Understanding Social Commerce Acceptance: The Role of Trust, Perceived Risk, and Benefit

Due to the increased popularity of social networking sites, a new platform called social commerce has emerged. Social commerce facilitates online interactions and user contributions to assist them in conducting commercial transactions. In this study, we rely on risk-return strategy in consumers’ decision making to study drivers and deterrents of social commerce use. We study both purchasing and participating behavior; according, we categorized risk and benefit related to each behavior. We also study trust from two insights: trust toward members and trust toward website. Using survey data from 196 users of etsy.com, we found that trust and benefit are important motivators of social commerce use, and perceived risk is a deterrent factor. Trust toward members reduces perceived risks related to both participating and purchasing behaviors. However, trust toward website does not have a significant effect on reducing risk perceptions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.