دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 5493
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

تاثیر توانمندسازی مصرف کننده بر اعتماد آنلاین : بررسی در سراسر زنان و مردان

عنوان انگلیسی
Impact of consumer empowerment on online trust: An examination across genders
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
5493 2012 8 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : Decision Support Systems, Volume 54, Issue 1, December 2012, Pages 198–205

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
تفاوت های جنسیتی - توانمند سازی فروش - نگرانی های حریم خصوصی - اعتماد - تجارت الکترونیکی
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  تاثیر توانمندسازی مصرف کننده بر اعتماد آنلاین : بررسی در سراسر زنان و مردان

چکیده انگلیسی

Consumer empowerment is a psychological construct related to the individual's perception of the extent to which he/she can control the distribution and use of his/her personally identifying information. It has been argued to have an impact on consumers' privacy concerns and trust in e-commerce. However, very little is known about the difference in male and female perceptions of this control. This investigation is focused on examining how perceptions between the genders differ concerning consumer empowerment and privacy concerns, and how the consumer empowerment results in perceptions of trust and decrease in privacy concerns. We test our proposed hypotheses using data collected from 322 experienced online consumers. Our results show that empowerment has a stronger positive effect on trust for males than for females, and that privacy concerns have stronger negative impact on trust for females than for males.

مقدمه انگلیسی

While e-commerce has grown substantially over the last decade, it still is marred with the lack of trust and growing privacy concerns. Various researchers have suggested empowering the consumers in order to alleviate their privacy concerns and to build their trust in e-commerce. For example, Van Dyke et al. [88] showed that consumers with higher levels of perceived privacy empowerment exhibited lower level of privacy concerns. Olivero and Lunt [62] suggested that when faced with an increase in awareness of privacy threats, consumers tend to reduce trust and demand more control. This suggests that firms which empower consumers by delegating control may be able to gain a competitive advantage. The psychology literature suggests that empowerment is viewed differently by males and females [41] and [75]. The question then arises: Do males and females differ in their evaluations of interplays among online trust, privacy concerns, and consumer privacy empowerment? Answering this question will help practitioners and academics to understand how to empower consumers to establish their trust. To this end, we develop a model based on social constructionist theory of gender characterization, and hypothesize that the effects of privacy concerns and privacy empowerment on trust differs across genders. Using a large sample, we ask the following research questions: RQ1: Is the effect of consumer privacy empowerment on online privacy concerns different across genders? RQ2: Is the effect of consumer privacy empowerment on online trust different across genders? RQ3: Is the effect of consumers’ privacy concerns on online trust different across genders? This research topic is important for the following three reasons. First, whilst interest in gender has begun to pervade other disciplines, the IS domain has remained fairly impermeable against gender analysis, aside from a few notable exceptions [1]. For example, the existing and limited research highlights the differences among the two genders in terms of communication pattern, e-commerce intention and behavior, and trust in online environments [5], [29] and [90]. Therefore, this study is an attempt to bring the importance of gender differences in e-commerce setting to forefront. Second, understanding how gender differences map with consumer privacy empowerment will extend our understanding of consumer privacy empowerment construct. Third, and more importantly, gender can be easily incorporated into trust building, privacy concerns’ reduction and consumer empowerment strategies. As e-commerce is targeted towards both genders, and lack of trust and increased privacy concerns have been touted among the most important barriers, attempting to understand such differences will help practitioners and academicians in devising gender specific strategies to effectively establish trust between e-commerce vendors and consumers from both genders. Against this background, in the present article, we investigate the impact of gender on the interplay between consumers’ privacy concerns, their perceptions of control and trust in online environments. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. We begin with a brief literature on the importance of trust, followed by observed gender differences and theories of gender differences, especially in context of e-commerce environments. In the next section, we then build our theoretical model, followed by the measurement and testing of the model. After discussing the results, we conclude with the implications of our findings.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

