Online commerce, otherwise known as ecommerce, consists of a business economy which includes many types of businesses built around and on the internet.¹ A growth in the volume of e-commerce activity is now an undeniable truth. According to eMarketer's projection, the amount of e-commerce activity will rise by 14.1 percent in 2019 compared to 2018, and by 16.1 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, reaching $4206 trillion, indicating that e-commerce is gaining momentum over offline retail.²

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the rise in online spending. E-commerce is certain to be a significant trend that will characterise the global economy for some time to come.³ The change in consumers' lifestyles, as well as government imposed state of emergency, resulted in the proliferation of online orders and the intensive use of deep distribution channels to deliver the products directly to the customer's location.⁴

"Understanding the debate that trust and mistrust could be binary or not mutually exclusive is important within this wider debate as it has serious repercussions for the future stability of e-commerce"

Trust is critical to the long-term viability of e-commerce transactions. Because there is greater uncertainty in e-commerce transactions than in traditional commerce transactions, trust is more important.⁵ Total fraud increased 5.5 percent from Q2 2016 to Q2 2017, according to PYMNTS and Signifyd (institutions that track and analyse fraud by examining the transactions of over 5000 e-commerce merchants in Europe, North America, and Asia) and the value of potential fraud was estimated to be 57.8 billion USD as of October 2017.⁶ This suggests that e-commerce fraud is getting more significant, which may cause customer concern and can potentially impact trust in ecommerce in the long term which can threaten its sustainability. Sustainability in this article specifically refers to business sustainability and long term viability.

In a 2016 survey, participants were questioned, "How frequently are you frightened of being a victim of fraud while purchasing items and services online?" Forty percent of respondents said they were frightened about e-commerce fraud ‘always', ‘very frequently', and ‘often'.⁷ This level of mistrust for online transactions could prove difficult for the sustainability of ecommerce. Long term sustainability of ecommerce can only be established through high levels of trust.

Trust and mistrust were formerly thought to be mutually incompatible and simply opposed in concept, with distrust being regarded as a low degree of trust.⁸ This unidimensional method puts the two ideas at opposing ends of a single continuum. Trust is regarded as a "positive" emotion, whereas mistrust is regarded as a "bad" emotion that must be remedied.⁹

Others feel that trust and mistrust are separate emotions. Mistrust does not always imply a lack of trust. Trust and mistrust are separate yet coexisting emotions that are autonomous but connected.¹⁰

It has been established that long term sustainability requires high levels of trust. Understanding the debate that trust and mistrust could be binary or not mutually exclusive is important within this wider debate as it has serious repercussions for the future stability of e-commerce. When feelings of trust and distrust are connected, it is easier to find a commonality between the two emotions and dissect what can lead someone to trust a product in comparison to distrusting it. For example, if a consumer trusted a product/service until they were delivered a faulty product or the wrong product which can lead to feelings of distrust, as the feelings are connected, one can determine the similarity in events that led to the delivery of a faulty product. Knowing this, it would be easier to build that consumers trust in the product once again.

Trust can be categorised into three parts: intrapersonal-level (dispositional) trust, system-level trust, and interpersonal-level trust.¹¹ In e-commerce, a buyer (intrapersonal-level) trustor meets two trustees: the intermediaries (system-level/intermediary) and the sellers/vendors (interpersonal-level). The inclination of the buyers to believe (or not believe) in the seller and intermediaries to fulfill the transaction is referred to as intrapersonal trust. System-level trust provides assurance to a trustor to give their personal and financial information in order to purchase goods or services from an unknown vendor. Interpersonal trust is the seller’s confidence in the intermediary to deliver the goods and services to the buyer. This allows the consumers to trust that a vendor will fulfill the promise of the delivery of goods and services to the right location, within the time frame specified in addition to the upkeep of the quality of the goods and services. The buyer will trust the intermediary and the seller, and the intermediary and the seller will have to trust each other during the online transaction.

There are two conclusions that can be derived. First, distrust in an intermediary has a direct influence on perceived risk as well as distrust on the seller, which has a negative impact on buying intention. Meanwhile, confidence in an intermediary and trust in a seller have little effect on mistrust. This implies that even if a buyer has a high level of trust, he or she may still perceive a high level of danger. The endeavour to increase trust may not result in a decrease in the degree of distrust. Second, confidence in a vendor does not break down into a dual perspective of trust and distrust, implying that cognitive considerations are more important than emotional aspects. This means that if there is a similar connection/event between trust and mistrust for a consumer, it would be easier for them to change their level of trust.

¹Svobodová, Z.; Rajchlová, J. Strategic Behavior of E-Commerce Businesses in Online Industry of Electronics from a Customer Perspective. Adm. Sci. 2020, 10, 78

²eMarketer. Available online: www.emarketer.com/forecasts

³Gómez-Galán, J.; Martínez-López, J.Á.; Lázaro-Pérez, C.; Sarasola Sánchez-Serrano, J.L. Social Networks Consumption and Addiction in College Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Educational Approach to Responsible Use. Sustainability 2020, 12, 7737

⁴The Perspective of E-Business Sustainability and Website Accessibility of Online Stores Carmen Adina Pas,tiu 1 , Ionica Oncioiu 2,* , Daniel Adrian Gârdan 3 , Silvia S, tefania Maican 1 , Iuliana Petronela Gârdan 3 and Andreea Cipriana Muntean 1

⁵Kim, D.J. A Study of the multilevel and dynamic nature of trust in e-commerce from a cross-stage perspective. Int. J. Electron. Commer. 2014, 19, 11–64

⁶Security Magazine. E-Commerce Fraud Loss Reaches $57.8 billion. Available online: https://www. securitymagazine.com/articles/88451-e-commerce-fraud-loss-reaches-578-billion

⁷Statista. Level of Concern over Online Shopping Fraud in Finland. 2015. Available online: https://www.statista. com/statistics/551601/finland-level-of-concern-over-online-shopping-fraud/

⁸Rotter, J.B. Generalized expectancies for interpersonal trust. Am. Psychol. 1971, 26, 443–450 Stack, L.C. Trust. In Dimensionality of Personality; London, H., Exner, J.E., Jr., Eds.; Wiley: New York, NY, USA, 1988; pp. 561–599.

⁹McKnight, D.H.; Choudhury, V. Distrust and trust in B2C e-commerce: Do they differ? In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Electronic Commerce ICEC’06, Fredericton, NB, Canada, 14–16 August 2006.

¹⁰Lewicki, R.J.; McAllister, D.J.; Bies, R.J. Trust and distrust: New relationships and realities. Acad. Manag. Rev. 1998, 23, 438–458.

¹¹Verhagen, T.; Meents, S.; Tan, Y. Perceived risk and trust associated with purchasing at electronic marketplaces. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 2006, 15, 542–555