Journal Article

Community belongingness and small business banking in Scottish Islands

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between community belongingness and small business banking in Scotland, focusing on Scottish Islands, specifically, Shetland, Orkney, and Outer Hebrides. These islands provide a unique case study as they form the majority of British Isles, not counting Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories. Within Scotland, these are also the localities with the strongest sense of community. Our analysis is based on quantitative methods and uses detailed survey data for small businesses across Scotland, for the period 2016- 2019. Our findings show that Scottish islands are positioned at the top, or near it, in the share of small businesses describing a strong working relationship with their main bank. The positive relationship between community belongingness and businesses’ attitude towards their banks also holds more broadly, across Scotland. These findings seem to indicate the continuing relevance of soft information, or else tacit knowledge, in small business banking.

Authors

Ioannou, Stefanos

Oxford Brookes departments

Oxford Brookes Business School

Dates

Year of publication: Not yet published
Date of RADAR deposit: 2024-10-14

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License