Electron Markets (2009) 19:89–98 DOI 10.1007/s12525-009-0007-1
FOCUS THEME
The impact of uncertainty avoidance, social norms and innovativeness on trust and ease of use in electronic customer relationship management Yujong Hwang
Received: 27 August 2008 / Accepted: 13 February 2009 / Published online: 28 February 2009 # Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen 2009
Abstract Social and individual factors and their relationships to trust in electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) are important topics for e-commerce designers and information systems researchers. In spite of several previous studies of online trust and consumer behavior, none has adequately examined the influences of social and individual factors on online trust in eCRM. In this paper, the relationships among uncertainty avoidance, social norms, personal innovativeness in IT, and multidimensions of online trust (integrity, benevolence, and ability) as well as perceived ease of use (PEOU) are tested, based on a PLS analysis with 209 student samples. Social norms influence all three dimensions of online trust, while uncertainty avoidance affects only the benevolence and ability dimensions. Personal innovativeness in IT affects PEOU, and PEOU influences all three dimensions of online trust. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings beneficial to our understanding of customer relationships in the electronic marketplace are discussed in the paper. Keywords eCRM . Online trust . Uncertainty avoidance . Social norms . Personal innovativeness in IT JEL classification M15
Responsible editor: Nicholas C. Romano, Jr. Y. Hwang (*) School of Accountancy and MIS, DePaul University, 1 E. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60604, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
Introduction Online trust in electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) is an important topic for e-commerce designers and human–computer interaction researchers (Saeed et al. 2003c; Gefen et al. 2003; Birkhofer et al. 2000). In spite of several previous studies of online trust and consumer behavior (e.g., Gefen et al. 2003; Grazoli and Jarvenpaa 2000; Pennington et al. 2004; Jarvenpaa et al. 2000; Ba and Pavlou 2002; Gefen 2002a, b; Pavlou 2003; Bhattacherjee 2002; Paul and McDaniel 2004), none has adequately examined the influences of social and individual factors on online trust in eCRM. Individual factors for eCRM have been emphasized for the successful implementation of e-commerce (Leonard and Riemenschneider 2008). The role of various social factors involved in online trust for successful eCRM is an important research issue (McKnight et al. 2004). Schoder and Haenlein (2004) also emphasized a trust-based strategy for successful eCRM. Anecdotal evidence suggests that 30% to 75% of eCRM initiatives fail because organizations roll them out without assessing their social aspects (Simpson 2002). Based on a meta-analysis of online consumer behavior in 42 MIS articles published between 1995 and 2002, Saeed et al. (2003c) argued that social context variables and individual characteristics should be studied further to fully understand online consumer behavior. Specifically, the complex effects of social influence, individual characteristics, and personal innovativeness on multidimensional trust beliefs, such as integrity, benevolence, and ability, have not been tested in previous research. By understanding these relationships as different sources of influence on online trust, e-commerce system designers and information systems (IS) researchers can reduce the research gap between the trust theory and eCRM and improve website functionalities.
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Thus, this study has two primary objectives. The first objective is to investigate the social and individual influences on multidimensional online trust beliefs. For this purpose, the current study includes uncertainty avoidance (Dorfman and Howell 1988) and social norms (Limayem et al. 2000) as antecedents of multidimensional online trust beliefs. Since social and environmental factors in trust building are crucial issues to e-commerce (Gefen et al. 2003), this is an important empirical study that tests these specific relationships. Given that uncertainty and risk are the main constructs related to trust beliefs (Liang and Huang 1998; Grazioli and Jarvenpaa 2000; Jarvenpaa et al. 2000; Vellido et al. 2000; Liao and Cheung 2001; Ba and Pavlou 2002), investigating mechanisms to reduce and avoid uncertainty and risk should yield important insights into this proposed model. The second objective is to investigate the effects of individual characteristics related to information technology (IT) adoption, such as personal innovativeness in IT (PIIT) (Agarwal and Prasad 1998), on multidimensional trust beliefs and perceived ease of use (PEOU) in an online consumer behavior context. For this purpose, the current study tests the influence of PIIT on PEOU, and the effects of PEOU on multidimensional trust beliefs. Although Gefen et al. (2003) showed the relationship between PEOU and trust and usefulness, they used the unidimensional trust construct in the model. Thus, the direct relationships among PEOU and the three dimensions of trust beliefs are currently unknown. Given that social norms are social sources of influence while PIIT is an individual source of influence on IT adoption (Lewis et al. 2003), knowing the effects of these different sources of influence on trust beliefs would be valuable to more fully understand the nomological networks in the model. The relationship between social norms and PIIT will be also tested. The organization of this paper is as follows. “Research model and hypotheses” section presents the theoretical foundations of this research model and the hypotheses. “Method and measures” section outlines the research methodology and measures. “Data analysis and results” section describes the data analysis and results. Finally, “Discussion and conclusion” section concludes the paper and presents implications for researchers and practitioners.
Research model and hypotheses Multidimensional online trust beliefs Figure 1 presents the proposed research model. Gefen (2002b) provided a multidimensional construct combining specific beliefs of online trust: integrity, benevolence, and ability. Integrity is the belief that the trusted party adheres
Y. Hwang Online Trust H1-1
Uncertainty Avoidance
Benevolence H1-2
Family H2 H2-1
Media
H1-3
H2-2 H2
Social Norms
Integrity
H2-3
Friends
H2-4
Ability
PIIT H3
H4-1
Ease of Use
H4-2 H4-3
Fig. 1 Proposed research model
to accepted rules of conduct, such as honesty and keeping promises (Mayer and Davis 1999). Benevolence is the belief that the trusted party, aside from wanting to make a legitimate profit, wants to do good to the customer. Ability is the belief about the skills and competence of the trusted party. Gefen (2002b) developed and validated these three dimensions of online trust, and Gefen and Straub (2004) recently found that social presence has positive effects on integrity (β=0.21, p
