Measuring perceived security in B2C electronic commerce website usage: A respecification and validation

•Examine the nature and dimensionality of perceived security.•Develop measure of perceived security as a formative second-order construct.•Test if the construct behaves as it should in the technology acceptance model.•Dimensions of perceived security should encourage more detailed analyses.

Buyer concern about website security is a critical issue when it comes to maximizing the potential for electronic commerce transactions. Because perceptions of inadequacy can be a major obstacle to online shopping, many researchers have studied both the antecedents and outcomes of website security. Yet, the measures of security used in these studies are problematic. Although information systems researchers and business practitioners have conceptualized security as a multidimensional concept, published empirical studies have measured perceived security as a unidimensional construct. Exclusion of the underlying dimensions likely prevents researchers from fully assessing the impact of important dimensions of customers' perceptions of security. Here, we contribute to the methodological enhancement of this research stream by: (1) theoretically examining the nature and dimensionality of perceived security, and (2) developing and validating a multidimensional measure of this construct. The results from this study provide empirical justification for the conceptualization of perceived security as a formative second-order construct of perceived confidentiality, perceived availability, and perceived non-repudiation.