Online Dis-trust? Relationships between Cybersecurity and Online Transactions

This paper explores different relationships among various cybersecurity aspects and online transactions. Particularly, we focus on three online security aspects: (1) perception of network security, (2) being victim of a cyberattack, and (3) engaging in risky online activities. Using a Structural Equations Model (SEM) and the After Access 2017-2018 dataset (for six Latin American countries), we characterize the relationships between each of these three aspects, along with the importance of other structural variables. The main results are: (1) user’s perception of security plays a key role in e-commerce activities adoption - individuals who report feeling insecure in the Internet tend to engage in significantly fewer online transactions; (2) there is a strong positive relationship between e-commerce use and the likelihood of being a cyberattack victim - this group of e-commerce users would be more vulnerable; (3) individuals with lower educational and socioeconomic levels, and females, are in greater disadvantage in the adoption of e-commerce activities.

Keywords: cybersecurity, e-commerce, ICT

JEL Classification: D83, J16, O33

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Barrantes, Roxana and Aguero Garcia, Aileen and Matos, Paulo and Aguilar Lluncor, Diego, Online Dis-trust? Relationships between Cybersecurity and Online Transactions (July 27, 2019). TPRC47: The 47th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy 2019, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3427832 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3427832