E-governments have become an increasingly integral part of the virtual economic landscape. However, e-government systems have been plagued by an unsatisfactory, or even a decreasing, level of trust among citizen users. The political exclusivity and longstanding bureaucracy of governmental institutions have amplified the level of difficulty in gaining citizens' acceptance of e-government systems. Through the synthesis of trust-building processes with trust relational forms, we construct a multidimensional, integrated analytical framework to guide our investigation of how e-government systems can be structured to restore trust in citizen-government relationships. Specifically, the analytical framework identifies trust-building strategies (calculative-based, prediction-based, intentionality-based, capability-based, and transference-based trust) to be enacted for restoring public trust via e-government systems. Applying the analytical framework to the case of Singapore's Electronic Tax-Filing (E-Filing) system, we advance an e-government developmental model that yields both developmental prescriptions and technological specifications for the realization of these trust-building strategies. Further, we highlight the impact of sociopolitical climates on the speed of e-government maturity.
Effective visual design of e-commerce websites enhances website aesthetics and emotional appeal for the user. To gain insight into how Internet users perceive human images as one element of website design, a controlled experiment was conducted using a questionnaire, interviews, and eye-tracking methodology. Three conditions of human images were created including human images with facial features, human images without facial features, and a control condition with no human images. It was expected that human images with facial features would induce a user to perceive the website as more appealing, having warmth or social presence, and as more trustworthy. In turn, higher levels of image appeal and perceived social presence were predicted to result in trust. All expected relationships in the model were supported except no direct relationship was found between the human image conditions and trust. Additional analyses revealed subtle differences in the perception of human images across cultures (Canada, Germany, and Japan). While the general impact of human images seems universal across country groups, based on interview data four concepts emerged-aesthetics, symbolism, affective property, and functional property-with participants from each culture focusing on different concepts as applied to website design. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Despite rapidly increasing numbers of diverse online shoppers, the relationship of Web site design to trust, satisfaction, and loyalty has not previously been modeled across cultures. In the current investigation, three components of Web site design (information design, navigation design, and visual design) are considered for their impact on trust and satisfaction. In turn, relationships of trust and satisfaction to online loyalty are evaluated. Utilizing data collected from 571 participants in Canada, Germany, and China, various relationships in the research model are tested using partial least squares analysis for each country separately. In addition, the overall model is tested for all countries combined as a control and verification of earlier research findings, although this time with a mixed country sample. All paths in the overall model are confirmed. Differences are determined for separate country samples concerning whether navigation design, visual design, and information design result in trust, satisfaction, and ultimately loyalty--suggesting design characteristics should be a central consideration in Web site design across cultures.