Identification of factors influencing building initial trust in e-commerce

Abstract

Nowadays, consumer trust is identified as one of the most important factors in electronic commerce (e-commerce) growth. This has led much research to investigate the role of trust in e-commerce and determine the factors which influence trust in this area. This paper explores factors which are engaged in building initial consumer trust in online shopping when a consumer wants to buy from a website for the first time. For developing the model and determining factors, data collection is conducted using questionnaire distribution for 325 respondents. After that, the validity of the proposed model is confirmed with Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). In EFA, variables are categorized into 6 factors and then using CFA which is based on Structural Equations Model (SEM) the relationship between variables and factors is investigated. The results of research show that factors of Product Characteristics, Security & Reputation, Website Design Quality, Support, Purchase Characteristic, and Advertising are effective factors for building initial trust. In this study the statistical population is students of Damghan University.