Why are strangers trusted more during trade fairs? A literature review on the conceptual model of general trust formation

Purpose Considering that low-level general trust may hinder communication, this study aims to detect the factors that can influence general trust between exhibitors and visitors during business-to-business trade fairs. Design/methodology/approach Based on a literature review and stakeholders’ behavior analysis, a conceptual model of general trust formation between exhibitors and visitors is proposed. Findings The preconditions of strangers’ general trust patterns mainly include their early experience regarding trust, institutional trust in the environment and trust propensity. Stakeholders’ treatment, trust transfer, on-site restraints, reward and punishment expansion and on-site personnel arrangement may facilitate the formation of general trust between exhibitors and visitors. Research limitations/implications This paper is a conceptual article that requires further investigation to verify the main factors that influence general trust and the impact of general trust on other trust components between exhibitors and visitors. Practical implications Organizers, exhibitors and visitors should pay attention to participants’ selection, supervision, self-discipline and personnel management before and during trade fairs. International and small-scale, especially new trade fairs in developed and developing countries, must consider additional measures to improve general trust. Originality/value The existing literature has not focused on general trust in the trade fair context. In this paper, research on network and relationship marketing is further deepened in terms of a specific trust type. The interactions between stakeholders before and during fair may promote general trust among participants than in other settings, which partially explains why trade fair (even other two-sided markets) can increase social capital.

Interpersonal Trust and Technology Trust in Information Systems Research - A Comprehensive Review and A Conceptual Model

Trust is a crucial factor in personal as well as online exchanges due to their impersonal nature. In the information systems discipline, past research proposed and tested interpersonal trust formation as well as continuance in several contexts. Extending beyond interpersonal relationships, trust has been extrapolated as technology trust and applied to various technology contexts such as recommendation agents, inanimate software and objects. This paper presents a comprehensive review of interpersonal and technology trust constructs as applicable to ecommerce and technology contexts. Based on findings from past research this paper synthesizes research on interpersonal trust, trustworthiness and trust modes, and proposes a combined model of trust constructs. Based on the literature review and results from past research, this paper identifies an important gap in literature and proposes bases of technology trust constructs as an important contribution to literature. The theoretical and managerial implications are presented.

The mechanisms of trust formation under different conditions of political identity: An experiment among Taiwanese voters

Trust and cooperation within and between political identity groups are important issues for building a healthy civil society and democratic development. However, this research problem has seldom been analyzed under different political identity conditions by means of experimental design in Taiwan. Presidential elections have reproduced the polarization between two groups of voters supporting different presidential candidates. Therefore, in this article the authors are interested in whether political identity matters in trust exchanges among strangers. This study applies a three-stage trust game experiment to examine how trust is developed within pairs of subjects with either the same or different political identity. In the first stage subjects were randomly matched in pairs as trustor and trustee, and their political identities were not disclosed. In the second stage the pairs were still randomly matched, but each subject was informed of their partner’s political identity. In the final stage each subject could choose the preferred political identity of his/her partner. There were two mechanisms of trust-behavior formation under different identity conditions. The first mechanism was political identity. Supporters of presidential candidate Ma Ying-Jeou were more trustful than supporters of candidate Tsai Ing-Wen. Under the condition of subjects knowing their partner’s political identity, the identity effect became strongly significant in stages 2 and 3 of the experiment, especially for that of the Ma–Ma group. The second mechanism was mutuality. The mutuality effect was very significant in all three stages of the trust experiment, and that effect was stronger for those who voted for Tsai.

Hierarchal Formation of Trust on Peer-to-Peer Lodging Platforms

Based on the concept of trust from a hierarchical approach and with the support of processing fluency theory, the current study investigates customer trust, and its relationships with flow experience, satisfaction, and repatronage intention on peer-to-peer (P2P) lodging platforms. Customer flow experience on the Airbnb platform is verified to be an antecedent of economy-based trust. The hierarchical organization of trust is also proved applicable in the context of sharing economy websites (economy-based trust → information-based trust → identification-based trust). The results provide marketers and hosts of P2P lodging platforms effective strategies to assist customers form trust in sequential steps and in multiple perspectives. The present study is a pioneer which in depth examined trust formation in the emerging sharing economy platforms.

Modeling Users’ Trust in Drought Forecasts

Forecast valuation studies play a key role in understanding the determinants of the value of weather and climate forecasts. Such understanding provides opportunities to increase the value that users can obtain from forecasts, which can in turn increase the use of forecasts. One of the most important factors that influences how users process forecast information and incorporate forecasts into their decision-making is trust in forecasts. Despite the evidence from empirical and field-based studies, modeling users’ trust in forecasts has not received much attention in the literature and is therefore the focus of our study. We propose a theoretical model of trust in information, built into a forecast valuation framework, to better understand 1) the role of trust in users’ processing of drought forecast information and 2) the dynamic process of users’ trust formation and evolution. Using a numerical experiment, we show that considering the dynamic nature of trust is critical in more realistic assessment of forecast value. We find that users may not perceive a potentially valuable forecast as such until they trust it enough, implying that exposure to even highly accurate forecasts may not immediately translate into forecast use. Ignoring this dynamic aspect could overestimate the economic gains from forecasts. Furthermore, the model offers hypotheses with regard to targeting strategies that can be tested with empirical and field-based studies and used to guide policy interventions.

The concept of collaboration windows on the example of world cases

The article presents the concept of the collaborative windows as a tool for establishing cooperation between the maximum number of stakeholders to solve problems of different hierarchical levels. Through the synthesis of theoretical developments by B. Gray, J. Kingdon, and D. Lobster, the author proposes an integrative model of the collaborative window by crossing four relatively independent flows, namely: problem, procedural, political response, and organizational-structured ones. The researcher notes that except for the outlined components, external triggers and the figure of the collaborationist politician with a developed network of contacts play an important role in maintaining the potential of the collaboration window to further unite all stakeholders on a single collaboration platform. The latter serves as a space to facilitate the establishment of communications and the trust formation between the participants of the collaboration. But even the presence of all these elements does not guarantee the longevity of joint cross-sectoral projects due to the lack of adaptive capabilities of temporal and spatial factors because of their dynamic nature. The researcher also outlines some issues with the creation of collaborative platforms such as liquidity traps, power distribution, common accountability standards, and monitoring of participants’ actions. The article presents not only a schematic model of the collaboration window, but also examples from the world practice of cooperation between public, private, and civil sectors. The author also analyzes the transformation of urban infrastructure within the EU on an integrative model, highlighting the relevant flows and platforms of joint interaction. The collaborative window technique can be applied to a different range of common practices, as the outlined flows take place in virtually every policy area.