Trust in Internet Banking: a model and an empirical investigation

The paper presents a model on determinants of trust in Internet Banking (IB). In the early 2000, the slowness of IB adoption compared to the number of visitors of banks web sites led some scholars to analyze possible reasons underneath this fact. For instance, a research by Kim and Prabhakar conducted in the US shows that initial trust in the e-channel is a necessary, although non sufficient, condition for the adoption of IB, while trust in the bank offering IB services is not a significant determinant of the adoption of IB. The pioneer efforts of the Kim and Prabhakar’s model offer a preliminary contribution toward the understanding of IB. Nevertheless a more comprehensive model should bring into the analysis fundamental findings drawn from the CMC literature. In particular, studies on the effects of CMC show that electronic mediated interaction plays a dual role. On the one hand, it may be detrimental to the development of trust and therefore face-to-face (f-t-f) communication is needed. On the other hand, electronic communication is considered as less «aggressive» than f-t-f communication as perceived surveillance and criticism are lower. In turn, this increases trust. Finally, CMC studies show that also the web site quality may affect trust. Based on these findings, we build a new model. The empirical investigation of the model confirmed all our hypotheses.