The Consequences of the Identity Theft Fear in the Sport Products Online Shopping From the Perspective of Physical Education Students

Background. Today, online shopping has become one of the most important components of modern marketing that had both positive and negative consequences for customers. Objectives. The purpose of present research was to study the consequences of fear of identity theft in sport products online shopping from the perspective of physical education students. Methods. The present study is a descriptive-correlational survey and its statistical population includes all physical education students of Golestan province universities that 384 students were selected through available sampling as the statistical sample of the study. To collec research data, Hille et al (2015) fear of identity theft questionnaire, Chen et al (2015) perceived risk questionnaire and Chou & Hsu (2016) willingness to online shop questionnaire were used. Validity of the questionnaires was verified by 8 masters of sport management and internal consistency of questionnaires by using Cronbach's alpha was determined respectively 0.86, 0.78 and 0.81. To analyze the data and identify the effects of research variables, structural equation modeling was used in the PLS software. Results. The result showed that fear of losing money in the customer has a positive and significant effect on perceived risk. The effect of fear of credit damage in the customer on perceived risk was positive and significant. Finally, the results showed that the effect of perceived risk on the physical education students' willingness to online shopping was negative and significant. Conclusion. According to the results of the study, increasing awareness of physical education students about the selling rules of sports websites and increasing the security of sport products websites in order to reduce consumers' fears and concerns are suggested.