Enhancing information sharing in e‐commerce: empirical results on the role of initial trust and incentives

Collecting personal information from customers is an unavoidable element for Internet merchants to effectively deliver their goods and services to customers. However, the ease with which data can be acquired and disseminated across the Web, have led to many potential customers’ growing privacy concerns regarding disclosing their personal information. The paper analyzes the interaction between two strategies that firms can use to alter potential customers’ cost/benefit evaluation and increase information disclosure: the development of initial trust and compensation. Hypotheses are tested by means of two experimental studies, whose patterns are compared across two different consumer target groups.