A Parsimonious Model of the Antecedents and Consequence of Online Trust: An Uncertainty Perspective

Online trust is an important issue in e-commerce. Recent research has indicated that online trust, or the absence of online trust, is a key inhibitor in an individual consumer's acceptance of e-commerce. In an uncertain and complex environment such as e-commerce, online trust is an important mechanism for consumers to reduce uncertainty. Uncertainty inhibits these individuals from making online purchases and becoming loyal customers of e-commerce organizations. We developed and tested a model of online trust that addresses the major sources of e-commerce uncertainty and consumer loyalty. We found that website usability, expected product performance, security, and privacy collectively explained 70% of the variance in online trust. The strongest predictors were consecutively security, website usability, expected product performance, and privacy. We also found that online trust and privacy explain 50% variance in consumer loyalty.