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The relationships among consumers’ ethical ideology, risk aversion and ethically-based distrust of online retailers and the moderating role of consumers’ need for personal interaction

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Abstract

Consumer distrust is only recently beginning to be perceived as an important e-commerce issue and, unlike online trust, the nature and role of distrust is much less established. This study examines the influence of two important consumer characteristics (ethical ideology and risk aversion) on consumer’s ethically-based distrust of online retailers. Also, the moderating role of consumer’s need for personal contact with sales staff is tested. Results from 409 online consumers confirm that both relativist-based ethical ideology and risk aversion are strongly and positively related to consumers’ distrust. Interestingly, our findings show that positive effects of relativism and risk aversion on consumer’s distrust are moderated by consumers’ need for personal interaction, which is more pronounced for those consumers with a high need for personal interaction with retail salespeople.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was supported by the grant ECO2012-35766 from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness and by the Fundación Séneca-Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia (Spain), under the II PCTRM 2007–2010. Authors also thank the support provided by Fundación Cajamurcia.

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  1. Department of Marketing, University Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Bogotá, Colombia

    Isabel P. Riquelme

  2. Department of Marketing, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, University of Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain

    Sergio Román

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Riquelme, I.P., Román, S. The relationships among consumers’ ethical ideology, risk aversion and ethically-based distrust of online retailers and the moderating role of consumers’ need for personal interaction. Ethics Inf Technol 16, 135–155 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-014-9341-x

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