Many have speculated that trust plays a critical role in stimulating consumer purchases over
the Internet. Most of the speculations have rallied around US consumers purchasing from
US–based online merchants. The global nature of the Internet raises questions about the
robustness of trust effects across cultures. Culture may also affect the antecedents of
consumer trust; that is, consumers in different cultures might have differing expectations of
what makes a web merchant trustworthy. Here we report on a cross-cultural validation of an …