How does a web-service’s apparent trustworthiness affect people’s intention to adopt? a.k.a. “Seal of Approval and Multidimensionality of Perceived Trustworthiness in Online Service Adoption” Kevin K.Y. Kuan Judith S. Olson University of Michigan Business School

Motivation Trust is the critical aspect in understanding consumer behavior online. (Better Business Bureau) Lack of trust is by far the major reason that people do not adopt online shopping (Hoffman et al., 1999) Only 29% of internet users in the US trust web sites that sell products and services. (Hansen and Borland, 2002)

Research Questions What is trustworthiness made up of? How does apparent trustworthiness affect people’s willingness to adopt online services? In what way does a seal of approval (e.g. TRUSTe) affect apparent trustworthiness?

Literature Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1986) Perceived Usefulness The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her performance. Perceived Ease of Use The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort. Both have been shown to affect people’s intention to adopt a technology.

Literature People trust (Mayer et al., 1995) Willingness to accept vulnerability. Web services want to be viewed as trustworthy Perceived Ability The group of skills that enable a service to be perceived as competent within some specific domain. Perceived Integrity Adherence to a set of principles thought to make the service dependable and reliable, to fulfill its promises (e.g of privacy) Perceived Benevolence The extent to which a service is believed to feel care and concern for the user, and the willingness to do good to the user beyond an egocentric profit.

Hypotheses Trustworthiness is a higher-level concept with three dimensions: Perceived Ability Perceived Integrity Perceived Benevolence Seal of approval improves perceived ability, perceived integrity and perceived benevolence. Perceived trustworthiness has a direct effect on intention to adopt and is affected by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.

The Experiment The Online Service Aggregates and summarizes personal information from other web sites. Requires users to provide sensitive account information. Procedure 112 subjects minutes online site demonstration. Post-experiment questionnaire adapted from previous studies. Conditions With TRUSTe seal Without TRUSTe seal

Research Model

Results

Without TRUSTe (N 1 =56) With TRUSTe (N 2 =56) t-test Perceived Ability Perceived Integrity ** Perceived Benevolence ** p<0.01

Summary TRUSTe seal of approval improves perceived integrity but not ability and benevolence. TRUSTe is primarily a privacy seal. Perceived trustworthiness has a direct effect on intention to adopt Perceived trustworthiness is affected by perceived usefulness but not perceived ease of use.

Implications Different seals of approval could have different effects on different dimensions of perceived trustworthiness. Different businesses may need different or multiple seals. Other methods to establish trustworthiness. A useful online service makes the service perceived as more trustworthy. Online service has to be useful, usable AND trustworthy in order to be adopted.

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