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Ecommerce is defined as value-based exchanges between two or more parties, such as buying and selling products, services over the Internet (Chen & Dhillon, 2003; Jarvenpaa et al., 2000; Lawrence et al., 1998; Riggins & Rhee, 1998; Zwass, 1996). E-Commerce may include multilateral transactions, relationships, and exchange of data and information such as business-to-business, business-to-customer and customer-to-customer exchanges using Internet based technologies to reduce cost, and increase speed of exchange of goods and services, data and communication (Chingning & Ping, 2012; Fingar, 2000; Iancu & Colomeischi, 2018).
Trust is a crucial factor in such internet based online exchanges due to their impersonal nature. Trust reduces social complexity and enables different parties with diverse information bases, beliefs and experiences to collaborate in face to face as well as online economic or social transactional exchanges (Gefen, 2000; D. Gefen et al., 2003; Lewis & Weigert, 1985; Luhmann, 1979; McKnight et al., 2002). In the context of ecommerce transactions, past research has proposed and tested various forms of interpersonal trust, in initial formation as well as in continuing relationships. (Doney & Cannon, 1997; Lewicki & Bunker, 1995; McKnight et al., 1998; Meyerson et al., 1995; Pavlou & Gefen, 2004; Shapiro et al., 1992). Because of the lack of direct personal interaction between the parties in online transactions and the nature of these transactions, ecommerce is fraught with unique risks (Lee, 1998). Therefore, extending beyond interpersonal relationships, trust has been extrapolated into the ecommerce technology contexts as well such as trust in online recommendation agents that act on behalf of an ecommerce seller, or, software artifacts that act on behalf of online customers or organizations, and trust in inanimate software artifacts such as spreadsheet software, or antiviral software (Mcknight et al., 2011; Paravastu et al., 2014; Ratnasingam & Pavlou, 2003; Vance et al., 2008; Wang & Benbasat, 2005, 2007, 2008).