Privacy Risk - not a risk for Romanian Online Shoppers?

Online shopping has been intensively studied in connection with perceived risk, which is known to be a deterrent of e-commerce. Perceived risk in e-commerce is a multi- dimensional construct composed of several types of risks such as: financial risk, product risk, social risk, psychological risk, delivery risk and privacy risk. One of the dimensions of perceived risk that is worth investigating is privacy risk. Online shops, nowadays, register all the data of their buyers and set up client databases that sometimes are sold to third parties. Thus, personal data can be used without the buyers' approval and fraud is possible to happen. A serious threat is credit card data theft, whereas at a lower level of importance, the buyers can be spammed with unwanted offers that invade their privacy. The present study aims to determine the relative influence of privacy risk on intention to adopt e-commerce in comparison with other types of risk. To identify the influence of privacy risk on intention to adopt we used a structural equation model and confirmatory factor analysis.