The Influence of Personality on Mobile Web Credibility

Research has shown that the perceived credibility of a website is critical to its success. However, little is known about how individual differences influence this important factor of web design. In this paper, we investigate how personality traits affect the perceived credibility of a website in the mobile domain. Using a sample of 323 participants, we developed a model showing how the Big Five personality traits influence the perceived credibility of a website through its perceived aesthetics and perceived usability. Our model reveals that Agreeableness is the strongest predictor of aesthetics and/or usability, followed by Conscientiousness. This suggests that the more agreeable and/or the more conscientious users are easily more satisfied aesthetically and usability-wise by a mobile websites than the less agreeable and/or the less conscientious users respectively. Consequently, designers of mobile sites may have to do more in user interface design in order to attract the less agreeable and/or the less conscientious users to their sites based on its hedonic (aesthetics-inspired) and utilitarian (usability-inspired) appeal.