The Role of Trust in Personal Information Disclosure on Health-Related Websites

E-commerce adoption has been extensive but for some specialized areas it is still in the early stages. One such area is health-related websites where the sensitive issues around the consumer’s health extenuate the similar challenges faced in other areas of e-commerce. Disclosing personal information is necessary to fully utilize such health-related websites but consumer trust is required for this. This research proposes a model of the role of trust in personal information disclosure on health-related websites. This model identifies 10 factors grouped in three categories. The first category is dispositional factors including faith in humanity, trusting stance and privacy concern. the second category is situational factors including reputation and perceived risk. Lastly the third category is institutional factors including the perceived effectiveness of the privacy statement, third party certification, legal and regulation and security infrastructure. Low risk, reputation, effective privacy statement and privacy seals were found to facilitate trust. While institutional factors like the legal framework and regulation have an elevated role to keep the consumer safe in this context, lack of clarity on what they are leads to a weak perception of their value. Trust in the health-related website was found to positively influence the intention to disclose information.