors that drive Omani customers’ intention to adopt green banking. Moreover, this study extends the TPB with environmental concern and personal values to examine the green banking adoption by individual customers.

Drawing on the international business and game theory literature, this study assesses foreign firm treatment in the early stages of regulatory enforcement.

Treating regulation intensity as an exposure variable, negative binomial regression models were applied to firm-level data from 32 emerging markets (n = 15,331) to identify the determinants of inspection interactions. Robustness checks also were performed via variable substitutions for several predictors and an alternative form of statistical testing (i.e. Tobit regression, since it arguably better addresses dependent variables with corner solution responses).

Controlling for multiple organizational, regulatory and national characteristics, the findings are consistent with a foreign privilege, manifesting in reduced vulnerability to multiple encounters with labor inspection officials. Moreover, inward FDI stock was negatively related to the general probability of repeat interactions regardless of locus of ownership, an effect that was not moderated by stage of development or the regulatory influence of host interest groups. This collectively suggests that foreign firms not only are favored in compliance monitoring but also work post-entry to influence agencies to generally benefit business.

More comprehensive assessments were precluded given the lack of information on reasons for contact, citations and fines, and inspectorate reactions to company responses. Second, enforcement-risk management was measured indirectly since investors' internal dealings and actions toward officials are unavailable in secondary sources.

These findings have important implications for social responsibility, suggesting CSR stakeholders need to track enforcement more closely and exert pressure where needed so rights are not sacrificed for economic development.

This study provides the most rigorous assessment to date of the role that firm, government and economic factors play in national inspection targeting. It also examined whether foreign owners pool and leverage their political influence to impact general inspection activity, a previously untested prospect.