All Is Right with the World: Schema Congruity and Trust Beliefs in B2C Electronic Commerce

Sharath Sasidharan
Additional contact information
Sharath Sasidharan: School of Business, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS, USA

International Journal of Technology Diffusion (IJTD), 2015, vol. 6, issue 4, 78-94

Abstract: Business-to-Consumer e-commerce vendors view consumer trust as an important determinant of purchasing intent. Based on the cognitive dissonance and schema-congruity theories, this paper examines the impact of schema-congruity between the website design elements of color and typography with the product context in impacting trust. Websites perceived as compatible with subconsciously internalized belief systems and hence deemed schema-congruent by consumers are expected to engender higher levels of trust. A controlled experimental study involving 128 participants spanning eight different schema-congruency conditions was conducted. Results indicated that completely schema-congruent websites engendered higher levels of trust. Partially schema-congruent and schema-incongruent websites registered significantly lower levels of trust due to cognitive dissonance arising out of their incompatibility with consumer belief systems. The judicious selection of color and typography perceived as schema-congruent with the product context can serve to enhance consumer trust in e-commerce websites.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve. ... 4018/IJTD.2015100105 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:igg:jtd000:v:6:y:2015:i:4:p:78-94

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Technology Diffusion (IJTD) is currently edited by Ali Hussein Saleh Zolait

More articles in International Journal of Technology Diffusion (IJTD) from IGI Global
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journal Editor ().