How Do Trust and Risk Affect Customers' Online Purchase Intention? A Study of Trust and Risk in the Online Shopping Context

Internet technology and e-commerce have both grown rapidly over the past few decades. Customer trust and perceived risk have both been widely discussed in previous studies. According to well-established studies, trust consists of three dimensions: ability, benevolence, and integrity. Risk consists of behavioural uncertainty and environmental uncertainty. The question then is how do trust and risk influence customers’ online purchase intention? Price is also a crucial variable in the current thesis’ conceptual model, even although the relationship between price and risk is controversial. This thesis is an investigation of trust and perceived risk in online context with price incorporated as a key factor. I used survey method to investigate how trust and risk will influence purchase intentions in an online context, as they are latent constructs. My study also employed a scenario-based experimental design method. The data was analysed with structural equation modeling. The results showed that ability had negative and significant effect on risk. Benevolence had positive and significant effect on purchase intention when the product price is high. Behavioral uncertainty had significantly positive effect on benevolence and purchase intention for high-price products.