6.1. Privacy concerns The importance of trust to e-commerce success has been demonstrated in literature many times [28] and [37]. Other studies have shown that privacy concerns can be a major cause of the lack of trust between a consumer and a firm [15]. Privacy issues have been rated as one of the most important barriers to the continued growth of e-commerce. The findings are also consistent with Liu et al. [53] who found that privacy concerns decrease trust. The lack of the consumer's trust in e-commerce is engendered primarily by the industry's documented failure to respond satisfactorily to mounting consumers' concerns over the information privacy in electronic, networked world [37]. The results of our study indicate that privacy concerns have a significant (p < 0.05) negative effect on trust for both males and females (βmale = − 0.29 and βfemale = − 0.54). The magnitude of the beta coefficients shows that the impact is stronger for females. The difference in χ2 shows that the difference is the magnitudes is also significant. Past studies [60] and [67] have shown that consumers might decide not to transact online solely based on their concerns about collection and misuses of their personal information. More importantly, because trust is a deeply held consumer attitude that also effects commitment, the negative influence of privacy concerns through trust may be more devastating for the long run due to its adverse impact on the overall relationship with the vendor [20]. Considering the long lasting negative impact of privacy concerns, employment of strategies that lessen these concerns is critical. As the impact of privacy concerns on trust is stronger for females, our findings further suggest that the strategies should be devised by keeping female consumers in mind. Sheehan [78] suggested that for females, relationships with entities are very important for online commerce relationships. Unless females have long and existing relationship with the e-vendors, they are usually very cautious about their private information leading them to be more suspicious and less trusting of the e-vendor than their counterparts. We leave investigation of such gender based strategies as an option for future research. 6.2. Consumer privacy empowerment As we mentioned earlier, Westin [94] contends that lack of control is at the heart of concerns over privacy. If that is true then the perception of being in control of your personally identifiable information would seem the logical antidote to the privacy concerns that impair trust. The results of this study support that contention for both males and females (βmale = − 0.49 and βfemale = − 0.46, p-value < 0.05). However, our hypothesis that this effect varies across the two genders was not supported. The effect of empowerment on trust was found to be significant for both males and females (βmale = 0.52 and βfemale = 0.20). As hypothesized in H3, the effect was found to be significantly stronger for males than for females (χ2 = 5, p-value < 0.05). Lee et al. [52] studied signaling in e-commerce. Although not investigating privacy empowerment directly, their results did indicate that the publication of a privacy policy on a web site did act as a signal to the consumer that resulted in an increase in the probability of purchase. A privacy policy promising to keep customer's personal information private may be regarded as a signal of integrity because it conforms to customer's views of acceptable behavior regarding their personal information [52]. Our findings suggest that policies that provide consumers with privacy empowerment may operate in the same way. Empowerment also has an indirect effect on trust through privacy concerns. Empowerment has a negative effect on privacy concern. In other words, an increase in the perception of privacy empowerment (e.g. control) leads to a decrease in the level of privacy concern. Thus empowerment positively affects trust, through an indirect effect, by lowering privacy concern. This result is consistent with the findings of Olivero and Lunt [62] who found that increased levels of concern over privacy resulted in a decrease in trust and an increase in the demand for control. Our findings suggest that those firms which meet the demand for control through empowering the consumer are rewarded with lower levels of privacy concern and increased trust. 6.3. Theoretical implications Strong support exists for the negative relationship between consumers' privacy concerns and trust in e-vendor implying that privacy has a strong negative influence on an individual's trust in an e-vendor. In turn, this influences the individual's behavioral intentions to do business with and to revisit the vendor. Gefen and Straub [32] suggested that control is one of the central aspects of human behavior. We examined the impact of such control across the two genders by studying the impact of perceived consumer privacy empowerment. Our conclusions are in agreement with findings of organizational empowerment studies. The organizational studies show that employee empowerment strengthens employee's relationships with the firm. Our findings suggest that an empowered consumer perceives lesser risk in dealing with an e-vendor, and, hence, improves the relationship with the vendor. This corroborates Gefen and Straub's suggestion. In addition, this study extends the literature on consumer privacy empowerment and its interplay with trust and privacy concerns in online settings. The findings of this study also show that there are significant differences in privacy concerns among males and females. These findings support Johnson-George and Swap [44] results which showed that males and females utilize different sets of attributes in assessing risk situations and trust of the other party. These results imply that the gender effects should be considered in privacy and trust studies. 