Based on the Electronic Commerce Enquête 97/98, one of the largest empirical investigations on electronic commerce issues in the German-speaking world (n>900), companies' perception of risk factors in electronic commerce is revealed using multivariate statistical procedures.

The presentation will highlight the integral relationships and the importance of technical and non-technical dimensions of risk related to electronic commerce in various industry segments. Companies belonging to different industry segments were asked to rate eight different electronic commerce scenarios with respect to their attitude and willingness to engage in electronic commerce transactions via the World Wide Web. The scenarios incorporate different levels of associated risks capturing the fundamental trade-off between opportunity for profit making versus danger of loss.

Using Conjoint Analysis the relative importance of risk factors including psychological risk, financial risk, and legal/technical risk was then quantified. In most cases legal/technical risk over financial and psychological risk is of most importance to the vast majority of firms. To group the responding companies for further investigation we used the variable "industry segment". Applying t-tests, main findings support the hypothesis that there are significant industry segment specific differences of risk perception. In conclusion, risk matters in varying degrees for all companies, thus helping us to better differentiate the importance of risk in electronic commerce.