Student Risk Perception Towards Online Shopping at

Caraga State University - Cabadbaran City

Introduction

The number of online shoppers is growing faster than the number of Internet users, indicating that

more Internet users are becoming comfortable shopping online (Maggie, 2003). With these, online sales

are also growing along with rising activity among young people, notably college students. Online

shopping has grown significantly in popularity and this has discovered a variety of advantages since the

act of buying products and services are over the internet. The primary benefits of online purchasing

include better costs, convenience and lesser journeys to a physical store. However, the manner in which

the risk is covered in online shopping can influence public awareness of it and this refers to

where people's subjective assessments of the likelihood of adverse events, or also called risk

perception (Paek, 2017).

Background of the Study

As more customers around the world gain access to the Internet, it is crucial to

understand what drives and prevents people from making online purchases. A key factor in the

success of e-business is the analysis of consumer behavior. The acceptance of information and

new technologies in the business community have been studied by researchers using a variety of

well-established theoretical frameworks and presently, online shopping is going through what

could be called a boom through the expansion of e-commerce. The Philippines had a 68.0

percent internet penetration rate at the beginning of 2022, constituting about 76.01 million of the

nation's total population (Kemp, 2022), making it the world's social media capital. A Rakuten

Insight survey on online shopping behavior conducted in June 2022, 86% of 10,279 respondents
in the Philippines with age group 16 years old and above stated that they shopped from e-

commerce marketplaces in the previous three months (Statistica, 2023) and the main reasons

why most online shoppers prefer online shopping are convenience, price, vouchers for free

shipping, variety of products, and bigger discounts. The never-ending demand of online

consumers drove up the demand and supply for popular products listed online. Thus, the Internet

at a customer’s perspective offered more benefits of reducing both the time and money spent in

shopping.

However, there are still some issues that customers must deal with when shopping online,

despite all the efforts of e-commerce corporations to fix them. Even with these problems, the

number of internet shoppers increased by 900 million with more people in 2021 compared to

2020, or 4.4%, every year (Gaubys, n.d). According to Schaik (2017), customers can change

their behaviour in buying a product according to the amount of danger they are willing to take.

This leads us to risk perceptions which are crucial in predicting the use of the precautions (Paek,

2017) .
References:

Gaubys, J. (n.d.). How Many People Shop Online in 2022? [Jun 2022 Update].

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-shop-online

Kemp, S. (2022, February 15). Digital 2022: The Philippines. DataReportal – Global Digital

Insights. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-philippines

Magee, M. (2003) ‘Boom or bust for eshopping,’ The Sunday Tribune. [Online], [Retrieved

December 22, 2003], http://web.lexisnexis.com/universe/document

Paek, H. (2017, March 29). Risk Perceptions and Risk Characteristics. Oxford Research

Encyclopedia of Communication.

https://oxfordre.com/communication/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/

acrefore-9780190228613-e-283;jsessionid=549769CA3CB94B8B15F6451C2A387082

Schaik, P. V. (2017, July). Risk perceptions of cyber-security and precautionary behaviour. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S074756321730359X

Statista. (2023, January 13). Preferred online shopping channels Philippines

2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1325691/philippines-online-shopping-modes-in-

the-past-three-months/