An Empirical Study of Online Trust and Consumer Behavior: Cultural Orientation, Social Norms, and Personal Innovativeness in Information Technology

Building online trust and understanding its relationship to online consumer behavior are important topics for e-commerce designers and human-computer interaction researchers. In this paper, the relationships between multidimensions of online trust (integrity, benevolence, and ability) and purchase intention are tested and discussed. Furthermore, the uncertainty avoidance cultural orientation, social norms, and personal innovativeness in information technology are tested as antecedents of online trust and ease of use in the model (n = 209). As expected, social norms influence all three dimensions of online trust, while uncertainty avoidance cultural orientation affects only benevolence and ability dimensions. Personal innovativeness in IT affects ease of use, and ease of use influences all three dimensions of online trust. Integrity, ability, and ease of use influence purchase intention, while benevolence shows no direct relationship to purchase intention. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.