Influence of effort expectancy on consumers’ purchase intention within a B2C imported cross-border e-commerce market: The mediating role of consumer trust

This study is primarily aimed at examining the influence of effort expectancy on consumers’ purchase intention within a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) consumption market in China. With the improvement of the living standards for the Chinese consumers, the B2C imported cross-border e-commerce platforms have become the choice of consumers for online shopping. On the basis of the seminal UTAUT Model, consumer trust is proposed as a potential mediator for the relationship between effort expectancy and purchase intention. By using a non-probability sampling technique, an online questionnaire survey distribution was employed with an overall return rate of 108 usable feedback. Data were analysed using the SmartPLS Version 4.0.9.9 statistical software. Results revealed a positive and significant influence of effort expectancy on consumers’ purchasing intentions. Furthermore, we found that consumer trust significantly mediates the relationship between effort expectancy and purchase intention. These findings could assist imported cross-border e-commerce platform enterprises towards enhancing the convenience of online shopping on these platforms and improving consumers' trust in online shopping activities. This study contributes to promoting the platform enterprises to improve the convenience of the whole process of platform operation and purchase, and is conductive to paying attention to the consumer trust to enhance the enterprise’s reputation, which will help develop customer stickiness and cultivate loyal customers.