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

TLDR

Trust is a vital relationship concept that requires clarification because researchers across disciplines have defined it in many different ways. This paper develops a parsimonious interdisciplinary typology of trust types for e‑commerce, aiming to facilitate comparison, communication, and linkage of trust constructs to consumer actions. The typology defines conceptual‑level constructs—disposition to trust, institution‑based trust, and trusting beliefs and intentions—decomposes them into measurable subconstructs, and relates them to existing Internet relationship constructs. The study posits that web‑vendor interventions influence consumer behavior partly through consumers’ trusting beliefs and intentions.

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.