AbstractTrust is a widely studied phenomenon across numerous disciplines. E‐trust researchers have conducted a vast number of studies, but despite extensive interest in the issue, there are only few studies that concentrate on how consumers build e‐trust. Furthermore, consumer e‐trust is seen to be a function of both interpersonal and institutional e‐trustworthiness, but only limited number of attempts have been conducted to study the relative importance of interpersonal and institutional e‐trustworthiness in consumer e‐trust development process. The present article seeks to improve this situation by studying how consumers' perceived interpersonal and institutional e‐trustworthiness influence their intention to build e‐trust. The results of the study suggest that consumers build e‐trust actively, and the development of e‐trust is not only based on trustees' behaviour. Moreover, the results indicate that interpersonal e‐trustworthiness is more important than institutional e‐trustworthiness in consumers' e‐trust building.Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.