Untangling the Antecedents and Covariates of E-Commerce Trust: Institutional Trust vs. Knowledge-Based Trust

Through experimentation, we establish a causal relationship between structural assurance and both vendor trustworthiness (knowledge-based trust) and technology trustworthiness (institution-based trust). We expand the definitions of structural assurance and institution-based trust to include the element of security measures employed by the marketplace technology. Situational normality demonstrates a causal relationship with technology trustworthiness, and with vendor trustworthiness, the latter only when the covariates of familiarity with the Internet and a person’s initial trust are controlled.