How Consumers Process Online Privacy, Financial, and Performance Risks: An fMRI Study

Despite the enormous growth of e-commerce, consumers still come against risk-related barriers while carrying out online purchases. Specialists of e-commerce have therefore explored the facets of online risk perception with the aim of identifying which has the greatest impact. There is, nonetheless, no consensus as to the facets of risk perception or their relative importance. This is the first study resorting to neurological tools that examines the differences between the three most widespread facets of risk (financial, privacy, and performance) in a low-involvement purchase environment. Contrary to behavioral findings, brain data from neurological analyses identify differences between the three facets of risk. Financial risk conveys the lowest subconscious aversion and negative values. Subconscious privacy risk, in turn, confers ambivalence and uncertainty while performance risk elicits the highest levels of disappointment and distrust. Implications from the current findings, if taken into account by retailers, can greatly improve web contents and purchase processes, and bolster sales.