A predictive model for e-commerce consumer expenditure in EC countries

Describing and predicting consumer expenditure on a country or cross-national level has a long tradition in theoretical and applied economics and econometrics. This paper is a first attempt in describing aggregate eCommerce consumer expenditure among European Commission (EC) countries. After brief introduction of possible theoretical models which explain the variation in eCommerce consumer expenditure among observed countries, a list of important predictors has been discussed. The results generated by regression analysis show that non-traditional factors such as online time (measured by “Average online time per citizen per month”) and consumer lack of confidence, i.e. mistrust (measured by “Effects of security concerns on eCommerce”) are more reliable predictors of aggregate eCommerce consumer expenditure in EC countries than the traditional factors such as disposable income and price of the products.