The Influence of Digital Literacy on Consumer Purchasing Decisions in E-Commerce Platforms: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study Based on an Indonesian Synthetic Population
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66084/ebmj.v3i02.636Keywords:
digital literacy; purchasing decision; e-commerce; Monte Carlo simulation; synthetic population; consumer trustAbstract
The rapid expansion of Indonesian e-commerce has outpaced the growth of consumer digital literacy, while existing empirical studies are hampered by heterogeneous instruments and limited methodological transparency. This study examines the influence of digital literacy on e-commerce consumer purchasing decisions using a fully disclosed Monte Carlo simulation based on a synthetic population—all data are synthetic and not the product of a field survey. A synthetic population of 400 consumer agents was generated through calibration to the four pillars of the Indonesian Digital Literacy Index 2022 (digital culture, digital ethics, digital skills, and digital safety; national index 3.54), and a structural model linking digital literacy, e-commerce trust, and purchasing decisions was estimated using OLS regression and Sobel mediation testing. The results show a positive and significant direct effect (B = 0.506; β = 0.309; p < 0.001) and a significant indirect effect through e-commerce trust (indirect effect = 0.170; Sobel z = 4.206; p < 0.001), with R² = 21.3%. The validity of the analytical pipeline was verified twofold: 1,000 replications confirmed unbiased parameter recovery (mean β̂ = 0.448 against a true value of 0.45), and 1,000 null-scenario (placebo) replications produced a false-positive rate of 5.7%—close to the nominal α = 5%—demonstrating that the significance of the findings is not a pipeline artifact. Digital safety was identified as the most decisive pillar. The novelty of this study lies in the development of a Monte Carlo simulation model based on the four pillars of Indonesian digital literacy as an instrument for preliminary estimation, statistical power analysis, and a falsifiable baseline prior to empirical field surveys.
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