Security control and risk analysis under EC environment

Abstract

The proliferation of EC introduces new security risks as well as the benefits. The risk provides two security-related issues: customers`` distrust due to the lack of understanding of security control and the importance of the disruption of operation. We investigate the two issues in Part II and III, respectively. In Part II, we focus on customer perception of security control under the EC environment. Customers`` understanding of security control is insufficient. They are not fully aware of EC security technologies. Moreover, they cannot know which control is implemented and maintained on an EC site when visiting the site. They only perceive the security control of a site indirectly through the advertisement and the publicized information. This research, therefore, attempts to find the impact of customer perception of security control on EC acceptance. For this purpose, we introduce trust as a mediating concept of the relationship between customer perception of security control and his/her acceptance under EC environment. This dissertation proposes two theoretical models, which is based on the literature encompassing the areas of IS security, relationship marketing, and technology acceptance. In the first model, we investigate the impact of customer trust on his/her acceptance under the EC environment. The model extends the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in the EC context. We introduce an additional motivating belief, trust, to the TAM, and hypothesize the impact of trust on EC acceptance. The second model presents the impact of customer perception of security control on his/her acceptance of EC. We suggest that trust and perceived usefulness is the mediating factors of the relationship between customer perception of security control and his/her acceptance of EC. Hypotheses are developed to assess the proposed causal relationships. To empirically test the proposed models, we conducted a Web survey of Internet banking users. We chose Internet banking as the r...