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.