Integrating Trust in Electronic Commerce with the Technology Acceptance Model: Model Development and Validation

This paper develops and empirically validates a model to predict intentions to transact by integrating trust in electronic commerce (EC) with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM.). The impersonal nature of the online environment and the technological unpredictability of the Internet reduce consumer perceptions of control over their online transactions, making trust an inevitable component of EC. Since intentions to use a Web retailers interface for transactions necessitate an element of trust, perceived risk is incorporated as a direct antecedent of intention to transact. In addition, trust in EC that arises mainly from favorable privacy and security perceptions is hypothesized to reduce perceived risk and indirectly to influence intentions to transact. In addition, following TAM, intentions to transact are also influenced by both perceived usefulness and also by perceived ease of use. The resulting research model is validated using data from 52 subjects and the results give substantial support for the proposed hypotheses, while explaining 76 % of the variation for intention to transact in EC. This research validates TAM outside the workplace, suggesting that by including trust in EC, it could extend into consumer online behavior. The paper discusses several new insights of this study an