Measuring the Role of Trust in M-Commerce Acceptance: An Empirical Analysis in Context of Pakistan

With the emergence of internet and WWW (World Wide Web), traditional businesses got a new opportunity to compete globally. A new term of M-Commerce (Mobile Commerce) emerged and set a new trend in commerce and business. Traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses became e-business (electronic business) with the help of ICT (Information & Communication Technology) tools. Evidences from literature review suggest that there has been little growth in the acceptance of M-commerce in developing economies such as Pakistan as compared to developed economies. There are doubts that users of M-commerce demonstrate a lack of enthusiasm, which may be because of the lack of trustworthiness. Based on the well-known and widely used TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), this study provides the theoretical underpinning and empirical evidence between the relationships of trust construct with the adoption of Mcommerce in Pakistan. A cross sectional questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from Mcommerce users in Pakistan to check the influence of trust. After the analysis of 390 valid responses obtained results indicate that trust and other constructs of TAM are related and there is positive and significant role of trust in the acceptance of M-commerce in Pakistan. Results also prove the hypothesized relationship among all constructs of proposed Model.