Chiravuri, Ananth

Nazareth, Derek

English

AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Association for Information SystemsAIS Electronic Library (AISeL)AMCIS 2001 Proceedings Americas Conference on Information Systems(AMCIS)December 2001Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce: AnAlternative Framework Using TechnologyAcceptanceAnanth ChiravuriUniversity of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeDerek NazarethUniversity of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeFollow this and additional works at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2001This material is brought to you by the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been acceptedfor inclusion in AMCIS 2001 Proceedings by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contactelibrary@aisnet.org.Recommended CitationChiravuri, Ananth and Nazareth, Derek, "Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce: An Alternative Framework Using TechnologyAcceptance" (2001). AMCIS 2001 Proceedings. 152.http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2001/1522001  Seventh Americas Conference on Information Systems 781CONSUMER TRUST IN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE:AN ALTERNATIVE FRAMEWORK USINGTECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCEAnanth ChiravuriUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukeeananthc2@uwm.eduDerek NazarethUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukeederek@uwm.eduAbstractThe Internet continues to grow at a substantial rate, with estimates for online persons reaching 407 million byNovember 2000 (Nua 2001).  Despite this growth, business to consumer commerce still experiences challengeson many fronts.  Several studies have identified trust as a major concern for consumers to buy online.  Thispaper examines trust and its antecedents, and presents an alternative framework, using the TechnologyAcceptance Model (TAM), of the consumers usage of the Internet for e-commerce.IntroductionBusiness-to-consumer commerce over the Internet continues to face multiple challenges, despite the immense popularity andsubstantial growth in the Internet.  Recent failures of ventures aimed at direct selling to consumers using the Internet as the soledistribution channel, e.g. etoys.com, have dampened the outlook  for other such ventures, as reflected by their dwindling stockprices.  One principal reason for this is the fact that many of these ventures are finding it difficult to achieve projected growth.This is in part explained by the tendency of consumers critically evaluating their on-line purchases.  Several issues crop up in theseevaluations, including availability of current products (not just overstocks and prior years' models), price, quick delivery, problem-free returns, post-purchase service, among others.  Other factors that have been a recurrent theme in this introspection center onissues like security, privacy, and the like.  Companies are finding it hard to persuade additional consumers to buy on-line despitethe advantages of convenience,  choice, and price.  It is clear that unless issues like consumer protection, privacy, security, andthe like, are effectively addressed, on-line consumer sales will continue to stagnate.  This paper aims to contribute to the existingresearch by attempting to understand the usage process from the critical perspective of trust. The Meaning of TrustThe benefits of trust have been widely recognized.  Trust makes cooperative endeavors happen (Arrow 1974; Deutsch 1973;Gambetta 1988).  Trust is a key to positive relationships in various settings (Fox 1974; Lewis and Wiegert 1985a) and becomesmore central and critical during periods of uncertainty due to organizational crisis (Mishra 1996; Weick and Roberts 1993).However there is little consensus on what trust means (Kee and Knox 1970; Taylor 1989; Yamagishi and Yamagishi 1994).  Toooften, it has been addressed without the help of solid a-priori conceptualizations (McKnight and Chervany 2000).  Trust isdescribed as a risky advance concession in the hope or expectation of a positive outcome (Luhmann 1988).  Trust has also beencharacterized as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the otherparty will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”(Mayer et al. 1995).  This definition will be used to develop the model.Trust in the E-Commerce MarketplaceThere have been many studies on understanding trust and its antecedents in the context of e-commerce.  Quelch and Klein (1996)speculate that in the early stages of the Internet development, trust is a critical factor in stimulating purchases over the Internet.Electronic Commerce782 2001  Seventh Americas Conference on Information SystemsTrustUsefulness Ease of useIntentionto use UsageEase offindingEase ofunderstandingInformation qualityFactual signals/heuristic cuesCompanyreputationFamiliarityQuality ofexperienceExtent ofexperienceDoney and Cannon (1997) label trust as an order qualifier for purchase decisions, i.e. in order for a consumer to place an orderthe consumer must trust the merchant first.  Gefen (2000) concludes that both trust and familiarity influence two distinct aspectsof e-commerce: inquiry and purchase, and are especially strong on peoples intention to purchase.  The study also points out thattrust and familiarity are differently distinct constructs.  Jarvenpaa et al. (1999) conclude that a perceived merchant reputation hada significant effect on a consumers trust than the merchant size and point out that no strong cultural effects were found regardingthe antecedents of trust.  The results from their study also tentatively suggest that greater experience with the web is associatedwith lower trust and higher risk in a particular merchant.  