6.4. Implications for practitioners These results have an important implication for practitioners. Earlier studies have shown that companies can gain competitive advantage by behaving ethically, i.e. by letting users know what information they will collect, how they will collect, and for what purposes they will use that information [15] and [16]. Trustworthiness has also been shown to be a source of competitive advantage [6]. Our findings suggest that by behaving ethically and empowering consumers to control their private information, a firm may be able to create a competitive advantage by increasing customer trust. We suggest that two actions are required in order for a firm to take advantage of the implications of this research. First, a firm can increase actual consumer privacy empowerment by adopting policies which delegate control over decisions related to private information to the consumer. Second, the firm should communicate these empowering policies in a way that builds a sense of empowerment in the mind of the consumer, and, thereby, increases consumers’ perceived privacy empowerment. For example, the access portion of the privacy statement should tout the consumer's right to see and correct personal information in addition to providing explicit guidelines on how to access and correct erroneous information. It is our opinion that the traditional language used in privacy statements may not be the best way to communicate these policies and their implications. An argument can be made that the traditional language used in privacy policies does not engender trust, so much as require it. For those firms whose privacy statements do not provide the consumer with choice and access, the other portions of the privacy statement may actually increase privacy concern. The notice portion may list several possible ways that private information could be abused (i.e. unrelated marketing, sold to third parties etc). This may serve only to sensitize the consumer to potential risks they had not previously considered. According to the selectivity model [59], males often do not engage in comprehensive processing of all available information but instead are selective. In case of our findings, it implies that males will primarily consider and rely on subsets of highly available choice and access cues. Firms should, therefore, provide such clear cues to male customers in order to empower them through notice options. Furthermore, a firm's promise not to engage in a specific behavior seems to us to require trust on the part of the consumer rather than to engender it. New wording or methods should be adopted to create a sense of control on the part of the consumer over their private information. By delegating control to the consumer, the firm will signal its trustworthiness and at the same time reduce the amount of trust that the consumer is required to place in the ethical intentions of the firm. Such policies should limit the feeling of vulnerability on the part of the consumer and make it easier to trust the firm. Our findings suggest that, as empowerment has stronger impact on males, such policies should emphasize on building trust through empowerment with male customers, and through interactional relationships with female customers [78]. To summarize, as this study shows that the interplays between trust, privacy concerns, and empowerment vary across the genders, we recommend gender-based tailoring of sites. As a matter of fact, a number of web sites that have altered content to attract gender specific customers have enjoyed increases in visits. 6.5. Limitations and future work It is important to note that the sample for this study included only people who had made at least one internet purchase. In addition, all of the participants had visited the website that they used for the basis of their response. McKnight et al. [58] noted that the factors that affect trust shift depending on the stage of the relationship between the consumer and e-vendor. For example before visiting a site, disposition to trust and reputation advertising are more important trust factors. After visiting the web page site quality becomes more important. Therefore the relationships between factors affecting trust might be different for consumers who had never purchased from the internet or those who have not yet visited the site in question. Kim [47] showed that culture plays an important role in consumers' privacy concerns. Using Hofstede's [38] cultural dimension, Kim suggested that privacy is valued more in a Type I (culture with individualistic–weak uncertainty avoidance–low long-term orientation–low context) than in a Type II culture (collectivist–strong uncertainty avoidance–high long-term orientation–high context). Kim's findings hint that culture may have an impact on empowerment also. Therefore, it would be interesting to study the impact of culture on consumer privacy empowerment. In summary, the findings of our study have important implications for practitioners many of whom are searching for ways to minimize consumer's privacy concern and increase consumer trust in their web sites. The results of this study suggest that a useful strategy for an e-vendor interested in increasing consumer trust is to build a sense of privacy empowerment in the mind of the consumer.