Building trust online: Interactions among trust building mechanisms

Lack of trust has been shown to be a major obstacle to the adoption of online shopping. However, there has been little investigation of the effectiveness of various trust building mechanisms and their interactions. In our study, three trust building mechanisms (third-party certification, reputation, and return policy), were examined. A scenario survey method was used for data collection. 463 usable questionnaires were collected from respondents with diverse backgrounds. Regression results showed that all three trust building mechanisms had significant positive effect on trust of the online vendor. However, their effects were not simple; they interacted to produce a different overall effect on the level of trust. These results have both theoretical and practical implications.