Abstract:
Electronic commerce has grown rapidly throughout the past twenty years to be one of the most dynamic
channels of international trade, which essentially redefined conventional business strategies. However, beyond
those development, perceived risk continues to present a severe challenge to a large proportion of students in
Sri Lanka and stress the necessity of further actions in order to strengthen consumer confidence. This study
aims to examine how five key dimensions of perceived risk such as financial risk, product risk, privacy risk,
delivery risk and social risk affects the online purchase intention of Sri Lankan university students. The study
will specifically investigate how this risk perceptions influence student’s likelihood to make purchases, their
intent to repurchase and their recommendation behavior. The population of this study will be university students
from 17 government in Sri Lanka and the sample will be 220 students. Convenience sampling will be used to
ensure practical access to a wide demographic of students. The data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics,
reliability testing, correlation and multiple regression analysis. The study will contribute to the literature gap in
a significant manner contextualizing relative risk in the context of online purchasing behavior of the university
students in Sri Lanka. Practically, the findings will provide effective suggestions to policy formulators and e
commerce-based firms to reduce the fear among students in order to establish a stronger penetration of e
commerce within the population.
