Electronic commerce (or "e-commerce") describes the use of electronic networks to simplify a business operation. With e-commerce, retailers now can advertise and sell their products easily over the Web. In Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy (Vol. 11, 2001), Canadian researchers investigated the factors that impact the level of trust in Web e-retailers. Five quantitative independent variables were used to model level of trust (y):
x1 = ease of navigation on the Web site
x2 = consistency of the Web site
x3 = ease of learning the Web interface
x4 = perception of the interface design
x5 = level of support available to the user
a. Write a first-order model for level of trust as a function of the five independent variables.
b. The model, part a, was fit to data collected for n = 66 visitors to e-retailers' Web sites and yielded a coefficient of determination of R2 = .58. Interpret this result.
c. Compute the F- statistic used to test the global utility of the model.
d. Using a = .10, give the appropriate conclusion for the test, part c.