Designing and Evaluating a Model to Explain Economic Transparency and National Trust by Emphasis on E-Commerce

E-commerce has grown and expanded as the Internet has expanded and inevitably affected much of society. This trade is one of the factors driving the economic growth and development. Therefore, the study of the effective factors, their prerequisites and their consequences, is important. The purpose of this research is examining and modeling the place of transparency and national trust in the e-commerce process with a mixed approach. In the qualitative part of the research, a conceptual model was designed with the opinion of 21 experts in the field of e-commerce. In the quantitative research phase, the designed model has been tested through a statistical sample of 300 active users in the e-commerce space. The analysis of information in the quantitative part of the model has been done by modeling structural equations. Information analysis was performed in two parts of measurement model and structural part of model. In order to evaluate the measurement model, the technical characteristics of the questionnaire including reliability and validity were investigated. In the structural section, coefficients of the model for evaluating research hypotheses were tested. The results show that e-commerce promote transparency. Transparency also has a positive and significant effect on reducing corruption and eliminating intermediaries from the supply chain of goods and services. Also, reducing economic corruption in e-commerce will increase national confidence in this space.