Interpersonal trust and within-nation regional e-commerce adoption

Abstract

The value of trust plays a critical role in social and economic exchanges (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Butler, 1991; Giffin, 1967; Kumar, Scheer & Steenkamp, 1995; Morgan, 1994). Trust also has a significant impact on e-commerce activity (Bhattacherjee, 2002; Gefen, 2000; Green & Pearson 2011; Kassim, & Abdullah, 2008; McKnight & Chervany 2001; Tan & Theon, 2003). Furthermore, trust levels and trust development processes have been shown to vary cross-nationally (Doney, Cannon, & Mullen, 1998; Gefen & Heart, 2006), and affect differences in e-commerce between nations (Greenberg, Wong-On-Wing, & Lui, 2008; Kim, 2008; Mahmood, Bagchi & Ford, 2004; Schumann, Von Wangenheim, Stringfellow, et al., 2010). However, cross-cultural studies of the relationship between trust and e-commerce activity have only been conducted at the national level with no studies to date investigating the relationship of trust to e-commerce activity among within-nation regions. This gap in the literature is troublesome given that a number of scholars have demonstrated that within-nation regional differences are a key area in need of further research (Fukuyama, 1995; Lenartowicz & Roth, 2001; Locke, 1995; Peterson & Smith 2008; Stelzl & Seligman, 2009). Therefore, the role that trust plays in e-commerce activity among withinnation regions should be further investigated. This paper explores within-nation regional differences in e-commerce activity and investigates whether trust is significantly related to regional e-commerce activity.