A multidimensional trust formation model in B-to-C e-commerce: a conceptual framework and content analyses of academia/practitioner perspectives

What dimensions can be identified in the trust formation processes in Business-to-Consumer (B-to-C) electronic commerce (e-commerce)? How do these differ in importance between academia and practitioners? The purpose of this research is to build a model of multidimensional trust formation for online exchanges in B-to-C electronic commerce. Further, to study the relative importance of the dimensions between two expert groups (academics and practitioners), two semantic network and content analyses are conducted: one for academia’s perspectives and another for practitioners’ perspectives of trust in B-to-C electronic commerce. The results show that the two perspectives are divergent in some ways and complementary in other ways. We believe that the two need to be combined to represent meaningful trust-building mechanisms in websites. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.