Investigating the Role of Trust and Gender in Online Tourism Shopping in South Korea

Abstract

This study identifies factors that affect trust in online tourism shopping, including transaction security, navigation functionality, and cost-effectiveness. It examines the effects of these factors on trust and the relationship between this trust and repurchasing intentions. Furthermore, this study investigates the moderating effect of gender in the context of the aforementioned constructs in a proposed research model. To this end, an online survey of Internet users who had shopped online for a tourism-related product or service within the past year was conducted. The results of this study indicate that transaction security, navigation functionality, and cost-effectiveness affect trust, which in turn influences repurchasing intentions. Gender was observed to have a significant moderating effect in that the thought processes of males strongly affected the influence of cost-effectiveness on trust and the impact of trust on repurchase intention in comparison with females. The thought processes of female online shoppers had a stronger impact on navigation functionality in comparison with those of the males. The results of this study may aid in the development of trust prediction methodologies and repurchasing intention of the tested constructs by directing the design of websites that effectively appeal to different genders.