Consumer Trust in Electronic Service Consumption: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between Finland and Portugal

Abstract

Lack of trust has been identified as a major barrier to consumer acceptance of e-commerce. This empirical study examines consumer trust in electronic service consumption in a cross-cultural setting, comparing perceived trust between Finnish and Portuguese Internet banking users. Consumer trust is a significant factor both in consumer attitudes and behavioral intention to using Internet banking. Consumer trust in Internet banking is reflected as the trust in the information and trust in the medium, that is, the Internet, and respondents' trust levels are compared at this two-construct level. This study enhances the understanding of trust in the Internet banking context and discusses some cultural factors possibly facilitating anticipation of cultural differences in consumer perceived trust in electronic service consumption. The findings of the Internet surveys conducted indicated differences between the countries studied, and underlined the importance of further studies on the role of culture in consumer trust.

Engaging consumers online through websites and social media: A gender study of Italian Generation Y clothing consumers

“…Morgan and Hunt (1994) demonstrated that path relationships between trust, commitment, and loyalty are different between females and males. In the context of online financial services, Kivijärvi, Laukkanen, and Cruz (2007) argued that it is meaningful to test the role of gender in trust-based research models, and more recently, Ladhari and Leclerc (2013) demonstrated that genders differ in their perceptions of website service quality, e-satisfaction, e-trust, and e-loyalty.…”

The roles of trust and experience in consumer confidence in conducting e‐commerce: a cross‐cultural comparison between France and Germany

“…An experimental study by Mutz (2005) also indicated that increasing levels of social trust encouraged greater intention to purchase online. While trust is central to marketing and marketing relationships, there is still a dearth of published work on trust in the field of marketing (Arnott, 2007), especially the cross‐cultural research on the topic (Kivijärvi et al ., 2007).…”

“…A recent study by Kivijärvi et al . (2007) examined the role of culture (individualism and uncertainty avoidance) in consumer trust in the context of online banking.…”

“…With the growth of Internet and e‐commerce, cybertrust (confident expectation of Internet) has become critical to the success of ‘e‐services’ (Dutton and Shepherd, 2006). Lack of trust has been identified as a major obstacle to consumer acceptance of e‐commerce (Kivijärvi et al ., 2007). Online consumers are worried about identity theft and transaction fraud.…”

An analysis of Internet Banking in Portugal

“…First, data support in general the conceptual framework presented. However, some mentions need to be made: (i) trust and convenience, from all the elements referenced in the literature as relevant from the client' perspective, continue to be a very important elements [2,3,[28][29][30]; (ii) the results did not support the paradigm that the characteristics of individuals affect their behavior as consumers, which contradicts the conclusions of Sadiq and Shanmugham [27]; (iii) individual technological characteristics affect consumer adoption of internet banking service; (iv) consumer perceptions over the Internet Banking service affect their use, as reveal by the existence of three types of customers that show different practices and perceptions of IB; and (v) intention to use internet banking is dependent upon attitudes towards the use of internet banking and subjective norms about the use of internet banking. These last results are consistent with the literature, in particular the models of adoption of new technologies proposed by Eriksson and Such (2008) and by Alsajjan and Dennis [23].…”