A Meta-analysis of Online Trust Relationships in E-commerce

A meta-analysis examined the role of online trust in business-to-consumer e-commerce. The analysis of 16 pairwise relationships derived from 150 empirical studies involving online trust revealed that online trust exhibits significant relationships with selected antecedents (e.g., perceived privacy, perceived service quality) and consequences (e.g., loyalty, repeat purchase intention). Even so, additional analyses demonstrated that methodological characteristics such as study design, website type, and type of items used to measure the trust construct moderated certain online trust relationships. These additional analyses indicated that the relationships between online trust and its respective antecedents and consequences are simultaneously more idiosyncratic, complex, and subtle than previously envisioned. Implications of the analyses for theory, practice, and future research are discussed.