Cyr Website Design, Trust and Culture Website Design, Trust and Culture: An Eight Country Investigation Dianne Cyr Simon Fraser University cyr@sfu.ca ABSTRACT Website design elements (information design, information content, navigation design, visual design), disposition to trust, website trust, and transaction security are examined for differences in an eight country sample with a total of 1156 participants (including Canada, the United States, India, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Chile, and China). Within Canada, users from English Canada and French Canada were also compared. In a theoretical context that includes cultural differences for uncertainty avoidance (e.g. Hofstede’s classification) and the GLOBE study which identifies similar country clusters, overall and as predicted, low uncertainty avoidance countries of French Canada, English Canada, and the United States have the highest scores on the various constructs indicating more favorable reactions by users. Largest differences across most of the constructs occur between Germany, Japan, and China with other countries in the sample. Keywords website design, culture INTRODUCTION E-business vendors seek to develop websites that are visually pleasing, easy to navigate, rich in information content, and secure. In the current research these topics are examined with global users from Canada, the United States, India, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Chile, and China. Within Canada users for both English Canada and French Canada were included to examine within country differences when two diverse cultures are represented within the same nation state. This investigation is aimed to achieve the following goals based on user perceptions of the same e-commerce website professionally adapted for the user’s local culture in each of the eight countries included in this study. (1) Examine website design elements for information content, information design, navigation design and visual design to determine user perceptions of each element and how these differ between country groups. (2) Investigate user disposition to trust, perceptions of website trust and transaction security. (3) Examine if differences exist for English Canadian and French Canadian participants. (4) Develop and validate a new construct for Information Content. CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS Researchers have often used Hofstede’s classifications to study social psychological phenomena. In this research, one of Hofstede’s classifications (for uncertainty avoidance) will be considered for its relevance to website design, as well as to trust and security issues related to e- commerce. Uncertainty avoidance characterizes how societies accommodate high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity in the environment. Members of very high uncertainty avoidance societies such as Japan seek to reduce personal risk and to augment security. Individualism-collectivism is a second dimension that has been previously used to examine user reactions in e- commerce (e.g. Jarvenpaa et al., 1999). Individualistic cultures place greater importance on the needs, values and goals of the individual over those of the group, while in collectivist cultures the needs, values, and goals of the group prevail (Hofstede, 1980). Countries high on individualism are usually low on uncertainty avoidance and countries that are low on individualism are usually high on uncertainty avoidance. Complementary to the work by Hofstede (1980) and relevant in the current research, House and his colleagues (2002) conducted an extensive study of leadership and organizational effectiveness in 61 nations which they called the GLOBE project. Country clustering was determined based on similarities and differences concerning societal values and beliefs. Of 10 cultural clusters identified in the GLOBE research five are represented in the current study. These are: South Asia (India), North America (Canada, the United States), Germanic Europe (Germany), Confucian Asia (Japan, China), and Latin America (Mexico, Chile) as indicated in Table 1. In alignment with theoretical premises from the GLOBE project, culture is determined not only by commonality among members of the collective based on psychologically based values and beliefs, but also by “commonality of observed and reported practices of entities such as families, schools, work organizations, economic and legal systems, and political institutions” (House, Javidan, Hanges, and Dorfman, 2002, p.5). This Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Workshop on HCI Research in MIS, Paris, France, December 13, 2008 1