E‐Retailer Ethics and Consumer Trust in Mobile Commerce: Integrating Social Contract and Signaling Perspectives

This study extends corporate social responsibility (CSR) research into digital commerce by explaining how e‐retailers convert ethical obligations into credible signals that foster trust‐based stakeholder relationships. Integrating Social Contract Theory and Signaling Theory, it examines eight ethical practices—security, privacy protection, transparency, credibility, information accuracy, non‐deception, reliability, and ease of use—and their effects on customer e‐trust, e‐satisfaction, and positive electronic word‐of‐mouth. Survey data from 570 mobile shoppers in the United Kingdom were analyzed using structural equation modeling, complemented by autoencoder, radial basis function network, cascade correlation neural network, and propensity score weighting analyses. The structural results show that all ethical practices except ease of use positively influence e‐trust. E‐trust enhances e‐satisfaction, which subsequently promotes positive e‐WOM. Peer communication strengthens the effects of security, privacy protection, transparency, credibility, information accuracy, and non‐deception on e‐trust, but not those of reliability or ease of use. Across the complementary analyses, credibility and reliability emerge as the most stable ethical foundations of e‐trust, while the trust–satisfaction relationship shows the strongest cross‐method consistency. The study advances CSR theory by distinguishing substantive ethical obligations from the signals through which consumers evaluate their fulfillment and by identifying peer communication as a third‐party verification mechanism within contemporary mobile commerce settings.