How Culture Moderates the Effect of Trust on Online Shopping Frequency

Abstract: People all over the world are embracing online shopping and there is a general agreement that trust plays a key role in influencing online shopping frequency. This project seeks to address the increasing need for new studies in this area. This is an empirical project that investigates the moderating effects of culture on the impact of trust on online shopping frequency. The central focus of this project was to examine whether culture affects the decision of the international consumer to trust in online shopping contexts. In an attempt to contribute to both cross-cultural and e-commerce research, the project examined shoppers across 34 countries using two of Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions: Uncertainty avoidance and Individualism. The project took a post-positivist approach to research and adopted a mixed method research design. Thus, data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative research designs, which provided a complimentary triangulation of the results. Both secondary and primary data sources were used, as the project developed a model and tested several hypotheses based on the literature on e-commerce, social psychology, and culture. Seven hypotheses were tested and research results revealed that trust has a positive impact on online shopping frequency in a multicultural context. Interestingly, no moderation effects were found for culture. The importance of this project lies in the fact that it seeks to further research at the intersection of culture, trust, and online shopping. Moreover, unlike most e-commerce projects that gather data from students within a single country, this project examines data from respondents of various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, across several countries.