THE DECİSİON OF USE OR NOT TO USE CREDİT CARD İN TURKEY: AN EMPİRİCAL ANALYSİS FROM THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET SURVEY

Abstract

Credit cards are one of the most widely used payment tools in both virtual shopping and traditional shopping today. Although, there has still been low usage in Turkey, it has been increasing year by year. The main purpose of this study is to reveal the reasons of not using credit card in Turkey and determine the socio-economic and demographic features of the using and not using of credit card. The national representative “Household Budget Survey” data set obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute for the 2019 is used with this aim. Furthermore, another purpose of this study is to make policy recommendation for both macroeconomic policy makers and bank managers. The probit model is employed to determine the factors affecting credit card usage.  Overall, females, households with lower education levels, those in older age groups, households in lower income groups, residential owner households, those who have difficult access to the bank and household heads working in agricultural, forestry and fishing are less likely to use credit card.