UDC: 004.738.5:339(497.11)

DOI: 10.7595/management.fon.2012.0035

The development of electronic commerce (e-commerce) can be analyzed from many different aspects, which consequently affect the selection of substantial elements that can be used for understanding the obstacles for e-commerce implementation. In this paper we analyzed the (dis)trust as one of the elements which is, in our opinion, somehow neglected even though it can be the key factor of slow e-commerce development in Serbia. Although the distrust can be studied on different levels when related to e-commerce, it seems that cultural and socio-psychological are the most important for the countries that are still in the process of modernization and do not have a long tradition of free markets. This is why in our paper we focus on two macro factors of distrust in Serbia: distrust related to the normative and value systems, and distrust as part of the Serbian cultural pattern. To illustrate to what extent the distrust is embedded into Serbian society we analyzed the results of World Values Survey, which involved 80000 participants around the world including the citizens of Serbia. In the concluding remarks of the paper we highlight the importance of transformation of the normative and value system and point out that without this, all other actions for raising the confidence in e-commerce will have a limited impact.

Keywords: e-commerce, distrust, Internet, cultural patterns, normative and value system

Dalibor Petrović¹, Ivana Kovačević²

¹University of Belgrade, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering

²University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organizational Sciences

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