Web assurance seals are actions taken by e-commerce vendors to increase their trustworthiness and alleviate consumers’ concerns. In their essence, web assurance seals are a product of negotiations, adoptions, and settlements among various groups of interests (e.g., seal authorities, vendors, consumers, or governmental institutions). However, previous research has hitherto used a unilateral research perspective when studying web assurance seals (i.e., either consumer- or vendor-centric), which has acted as a gridlock for web assurance seal literature development. Drawing on signaling theory, we use a ranking-type Delphi study with three distinct, yet mutually supportive expert panels (N = 60) to compare vendors’ intentions to acquire web assurance seals and perceived effects by consumers. Our results uncover a mismatch between consumers’ perceptions and vendors’ intentions of web assurance seals, unintended side effects as well as vendors targeting other stakeholders than consumers, ultimately providing starting points for research to move forward.

Web保证印章是电子商务供应商采取的旨在提高其可信度并减轻消费者关注的行为。从本质上讲，网络保证印章是各种利益集团（例如，印章当局，供应商，消费者或政府机构）之间谈判，采用和解决的产物。但是，迄今为止，以前的研究在研究网络保证印章（即以消费者或供应商为中心）时使用了单方面的研究视角，这已成为网络保证印章文献开发的僵局。根据信号理论，我们使用具有三个不同但相互支持的专家小组的排名型Delphi研究（N = 60），比较供应商获取网络保证印章的意图和消费者的感知效果。我们的结果揭示了消费者的观念与供应商的Web保证印章意图不匹配，意外的副作用以及以消费者以外的其他利益相关者为目标的供应商，从而最终为开展研究提供了起点。