What is Trust? A Conceptual Analysis and an Interdisciplinary Model

Trust is a vital relationship concept that needs further conceptual analysis, not just empirical testing. Trust has been defined in so many ways by so many different researchers across disciplines that a typology of the various types of trust is sorely needed. This paper justifies and develops such an interdisciplinary typology and defines the constructs within the typology. These constructs, though defined at the personal level, are scalable to various levels of analysis and may be used in various trust situations, including IS/customer relations. Trust is central to interpersonal (Golembiewski & McConkie, 1975) and commercial (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) relationships. Trust is crucial wherever risk, uncertainty, or interdependence exist (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman, 1995; Mishra, 1996). These conditions flourish in many settings, and certainly exist in the relationship between Information Systems (IS) people and their customers. Trust has been found to be important to IS/customer performance (Nelson & Cooprider, 1996), and is also key in virtual teams (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1998) and e-commerce (Ba, Whinston & Zhang, 1999; Hoffman, et al., 1999; Jarvenpaa, Tranctinsky & Vitale, 1998; Noteberg, Christaanse & Wallage, 1999; Stewart, 1999). As conditions become more uncertain because of downsizing, mergers, and more complex business dealings, the need for trust grows (Mishra, 1996)

What Trust Means in E-Commerce Customer Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Conceptual Typology

ABSTRACT: Trust is a vital relationship concept that needs clarification because researchers across disciplines have defined it in so many different ways. A typology of trust types would make it easier to compare and communicate results, and would be especially valuable if the types of trust related to one other. The typology should be interdisciplinary because many disciplines research e-commerce. This paper justifies a parsimonious interdisciplinary typology and relates trust constructs to e-commerce consumer actions, defining both conceptual-level and operational-level trust constructs. Conceptual-level constructs consist of disposition to trust (primarily from psychology), institution-based trust (from sociology), and trusting beliefs and trusting intentions (primarily from social psychology). Each construct is decomposed into measurable subconstructs, and the typology shows how trust constructs relate to already existing Internet relationship constructs. The effects of Web vendor interventions on consumer behaviors are posited to be partially mediated by consumer trusting beliefs and trusting intentions in the e-vendor. KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: Customer relationships, human issues in e-commerce, Internet consumers, trust