Cultures of Trust: A Cross-Cultural Study on the Formation of Trust in an Electronic Environment

In this paper we present a cross-cultural comparison on users’ perception on computer security issues, with a special emphasis on the notion of trust. The study was conducted by bringing together two previous approaches on trust: the user studies conducted previously in Finland were repeated in Sweden, with only slight alterations to account for national features, such as language and choice of national examples, in order to track down cultural variation in how users perceive trust in the electronic world. The outcome is a to-the-point description of when, where, and how the designer or system builder should take cultural issues into account when trying to convince an online shopper of his trustworthiness. Also, the checklist for the designer, presented as the outcome of the Finnish user study, is further elaborated and refined based on these new results.