متاآنالیز روابط اعتماد آنلاین در تجارت الکترونیک A Meta-analysis of Online Trust Relationships in E-commerce

Introduction Consumer online trust is an important construct that has been frequently studied in the e-commerce literature. Online trust is typically conceptualized as a mediator in research models between selected antecedents and consequences. Antecedents of online trust are studied to determine the extent to which they influence online trust. Consequences of online trust are studied to determine the extent to which online trust influences consumers’ intention to use, use, or continue to use an e-commerce website (Pavlou 2003). However, empirical research involving online trust has produced inconsistent results. For example, the perceived size of an e-vendor had a significant positive effect on online trust in one study (i.e., Jarvenpaa, Tractinsky, and Vitale 2000), but an insignificant effect in other studies (e.g., Teo and Liu 2007). Inconsistent results create a quandary when attempting to generalize the existence, nature, and magnitude of online trust-related relationships. One explanation proffered for the lack of consistent findings is that online trust and its antecedents and consequences do not have simple or direct relationships; rather, the relationships are moderated by other variables. The present research addresses possible moderated relationships involving online trust by means of a meta-analysis of empirical research findings from 150 business-to-consumer e-commerce studies involving online trust over the past 16 years. To date, while there have been several qualitative reviews of online trust relationships (e.g., Beatty et al. 2011; Beldad, de Jong, and Steehouder 2010; Chen and Dhillon 2003; Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha 2003; Salo and Karjaluoto 2007; Wang and Emurian 2005), no attempt has been made to quantitatively summarize the body of research involving online trust and its antecedents and consequences.