Internet Trust as a Specific Form of Technology Trust and its Influence on Online Banking Adoption

Trust in general, is an important factor in many social interactions, involving uncertainty and dependency. Trust is central to any economic transaction, whether conducted in a retail outlet in the real offline world or over the Internet, by means of a website. However, trust is even more important in an online situation (Riegelsberger, Sasse, & McCarthy, 2005; Walczuch & Lundgren, 2004). One reason for the importance of trust in e-commerce is the fact that in a virtual environment the degree of uncertainty of economic transactions is higher than in traditional settings. Internet-based commercial transactions are accompanied by several risks that either are caused by the implicit uncertainty of using open technological infrastructures for the exchange of information (system-dependent uncertainty) or can be explained by the conduct of actors who are involved in the online transaction (transaction-specific uncertainty) (Grabner-Kräuter, 2002). ABsTRAcT