A retail investor's perspective on the acceptance of Internet stock trading

In the digital economy of information and communication technology, several organizations from various industries are jumping onto the bandwagon of offering consumer-oriented electronic commerce applications. In Singapore, Internet stock trading has been at the forefront of this trend since 1998. However, to date, the penetration rate of online trading remains low. As such, this paper attempts to analyze the factors that affect the growth of Internet stock trading. We used Taylor and Todd's (1995) decomposed theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework to explain investors' acceptance through their intentions to trade online and to rationalize their intentions in terms of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and other related variables. The model is tested based on 291 responses obtained through personal interviews. The measures and hypotheses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that attitude and social factors significantly influence investors' intention towards adopting Internet stock trading.