How emotions influence trust in online transactions using new technology

Online trust has recently become a critical issue, due to widely publicized information leaks, account hacking, and privacy breaches. This study investigates whether or not emotions have effects on trust in online transactions, particularly when a new technology is involved. We explored the effects of happiness and sadness on participants' choice of a payment method for online transactions. Forty-four undergraduates participated in online transactions with a prototype webpage after either happiness or sadness induction, compared to a neutral group. Different emotion mechanisms would predict different effects of each emotion. Results showed that when the item cost was relatively low ($10), a higher percentage of participants in both emotion conditions selected a novel payment method than those in a neutral condition. With more expensive items ($50 and $100) the number of participants who chose the new option equally increased across all conditions because participants could benefit relatively a large amount of discount (10%) from the novel payment method. Various emotion mechanisms are discussed with our results.