Web seals have recently been subject to increasing skepticism from consumers. This study develops and tests a theoretical model of web seal skepticism by integrating multiple theoretical perspectives. We explore how web seal skepticism emerges and harms consumers’ perceptions. The results of an online experiment with 757 participants demonstrate that consumer skepticism increases consumers’ mistrust in information system providers and makes them feel less protected. Our findings also indicate that situational factors (web seal unreliability and seal authority incredibility) are significant antecedents of web seal skepticism and that consumers’ inferences of providers’ manipulative intent mediate the relationships.

In a thought-provoking paper published in EJIS more than a decade ago, Lyytinen and colleagues asked the question, why does the “old world” perform poorly in high academic impact publishing? This triggered a lively debate on the epistemological and methodological traditions, preferences, and research practices of Europeans versus North Americans that has lasted until today. Is it still true, we asked ourselves, that European scholars generate less academic impact than their North American colleagues? Is the European research context indeed disadvantageous for developing high academic impact research? In this paper, we set out to explore these questions by analysing the Google Scholar profiles of 1713 IS researchers from all over the world. Our findings show that Northern and Western European scholars no longer seem to differ significantly from their North American peers, even though the different research contexts still exercise a certain level of influence. However, is this a development the “old world” desires? We provide an assessment and some suggestions for the future of European IS research.