Investigation of psychological dimensions of trust on e-loyalty

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to integrate extant literature on psychological dimensions and trust to develop a model of consumer e-loyalty. Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops four important psychological-based factors impacting consumer trust and e-loyalty: perception-based, experience-based, knowledge-based and attitude. Findings – The results of this paper propose that perception-based and experience-based factors are the main determinants of consumer trust and e-loyalty in e-retailing. Consumers do consider information practices. Research limitations/implications – This paper has attempted to shed some light on the psychological antecedents of consumer trust in e-retailing but still missed some important antecedents for example personality. An option for “not applicable” as an answer choice was not provided in the survey instrument. It is hard for a participant to provide accurate information about his/her past experience that happened three months ago in a self-reported method. Practical implications – From a theoretical perspective, the psychological-based consumer trust decision-making model provides a holistic view of an online consumer’s purchase decision-making process and e-loyalty. From a practical standpoint, the paper identified a number of potentially important psychology determinants of consumers’ trust in a website and empirical evidence concerning the relative impact of each of these determinants on consumers’ trust and e-loyalty. Originality/value – To date, this is the first research that has been conducted to analyse psychological dimensions of trust in e-retailers and its influence on e-loyalty by using partial least squares in Saudi Arabia e-commerce research.