Key Factors of Islamic Finance Perception: Tunisia Case Using the Cognitive Map

Abstract

In last three decades, the appearance of strong Islamic movements has generated a renewed interest in Islamic finance, particularly in Islamic interest free banking. This work hopes to analyze and determine the factors that influence the Islamic finance perception in Tunisia. We provide an average cognitive map of 65 Tunisian Islamic banks such as Al-baraka and Zitouna, in order to clarify the perception factors of Islamic banking by the Tunisian population. The findings revealed that the perception of Islamic financial industry is mainly the result of cultural, socio-demographic, personal and psychological variables and the type of financing. By using the MICMAC program, the empirical results showed that the cognitive approach is a relevant way for the interpretation of this phenomenon.

This study contributes to the existing literature and previous studies by addressing to Al Baraka and Zitouna's bankers instead of the bank customers. Move to bankers to know the perception of Islamic finance by customers is interesting. Bankers give a general idea of all clients which reduces the task when contacting each client separately and improve the credibility of qualitative findings. Moreover, our investigation is proposed a new approach to building an average cognitive map for the explanation of Islamic finance perception.