Explaining B2C e-commerce acceptance: An integrative model based on the framework by Gatignon and Robertson

This study attempts to analyze e-commerce adoption, proposing a global model that integrates the most relevant approaches in the literature. Gatignon and Robertson’s Adoption Model is taken as a reference framework because of its overall nature and its agreement with the main theories used to explain e-commerce acceptance. Thus, the model proposed to explain e-commerce adoption by consumers includes the simultaneous influence of attitudes, social norms, perceived risk, personal innovativeness in the field of new technologies and attributes perceived in the technology. The results obtained show that attitudes toward the system and Subjective Norm are the main determinants of the intention to shop on the Net. On the contrary, perceived risk has no significant effect on adoption process, while the influence of personal innovativeness is only relevant in the first purchase on the Internet.