PurposeThe main purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting e-trust perception of tourists using Web-based travel intermediaries (WBTIs). Cognitive and affective attitude components are believed to be important in assessing the e-trust perception of tourists. However, this paper aims to investigate if self-efficacy would be an important predictor for e-trust in the context of WBTIs.Design/methodology/approachThe quantitative research method is used in this study. Data were collected by the survey method from the tourists who visited Istanbul/Turkey and made their bookings via Web-based travel intermediaries. Hierarchical linear regression analysis is used to investigate to which extent age/gender/years of usage, self-efficacy, cognitive and affective components are affecting tourists’ e-trust perception.FindingsAccording to the study results, self-efficacy, the attitude components, in addition to the demographic variables, predict a significant amount of variance (45%) in e-trust for Web-based travel intermediaries. Besides attitude components, self-efficacy is put forward as significantly important in the perception of e-trust.Originality/valueThe novelty of the current study is that it uses hierarchical regression to test if self-efficacy would be an important predictor for e-trust while examining the effect of various predictive variables in sequential order. Therefore, the relative importance of this e-trust predictor can be evaluated based on how much it contributes to the prediction over and above other important antecedents of e-trust according to the literature. This study provides evidence that the social cognitive theory may be useful in understanding e-trust in online tourist behavior.