Dimensions of Perceived Ecommerce Risks: An Empirical Study Using the Psychometric Paradigm

The ecommerce environment is relatively new, and several risks associated with ecommerce are novel to consumers. While there is some published work which tries to relate how risk perceptions affect purchase behavior, virtually no research addresses risk per se – that is, how do consumers judge perceived risk in online environments. In this research, we use the well-known psychometric paradigm to study perceived risk of consumers in ecommerce. We develop a taxonomy of ecommerce risks relevant to business to consumer domain, an instrument for data collection and identify multivariate statistical techniques for data analysis. The research design allows us to uncover the basis of consumer’s perceived risk judgments. We report results from a pilot study and provide details on work-in-progress.