Perceived security and World Wide Web purchase intention

While Web-based consumer activity is poised on the brink of dramatic growth, concerns about security have the potential to limit this growth by arousing shopper's concerns about the Web-based channel. One key aspect to consumer participation in Web commerce may be the extent to which they perceive risk to their sensitive information. This study describes the creation of a scale to measure perceived Web security. We apply the scale in a causal model to investigate the relative impact of beliefs about Web shopping on intent to purchase products using the World Wide Web. Data from two samples is used to develop the scale and to perform the causal analysis. Our findings indicate the favorable psychometric properties of the scale, and the causal analysis from our sample indicates that security is a greater influence on intent to purchase using the Web than is the ease and utility of purchasing products. TAM proposes that perceived usefulness and ease of use will influence an individual's intentions to utilize an information technology. Perceived usefulness is defined by Davis (1989) as `̀ the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his job performance'' (p. 985). He defined ease of use as `̀ the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort'' (p. 985). Researchers working within the general framework of TAM have predicted user intentions with regard to a variety of technologies. These include electronic mail, text editors, word processing and graphics software (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989), spreadsheets (Hendrickson et al., 1993), voicemail and word processors (Adams et al., 1992; Chin and Todd, 1995), Database Management Systems (Szajna, 1994), and Group Support Systems (Chin and Gopal, 1995). Relevant to TAM is the users' attitudes toward a particular adoption. Attitude is based on the salient beliefs that a person has about the consequences of a given behavior and his or her evaluation of those consequences. Moore (1987), Moore and Benbasat, 1991) suggests that attitude in the context of IT usage deals with innovations. Consequently, he posits that attitude can be synthesized from perceived characteristics of innovating (Rogers, 1995). There are a variety of salient beliefs about Web shopping that are relevant (Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997). Drawing from previously established characteristics of innovating, we believe two likely salient beliefs about adopting an innovation such as purchasing products on the World Wide Web are related to the experience of shopping (Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997) on the World Wide Web, specifically its perceived ease and utility. Consequently we adopt Davis' (1989) perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Applied to Web shopping these become perceived ease of navigation, or the degree to which navigating the World Wide Web is perceived to be free of effort (Davis, 1989), and perceived usefulness or the extent to which using the Web would enhance one's shopping for products (Davis, 1989; Moore and Benbasat, 1991). While the Davis constructs were not originally developed for this context they are relevant, because they tap into beliefs about the ease and utility of adopting an innovation, in this case Web shopping. Our causal diagram is presented in Figure 1. The first and second hypothesized links are drawn from previous theory and research in the innovation adoption research tradition. Specifically, these linkages indicate that higher perceived ease and utility with respect to Web shopping will favorably influence intent to purchase products on the World Wide Web. This is consistent with previous findings regarding the influence of ease and utility of a particular innovation on its subsequent adoption (e.g. Adams et al., 1992; Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989; Chin and Gopal, 1995). As a consequence, we propose Hypotheses 1 and 2: H1: Perceived ease of navigation will favorably influence intent to purchase on the World Wide Web. H2: Perceived usefulness will favorably influence intent to purchase on the World Wide Web. In addition to other, more fully investigated perceived characteristics of innovating, our third causal linkage investigates the influence of perceived Web security on Web purchase intent. We define perceived Web security as the extent to which one believes that the World Wide Web is secure for transmitting sensitive information. Perceived Web security is relevant to introduce to the discussion because the adoption of purchasing products on the World Wide Web may involve a greater degree of risk than the adoption of other IT innovations. When one purchases products online, there may be a perception of risk involved in transmitting sensitive information such as credit card numbers across the World Wide Web. Because of this, we believe that purchasing products over the World Wide Web has aspects consistent with that of risk behavior. Risk is associated with outcome uncertainties such as lack of knowledge about the distribution of potential outcomes (March, 1978), and the uncontrollability of outcome attainment (Vlek and Stallen, 1980). To the extent that outcomes cannot be controlled and occur purely by chance, risk is higher than in situations where the adopter can influence outcomes (Sitkin and Pablo, 1992). In the case of purchasing products on the World Wide Web, it is possible that potential adopters may perceive that their credit card information may be at risk, and that they have no control over this. These perceptions of risk are often reinforced by stories in the popular press about credit card and identity theft. Further evidence for the possible perception of risk in Web shopping is related to the propensity of individuals to assign excessive weight to extreme outcomes even if the possibility of such outcomes is remote (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). In other words, even though potential Web shopping adopters might not regard the risk as being all that high, the extreme risk involved with having one's credit card stolen by a nefarious agent may cause potential adopters to perceive a greater risk than is actually present. Given the likely influence of [ 166 ] W. David Salisbury, Rodney A. Pearson, Allison W. Pearson and David W. Miller Perceived security and World Wide Web purchase intention Industrial Management & Data Systems 101/4 [2001] 165±176 perceived Web security on intent to purchase, we propose Hypothesis 3. H3: Perceived Web security will favorably influence intent to purchase on the World Wide Web. Previous research (e.g. Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997) indicates a need to address more formally the relationship between perceived characteristics of Web shopping and user intentions. Consequently, it is important to address potential Web shopping adopters' perceptions about both the perceived utility and the perceived risk (or inversely, the security) of the World Wide Web channel for purchasing products. However, we have identified no previously existing instruments to conveniently capture this construct. As a result, we intend to develop a scale to measure perceived Web security. We will first develop this scale and assess its psychometric properties. Next, we will test this scale in a theoretically derived causal model to assess the relative influence of perceived Web security, perceived ease of Web page navigation, and perceived usefulness on intent to purchase products using the World Wide Web. We believe that perceived Web security in combination with an adaptation of Davis' ease and usefulness constructs (Davis, 1989) will provide greater understanding of what consumers take into account when deciding whether to shop online.