Investigating the Effects of Cyber Fraud on Customer Trust for Online Shopping: The Ghanaian Setting

Cyber fraud has become a stumbling block in the development of many countries especially in the developing world as billions of dollars continues to be lost. It’s prevalence in the west African sub-region has stifled the efforts made by governments to bridge the technology gap between nations like Ghana and the west. Online shopping which is a convenient advancement in technology and relatively famous form of transaction in the west requires a considerable level of trust between the customer and the service provider. With the consumer culture theory (CCT) and model of integrative trust as theoretical foundations, this paper adopts a comprehensive two-way generic inductive approach to gather relevant data for analysis to unravel the effects of cyber fraud on the Ghanaian consumers’ trust for online shopping. The methodology encapsulates a systematic and rigorous literature review and documented cases of cyber fraud in Ghana. Results intimated that cyber fraud is a major cause of financial lose in Ghana and has to a large extent affected the Ghanaian consumers’ trust for online shopping and E-transactions in general as only 39% of the populace are revealed to buy online. Poor information technology infrastructure, growth of IT users, and a lack of regulation and training law enforcements were also found to be the underlying causes of why it is challenging to secure information online and hence the lack of trust. Keywords: Cyber Fraud, Trust, Online shopping. DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-36-10 Publication date: December 31 st 2019