Political-Economic Uncertainty, Digital Consumer Attention and Online Card Payments: A Short Empirical Investigation of Türkiye
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23070527Anahtar Kelimeler:
e-commerce; digital consumer attention; political-economic uncertainty; online card payments; Google TrendsÖzet
This study examines the relationship among political-economic uncertainty, digital consumer attention, and the actual growth in online card payment value in Türkiye, integrating finance, political science, and marketing. Monthly observations from January 2017 to December 2024 are employed. The Digital Consumer Attention Index is constructed as the equally weighted mean of five Google Trends series; the financial outcome is the annual log growth of BKM online card-payment value deflated by consumer prices; and a Türkiye-specific news-based uncertainty index represents the political-economic environment. A parsimonious ARX model with two lags is estimated using Newey-West standard errors (N = 82). The uncertainty coefficient is negative and significant (beta = -2.129; p = 0.007). The direct coefficient on digital attention is insignificant (beta = 0.447; p = 0.624), whereas the attention-uncertainty interaction is positive and significant at the 10% level (beta = 1.530; p = 0.083). Conditional effects indicate that the negative association between uncertainty and real payment growth weakens when digital attention is high. Digital attention may therefore function less as an autonomous sales driver than as a buffering mechanism that supports marketing resilience amid uncertainty. The findings are associational and do not establish causality.
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