Antecedents to e-ticketing: consumers’ attitude towards environmental variables and perceived risks in buying air tickets online

Abstract: The number of consumers who book travel tickets online is growing. But a
switch from offline environment to online environment creates certain
doubts in the minds of consumers. Such doubts have been termed as perceived
risks in literature. This study is carried out to understand the behavior
of consumer under such circumstances. The differentiations between two
competing environments give rise to risk perceptions. For instance, over
the Internet information about a variety of websites is at consumers’
finger tips and this is not the case in offline environment. But this huge
amount of information leads to perception of loss of time in finding the
appropriate travel website. As a consequence, such risk perceptions
restrict consumers in booking tickets over the Internet. A multiple-case-
study research was undertaken. The findings indicate that the online
environment is more convenient, easy to search, compare and book tickets.
The consumers in this study book tickets over the internet and do not
perceive (significant level of) any risk. They also believed that it was
very difficult to book form a risky website. The consumers book tickets
from websites which are perceived as risk free. Any risk perception
negatively effect consumers’ willingness to book tickets over the Internet.