Some studies looked at a framework to build and enhance consumertrust using Trusted Third Parties (Ba et al. 1998).  Palmer et al. (2000) examined the use and prominence of Trusted Third Partiesand privacy factors and concluded that these two elements are complementary. Three major antecedent factors of trust in the e-commerce arena are information quality, web interface design, and companyreputation (Fung and Lee 1999).  Einwiller et al. (2000) introduce “trust signals” as antecedents to consumer trust in Internetbusinesses.  Jarvenpaa et al. (1999) suggest looking at factors other than size and reputation and concludes that design, ease ofuse, aesthetics and native language might also have an impact. The study also suggests that usability along with aesthetics andlanguage might affect perceptions and inferences about other site characteristics such as trust. Technology Acceptance and TrustIt is interesting to note that none of these studies have employed the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis 1989) as aframework to explain consumer acceptance and usage of the internet as a medium to conduct business.  This is surprising, asnumerous studies have employed the model and its revisions (Davis et al. 1989; Szanja 1996) to explain the acceptance and usageof information technology in discretionary-use in contexts.  The objective of this paper is to present an alternative framework ofthe consumer’s usage of the Internet for e-commerce, using TAM and more critically, trust.  This model also attempts to identifysome of the antecedents of trust in the e-commerce context.A study to identify antecedents to web ease of use and usefulness (Lederer et al. 2000) concluded that several antecedentspredicted ease of use, including ease of understanding and ease of finding.  Another study by Fung and Lee (1999) explored theconcept of EC-trust, and identified company reputation, and quality of experience as antecedent factors to trust.  We use theseantecedents from the models presented above and present a framework to explain consumer’s intention to use the Internet forecommerce.  The antecedents of trust include those identified in previous studies such as company reputation (Jarvenpaa et al.1999), factual signals and heuristic cues (Einwiller et al. 2000), and familiarity (Gefen 2000).  The proposed research model ispresented in Figure 1.Figure 1.  Technology Acceptance and Trust Model Chiravuri & Nazareth/Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce2001  Seventh Americas Conference on Information Systems 783Several propositions can be formulated to address the role of trust in the context of technology acceptance.  These include:Proposition 1: Trust will  positively influence the intention to use (purchase)Proposition 2. The quality of prior experience will positively influence trust.Proposition 3. The extent of prior experience will moderate the relationship between trust and intention to use.Proposed Research MethodologyThis research employs existing constructs, albeit from different research streams.  The instrument will be based on measuresadopted in prior research, as adapted to the e-commerce trust context.  Several rounds of pretesting of this instrument areenvisioned, using independent experts, to assess face validity and content validity.  In an effort to ensure variance in the data, thesample for this research would employ a combination of e-commerce buyers and non-buyers. The sample size would be decidedafter taking into account the power, the effect size and the alpha level.  Multitrait-Multimethod (MTMM) matrix will be used tocheck for discriminant and predictive validity and thus investigate construct validity (Campbell and Fiske, 1959). The correlationmatrix will then be subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. In the CFA approach, factors defined by multiple measures of thesame trait reflect construct validity of the measures, while method effects are indicated by the factors based on different traitmeasures with the same instrument. Structural equation modeling would be used to test the theoretical model.Implications and ConclusionsThis research extends the technology acceptance model to incorporate trust as a key construct for discretionary-use informationtechnology.  Much of the work on technology acceptance centers on the use of technology in the work setting.  This researchextends it to the personal context.  In an effort to better understand user behavior in a situation where risks are non-trivial, the roleof trust is introduced.  A better understanding of trust, particularly in the e-commerce arena, is necessary to understand and predictthe purchase decisions of individuals.  While there are various models explaining trust and its antecedents, none of them use TAM and trust to explain intention to useleading to usage.  This study highlights the critical role of trust and the TAM to explain intention to use.  The antecedents of trust,usefulness and ease of use are identified.  The study also introduces the quality of prior experience as an antecedent to trust, andthe moderating role of the quantity of personal experience in shaping the relationship between trust and the intention to use thetechnology.ReferencesReferences are available at http://www.uwm.edu/~derek/amcis2001/TrustReferences.html.

Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce: An Alternative Framework Using Technology Acceptance

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Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce: An Alternative Framework Using Technology Acceptance

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