Focusing on consumer-to-consumer trust in electronic commerce with age and gender factors

Abstract

The importance of trust in building and maintaining consumer relationship in e-commerce environment is recognized in the Information Systems literature since prior researches show that general lack of trust in e-commerce is a significant factor in inhibiting online purchases. A key challenge for researchers is to identify antecedent variables that engender consumer trust in ecommerce including business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C). Although C2C has been found to be more popular than the B2C e-commerce, main stream tends to focus on B2C ecommerce without making a distinction between B2C and C2C. This study expected that two influences: internal facts including natural propensity to trust and perception of web site quality, and external facts including other's trust of buyers/sellers and third party recognition would affect an individual's trust in C2C e-commerce. This research extended this model of an individual's trust in C2C e-commerce to include age and gender as control variables.