National culture and consumer trust in e-commerce

Abstract

This study uses Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory to explain variance in consumer trust in e-commerce. We model trust as a combination of a consumer’s disposition to trust and context specific trustworthiness of an online store. The study hypothesizes direct effects of national cultural dimensions on disposition to trust, and of disposition to trust on dimensions of trustworthiness. We also examine whether and how disposition to trust mediates the effects between national culture and trustworthiness of an online store. We test the hypotheses with a sample of 616 online bookstore customers from China and Finland, countries that represent opposite cultural poles in many respects. We find that national culture solely explain 23% of the variance in the consumer’s general disposition to trust, and that disposition to trust is a highly significant predictor of the perceived trustworthiness of an online store. We further find that the mediating role of disposition to trust between national culture and trustworthiness depends greatly on the individual cultural dimension studied.