An overview of online trust: Concepts, elements, and implications

Abstract

Lack of trust has been repeatedly identified as one of the most formidable barriers to people for engaging in e-commerce, involving transactions in which financial and personal information is submitted to merchants via the Internet. The future of e-commerce is tenuous without a general climate of online trust. Building consumer trust on the Internet presents a challenge for online merchants and is a research topic of increasing interest and importance. This paper provides an overview of the nature and concepts of trust from multi-disciplinary perspectives, and it reviews relevant studies that investigate the elements of online trust. Also, a framework of trust-inducing interface design features articulated from the existing literature is presented. The design features were classified into four dimensions, namely (1) graphic design, (2) structure design, (3) content design, and (4) social-cue design. By applying the design features identified within this framework to e-commerce web site interfaces, online merchants might then anticipate fostering optimal levels of trust in their customers.

Website Credibility Assessment: An Empirical - Investigation of Prominence-interpretation Theory

“…In turn, they found that product quality affected purchase intentions. These findings are similar to the ideas of Wang and Emurian (2005), who suggest that four design factors (i.e., graphic design, structural design, content design, and social-cue design) have a prominent role in creating a quality Volume 8…”

“…Thus, it might be possible to integrate these factors into systems to do real-time evaluations of website visitors. Nevertheless, even without these sophisticated technologies, the fact that the type of interpretations that our subjects noted were consistent with the four design factors that Wang and Emurian (2005) note suggests that there are also more straightforward design principles that one can employ to influence what people notice and how they interpret what they are looking at as they make evaluations of credibility. Our results are consistent with these and similar findings that show that building a website that, for lack of a better way of saying it, looks credible can influence credibility.…”

The impact of organizational efforts on consumer concerns in an online context

“…There are four consumer concerns that differentiate an online from in-store transaction [20]: (a) increased risk, (b) the resulting trustor and trustee relationship, (c) security concerns about financial information, and (d) subjective privacy concerns.…”

Antecedents of Customer E-loyalty With the Effect of Trustworthiness in Malaysia Context

“…This information includes fast product search, value-added, and customized information (Liang & Lai, 2002). Additionally, website structure is defined as overall information of online companies and convenience of displayed information on website (Wang & Emurian, 2005). This website's structure will reflect the customer's view of website information, products, or services (Nielsen, 1999).…”