Issues and Attitudes Related to Online Trust in China: Empirical Findings from a Large Scale National Consumer Survey

摘要

Lack of trust is one of the barriers to prevent e-commerce from sound development, however the characteristics of online trust is different from that of traditional trust, in this sense more knowledge on the nature of online trust is needed. In China, online trust is getting more attention from the government. Government bodies concerned have issued some guidance to direct the establishment of online trust, but all involved are expecting more mechanism to ensure effective and sound order of e-commerce. This paper mainly studies the characteristics of online trust from three different aspects. These three aspects are major difficulties associated with online-trust encountered by Chinese users; major behavior and reaction of Chinese users to online trust issues; the attitude of Chinese users to the problems of online trust. The paper first analyzed existing findings and researches related to online trust which was done nationally and internationally. Based on the analysis, the structure and key questions of survey questionnaires have been designed, and data collection of the questionnaires is done through Chinese leading websites. Final empirical findings show that online trust issue in China doesn't demonstrate much difference from other countries. Risky awareness of Chinese users is higher, and their prevention ability for the risks is much less effective. Their understanding towards personal information safety is not very much in line with their action, while they have higher expectation for online trust code/criteria issued by the third party, and further online trust assessment done by the third party in accordance with online trust code/criteria.