KOREASCHOLAR

Youth in war ravaged regions often face with scant access to capital generally supplied by traditional banking institutions, which in turn restricts their entrepreneurial activities. Microcredit provides loan access to those excluded from formal financial services. Also, it is widely made available to rural communities in several Asian countries. Hence the main aim of this study is to determine factors influencing youth’s purchase intentions of microcredit in the post-war era, thus implying that findings of this study may be possibly useful to promote microcredit among youth in war affected regions. The Theory of Planned Behaviour has been generally applied to predict purchase intentions, nevertheless we modified this theory to derive hypotheses for this study. The study sample comprised 2500 youth selected from the war affected areas of Sri Lanka. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were employed for data analysis. The results showed that Positive Affect enhanced Purchase Intentions, whereas Perceived Deterrents and Default Risk Perceptions significantly reduced them. Also, Positive Affect reduced Default Risk Perceptions of microcredit, whilst Perceived Deterrents of microcredit increased them. Drawing from these findings, we then recommended how microcredit can be marketed to youth in war affected regions. Keywords: Microcredit, War Affected Youth, Purchase Intentions, Theory of Planned Behaviour, Default Risk Perceptions.

• Charles Jebarajakirthy(Swinburne University of Technology)
• Antonio C. Lobo(Swinburne University of Technology)
• Chandana Hewege(Swinburne University of Technology)