Understanding Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping: A Multidisciplinary Approach

The importance of trust in building and maintaining consumer relationships in the online environment is widely accepted in the Information Systems literature. A key challenge for researchers is to identify antecedent variables that engender consumer trust in Internet shopping. This paper adopts a multidisciplinary approach and develops an integrative model of consumer trust in Internet shopping through synthesizing the three diverse trust literatures. The social psychological perspective guides us to include perceived trustworthiness of Internet merchants as the key determinant of consumer trust in Internet shopping. The sociological viewpoint suggests the inclusion of legal framework and third-party recognition in the research model. The views of personality theorists postulate a direct effect of propensity to trust on consumer trust in Internet shopping. The results of this study provide strong support for the research model and research hypotheses, and the high explanatory power illustrates the complementarity of the three streams of research on trust. This paper contributes to the conceptual and empirical understanding of consumer trust in Internet shopping. Implications of this study are noteworthy for both researchers and practitioners.