Value Congruence and Trust Online: Their Impact on Privacy and Pr ...

While other factors can also influence trust-formation in an e-business, value congruence appears to be of particular importance. This is because trust created through value congruence (or the so-called affect-based trust) is more resilient than trust created through other means (McAllister, 1995). This qualitative difference merits further study and evaluation because it sets value congruence apart from other means of trust-building.

Another important aspect related to consumer trust is privacy and data collection. Both mortar and electronic businesses view customer data collection as a prerequisite to understanding and serving consumer needs. However, current and prospective customers may be reluctant to share private information with organizations they regard as untrustworthy. This consumer concern for privacy may be augmented in an e-business setting because of the potential for security breaches. The Internet communication links are open to anyone, e-business contact with a consumer is intangible, and the e-consumer may not be able to easily establish common ground with the person on the other side of the business transaction.

Judson and Kelly (1999) argued that privacy issues have replaced credit card security issues as the number one impediment to building an online business. Knowing the factors that influence a person’s decision to share information is vital to understanding the best way to collect information in an e-business setting.

The discipline of information system (IS) is concerned with the effective use of information technology (IT) to gather, store, analyze and disseminate information. The issue of how businesses can collect, dissect and process potentially useful information thus falls within the IS domain and represents a rich area of research. Ackerman et al. (1999) pointed out the progress that needs to be made in order to fully comprehend people’s privacy preferences and stressed that it is critical to study this concern in detail, especially for the online environment. Hine and Eve (1998) argued that despite the recent interest in privacy