Revisiting the role of web assurance seals in consumer trust

  • Authors:

  • Dan J. Kim;Charles Steinfield;Ying-ju Lai

  • Affiliations:

  • Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI;Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI;Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

  • Venue:
  • ICEC '04 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Electronic commerce
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

There is conflicting evidence as to the current level of awareness and impact of Web assurance seal services (WASSs). This study examines consumers' awareness of WASSs and consumers' perceived importance of assurance seals found on business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce websites. We further examine whether an intervention to increase consumers' knowledge of security and privacy threats, as well as informing them of the function of WASSs increases perceived importance of web assurance seals. We find that educating consumers about security and privacy threats, as well as the role of web assurance seals does increase awareness and perceived importance the seals, but interestingly consumers still are not likely to use these seals as an indicator of the trustworthiness of site. Moreover, there is no difference after the intervention in perceived security and privacy of a vendor's site, suggesting that consumers obtain these cues from other factors. After the intervention, the strongest predictor of perceived security remains consumers' assessment of the quality of the information provided on the site. However, the perceived privacy afforded by a vendor was no longer predicated by perceived information quality.