Results
Factor Analysis of Perceived Risk
The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy (0.90) and Bartlett’s test
of sphericity ( p ,0.001) indicated that data of perceived risk were suitable for factor
analysis. Three factors were extracted (see Table 1) and 63.3 per cent of variance was
explained.
The first factor contained five items concerning performance of a dwelling, thus it was
named ‘performance risk’. The second factor consisted of six items which were mostly
related to safety or security, therefore it was labelled as ‘safety-security risk’. The third
factor consisted of two items (risks of price fall after purchase and markup before
purchase) both associated with timing of house purchase, so it was labelled as ‘timing
risk’. Paired-samples T tests revealed that the home buyers were most worried about
performance risk (Mperformance¼4.02 vs. Msafety-security¼3.71, p ,0.001) and timing risk the
least (Mtiming¼3.38 vs. Msafety-security¼3.71, p ,0.001