Hamid Reza Peikaria - master of science in business administration linkoping university sweden
Syed Shah Alam - Faculty of Economics and Business, National University of Malaysia, ۴۳۶۰۰ Bangi UKM

This study investigates the factors authentication, encryption and third party assurances including third party security and privacy seals as the factors influencing customers’ trust in the business-to-customer (B2C) environment. The data was collected from 247 respondents and the Baron and Kenny’s (1986) procedure of multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesis. The results showed that customers’ perception of encryption and authentication mechanisms implemented by a Website have a positive significant influence on their technical security protection while technical security protection was found to partially influence the customers’ trust in the B2C e-commerce environment. The analysis did not find any relation between the third party assurance and customers’ trust, indicating that despite the high expenses companies involve to obtain such assurances from reputed third parties, such mechanisms and assurances do not have enhance the customers’ trust; which raises questions on the value of such mechanisms.

Trust, Security, Authentication, Encryption, Third Party Assurance