Psychological antecedents of institution-based consumer trust in e-retailing

  • Authors:

  • Rita Walczuch;Henriette Lundgren

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Accounting and Information Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Maastricht, Postbus 616, 6200MD Maastricht, The Netherlands;Department of Accounting and Information Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Maastricht, Postbus 616, 6200MD Maastricht, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Information and Management
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Online trust is one of the main determinants of the success of e-retailers and much research has dealt with website features triggering consumer trust to them. Another stream of research focuses on the psychological antecedents to online trust; i.e., what "happens" in the consumer's mind before or while a person decides to trust an e-retailer? So far, each effort has focused on only a few selected aspects of this trust formation process. No study has attempted to identify major psychological antecedents of trust. Our work identified the relative importance of the antecedents of institution-based trust in e-retailing; i.e., trust people have in it in general. A review of the literature reveals a large number of potential psychological antecedents. These can be categorized into five group of factors: personality-based, perception-based, attitude-based, experience-based, and knowledge-based. The five categories are hypothesized to influence institution-based consumer trust in e-retailing. According to our results, perception based factors are the main determinants of consumer trust in e-retailing. Consumers do behave, after all, rationally.