Abstract
On the Internet, trustworthiness is an issue and becomes more important as financial transactions continue to grow. According to our analysis of the top 20 largest US banks, fifty-five percent of the banks’ homepages used human photograph(s). The purpose of this study is to examine how image choices of a male, a female, a family, a small group of people in an office, or a diverse group of people in photographs on a bank homepage will have the most positive effect on customers’ perceptions of trustworthiness with regard to the website. For the research method, five mock-ups of a bank homepage were created with carefully modified and selected photographs from each image group. Then a web-based survey was conducted. The result, as determined by this study, reveals distinctions among ethnic groups. Asian participants tended to trust homepages using photographs of families the most and Caucasian participants tended to trust homepages using photographs of a small group the most.
Keywords
Bank Website, Trustworthiness, Human Photographs, Web Design
Citation
Ha, S., and Kang, S. (2010) Human Photographs on Trust in Bank Websites, in Durling, D., Bousbaci, R., Chen, L, Gauthier, P., Poldma, T., Roworth-Stokes, S. and Stolterman, E (eds.), Design and Complexity - DRS International Conference 2010, 7-9 July, Montreal, Canada. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2010/researchpapers/51
Human Photographs on Trust in Bank Websites
On the Internet, trustworthiness is an issue and becomes more important as financial transactions continue to grow. According to our analysis of the top 20 largest US banks, fifty-five percent of the banks’ homepages used human photograph(s). The purpose of this study is to examine how image choices of a male, a female, a family, a small group of people in an office, or a diverse group of people in photographs on a bank homepage will have the most positive effect on customers’ perceptions of trustworthiness with regard to the website. For the research method, five mock-ups of a bank homepage were created with carefully modified and selected photographs from each image group. Then a web-based survey was conducted. The result, as determined by this study, reveals distinctions among ethnic groups. Asian participants tended to trust homepages using photographs of families the most and Caucasian participants tended to trust homepages using photographs of a small group the most.