The impact of informational antecedents on Generation Z consumers’ evaluations of cross-border e-commerce transaction costs and purchase decisions

Purpose Compared to traditional (domestic) e-commerce consumers, cross-border electronic commerce (CBEC) consumers may face greater information asymmetry in the CBEC purchase process. Given this background, however, the literature has paid limited attention to the informational antecedents that influence consumers' perceptions of transaction costs and their CBEC purchase intentions. To fill this gap, this study integrates the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and transaction cost theory (TCT) to develop a model for exploring how product (website informativeness, product diagnosticity and website interactivity as the central route) and external (country brand, website policy and vendor reputation as the peripheral route) informational antecedents affect consumers’ evaluations of transaction costs in terms of uncertainty and asset specificity and their CBEC purchase intentions. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a survey approach to validate the model with 766 Generation Z CBEC consumers based on judgment sampling. The partial least squares (PLS) technique is adopted for data analysis. Findings The results show that all the proposed central and peripheral informational antecedents reduce consumers’ perceptions of uncertainty and asset specificity, which in turn negatively influences their CBEC purchase intentions. Originality/value Through this investigation, this study increases our understanding of how product and external informational antecedents affect consumers’ evaluations of transaction costs, which subsequently determine their CBEC purchase decisions. This study offers theoretical contributions to existing CBEC research and has practical implications for CBEC organizations and managers.