Communications in Information Science and Management Engineering

CISME

Dimensions of Consumers’ Perceived Risk and Their
Influences on Online Consumers’ Purchasing
Behavior
Lingying Zhang1, 2, Wojie Tan3, Yingcong Xu1, Genlue Tan1
1

College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518000, China
3
Normal School, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
1
zly2009@gmail.com; 3tanwj2011@163.com
2

Abstract-Consumers’ perceived risk is an important factor that affects online consumers’ purchasing behavior. In this paper, the first empirical research was about the dimension structure of consumers’ perceived risk (CPR) for the overall process of B2C
E-Commerce, and eight dimensions of consumers’ perceived risk were ascertained by confirmatory factor analysis, i.e. perceived health risk, perceived quality risk, perceived privacy risk, perceived economic risk, perceived time risk, perceived social risk, perceived delivery risk and perceived after-sale risk. Then, perceived risk dimensions affecting consumers’ purchasing behavior and their structural relationships were investigated through a consumer survey and statistical analysis using the methods of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model. The results of empirical testing demonstrate that there are five independent dimensions, perceived health risk, perceived quality risk, perceived time risk, perceived delivery risk and perceived after-sale risk which affect significantly online consumers’ purchasing behavior. The results also show that the other three dimensions, perceived privacy risk, perceived social risk and perceived economic risk are the less relevant factors.
Ke ywords- Risk Dimensions; Perceived Risk; Shopping Online;
Consumers’ Purchasing Behavior; Overall Process of B2C

I. INTRODUCTION
The analysis for dimensions of consumer perceived risk in online shopping is a necessary step to know the contents and types of consumer perceived risk, which is considered to be one of the important factors that impact on consumer online shopping decision-making, and it is also one of the important research theme for the online shopping risk [1][2]. Previous researchers focused on the risks in the phase of online transactions, some of them put forward the structure of risk dimensions in different perspectives such as the lack of security, privacy risk, the credibility of online retailers or reliability risk
[3][4], functional risk, shopping risk, time risk, social risk, psychological risk and so on [5][6].
The overall process of B2C includes three phases such as information searching before buying, the choosing of products and the service after purchasing. Therefore, the consumer’s perception of risk in every phase of the overall process should be considered, and so does the influence.
In this context, taking into consideration the different risk facets in every phase of the overall process of B2C, the present study attempts to analyze the perceived risk in the overall process of B2C and their influence on online consumers’ purchasing behavior. This study seeks to incorporate these dimensions of perceived risk into a research model, identify their impact on online consumers’ purchasing behavior, and test the relationships between constructs in the overall process of B2C.

In this paper, firstly, we discussed the perceived risk dimensions impact on consumer online shopping decision-making and analyzed the composition of online shopping consumer perceived risk. Based on investigation data, eight perceived risk dimensions which have significant impact on consumer online shopping decision-making are verified and proposed. Secondly, we empirically tested what risk factors from the overall process of B2C may really cause consumers’ perceived risks and examined what dimensions of perceived risks significantly influenced consumers’ purchasing behavior in the overall process of