Discussion of Holistic, Continuous Assurance Integration: e-Business Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Internet privacy is named as one of the major barriers to the expansion and further development of e-commerce. This study is to identify the antecedents to Internet privacy concerns, to investigate the relationship of the antecedents and the perceived trust and to validate Internet privacy's effect on the perceived trust. A conceptual model which identifies Internet literacy and perceived vulnerability as antecedents to Internet privacy concern is proposed and tested based on the sample of 276 Internet users. Empirical findings show that Internet literacy affect Internet privacy concern negatively while perceived vulnerability affect positively. Also perceived vulnerability's effect on and privacy concern's effect on perceived trust has both directional negative support. Implications and further research agenda are provided with the limitation of the study.