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ORCID

Cleopatra Moipone Matli: 0000-0001-6864-4222

Jeevarathnam P. Govender:0000-0002-2584-2824

Keywords

Online shopping non-adoption, Distrust, Social exchange, Social presence, Trust transfer, Consumer behaviour

Abstract

Online shopping non-adoption remains critically underexplored, especially in emerging markets. Addressing this gap, the authors develop and test a distrust-centric framework that applies the inhibitory logic of social exchange, trust transfer, and social presence theories to explain pre-emptive avoidance. Focusing on South Africa, where only 18.16% of the population engage in e-commerce, data was collected from 414 consumers who have never shopped online. Structural equation modelling reveals that perceived lack of reciprocity directly increases the intention of non-adoption. Moreover, distrust in online payment systems transfers to broader channel scepticism, which in turn drives avoidance. Perceived lack of social presence further amplifies this channel distrust. The study thus validates a model where non-adoption is driven by an anticipatory calculus of negative exchange, potent distrust transfer from critical subsystems, and the salience of absent human interaction. These findings provide a robust theoretical explanation for e-commerce resistance and actionable insights for trust-building in emerging digital markets.

Acknowledgments

Funding

The research received no funds.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of the article.

Declaration about the scope of AI utilization

The authors did not use an AI tool in the preparation of the article.

First Page

22

Last Page

47

Page Count

26

Received Date

23.08.2025

Revised Date

13.04.2026

Accepted Date

30.04.2026

Online Available Date

29.05.2026

DOI

10.7172/2449-6634.jmcbem.2026.1.2

JEL Code

M21, M31, M39

Publisher

University of Warsaw

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