Trustworthiness in electronic commerce: the role of privacy, security, and site attributes

Abstract

While the growth of business-to-consumer electronic commerce seems phenomenal in recent years, several studies suggest that a large number of individuals using the Internet have serious privacy concerns, and that winning public trust is the primary hurdle to continued growth in e-commerce. This research investigated the relative importance, when purchasing goods and services over the Web, of four common trust indices (i.e. (1) third party privacy seals, (2) privacy statements, (3) third party security seals, and (4) security features). The results indicate consumers valued security features significantly more than the three other trust indices. We also investigated the relationship between these trust indices and the consumer's perceptions of a marketer's trustworthiness. The findings indicate that consumers' ratings of trustworthiness of Web merchants did not parallel experts' evaluation of sites' use of the trust indices. This study also examined the extent to which consumers are willing to provide private information to electronic and land merchants. The results revealed that when making the decision to provide private information, consumers rely on their perceptions of trustworthiness irrespective of whether the merchant is electronic only or land and electronic. Finally, we investigated the relative importance of three types of Web attributes: security, privacy and pleasure features (convenience, ease of use, cosmetics). Privacy and security features were of lesser importance than pleasure features when considering consumers' intention to purchase. A discussion of the implications of these results and an agenda for future research are provided. q

Why Swedish people play online poker and factors that can increase or decrease trust in poker Web sites: A qualitative investigation

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Antecedents of Customer E-loyalty With the Effect of Trustworthiness in Malaysia Context

“…Lastly, internet privacy and security relatively affected e-trust (Kim, 2003). Several studies (Belanger, Hiller, & Smith, 2002;Kim & Shim, 2002) have found that security is predictor of consumer intention to shop via online. This was due to the fact that many e-consumers are unwilling to provide personal information over the internet (Salisbury et al, 2001).…”

Effectiveness of regulatory interventions on firm behavior: a randomized field experiment with e-commerce firms

“…A precondition for online shops to be a good alternative for consumers is that consumers can trust the information online shops provide about the characteristics of the merchandise, payment conditions, delivery process, privacy and security (Belanger et al 2002;OECD 2011). Customers of online shops fully depend on the information on the website, while customers of normal (physical) shops can gather information on the quality of products by actually experiencing (e.g., seeing, hearing, feeling) products before making a purchase decision.…”

“…This does not mean, however, that online sellers always have an incentive to be as informative as possible. Online sellers in particular have an incentive to design their online shop to maximize consumer expenditures (Belanger et al 2002). So, regulatory intervention might be needed to realize full transparency in online consumer markets.…”