Trust and Distrust in Two-sided Markets: An Example in the Sharing Economy

Mobile applications and Internet-based platforms continuously foster the rise of the sharing economy business model that can nowadays be found in various industries. In this paper, we focus on potential customers in the ridesharing industry. We use the setting of ‘BlaBlaCar’, a popular ridesharing platform, to investigate the implications of ‘trust’ and ‘distrust’ on the users’ intention to engage in a sharing encounter. In particular, we extend the research model by Mittendorf (2017) which investigates the influence of trust and risk in the sharing economy. In this regard, we differentiate between the platform and the sharing partners, while incorporating both trust and distrust. Our study employs survey data (n = 238) and structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Our results provide empirical evidence that trust and distrust have unequal effects on the respective user intention, which contributes to the understanding of two-sided market platforms. Academic and practical implications are discussed.

[1]  L. Hosmer.  TRUST: THE CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ETHICS , 1995 .

[2]  Dahui Li,et al.  Task Design, Motivation, and Participation in Crowdsourcing Contests , 2011, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[3]  Jin Chen,et al.  The Role of Mutual Trust in Building Members' Loyalty to a C2C Platform Provider , 2009, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[4]  Scott B. MacKenzie,et al.  Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[5]  C. Fornell,et al.  Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. , 1981 .

[6]  Norman L. Chervany,et al.  What Trust Means in E-Commerce Customer Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Conceptual Typology , 2001, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[7]  Joseph A. Cote,et al.  Multicollinearity and Measurement Error in Structural Equation Models: Implications for Theory Testing , 2004 .

[8]  Christoph Mittendorf,et al.  The Implications of Trust in the Sharing Economy - An Empirical Analysis of Uber , 2017, HICSS.

[9]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Trust and TAM in Online Shopping: An Integrated Model , 2003, MIS Q..

[10]  S. Gounaris,et al.  Assessing service quality on the Web: evidence from business‐to‐consumer portals , 2003 .

[11]  J. Byers,et al.  The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry , 2017 .

[12]  Paul A. Pavlou,et al.  Building Effective Online Marketplaces with Institution-Based Trust , 2004, Inf. Syst. Res..

[13]  Xitao Fan,et al.  Sensitivity of Fit Indexes to Misspecified Structural or Measurement Model Components: Rationale of Two-Index Strategy Revisited , 2005 .

[14]  Xianggui Qu,et al.  Multivariate Data Analysis , 2007, Technometrics.

[15]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  A Descriptive Content Analysis of Trust-Building Measures in B2B Electronic Marketplaces , 2006, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[16]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences , 2007, Behavior research methods.

[17]  Jae-Nam Lee,et al.  An Integrative Model of Trust on IT Outsourcing: From the Service Receiver's Perspective , 2005, PACIS.

[18]  P. M. Podsakoff,et al.  Self-Reports in Organizational Research: Problems and Prospects , 1986 .

[19]  P. Bentler,et al.  Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis : Conventional criteria versus new alternatives , 1999 .

[20]  J. Lewis,et al.  Trust as a Social Reality , 1985 .

[21]  Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa,et al.  Consumer trust in an Internet store , 2000, Inf. Technol. Manag..

[22]  S. Palekar.  Trust and ecommerce : A study of consumer perception , 2016 .

[23]  Christoph Mittendorf,et al.  What Trust means in the Sharing Economy: A provider perspective on Airbnb.com , 2016, AMCIS.

[24]  N. Luhmann.  Trust and Power , 1979 .

[25]  Qingyun Jiang,et al.  Antecedents and consequences of consumers’ trust in electronic intermediaries: An empirical study of hotel booking websites , 2009 .

[26]  J. H. Davis,et al.  An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust: Past, Present, and Future , 2007 .

[27]  Tibert Verhagen,et al.  Perceived risk and trust associated with purchasing at electronic marketplaces , 2006, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[28]  Jan H. Kietzmann,et al.  Ride On! Mobility Business Models for the Sharing Economy , 2014 .

[29]  D. Harrison McKnight,et al.  Distrust and trust in B2C e-commerce: do they differ? , 2006, ICEC '06.

[30]  Angelika Dimoka,et al.  The Nature and Role of Feedback Text Comments in Online Marketplaces: Implications for Trust Building, Price Premiums, and Seller Differentiation , 2006, Inf. Syst. Res..

[31]  Iis P. Tussyadiah.  An Exploratory Study on Drivers and Deterrents of Collaborative Consumption in Travel , 2015, ENTER.

[32]  Ned Kock,et al.  Lateral Collinearity and Misleading Results in Variance-Based SEM: An Illustration and Recommendations , 2012, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[33]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Validation Guidelines for IS Positivist Research , 2004, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[34]  Juho Hamari,et al.  The sharing economy: Why people participate in collaborative consumption , 2016, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[35]  Mareike Möhlmann.  Collaborative consumption: determinants of satisfaction and the likelihood of using a sharing economy option again , 2015 .

[36]  Fred D. Davis,et al.  User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models , 1989 .

[37]  Ilyoo B. Hong,et al.  The impact of consumer trust on attitudinal loyalty and purchase intentions in B2C e-marketplaces: Intermediary trust vs. seller trust , 2011, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[38]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  On the evaluation of structural equation models , 1988 .

[39]  Michael A. Cusumano,et al.  How traditional firms must compete in the sharing economy , 2014, Commun. ACM.

[40]  Anders Hjalmarsson,et al.  Peer-to-Peer Service Sharing Platforms: Driving Share and Share Alike on a Mass-Scale , 2013, ICIS.

[41]  S. Hunt,et al.  The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing , 1994 .

[42]  Thomas A. Weber.  Intermediation in a Sharing Economy: Insurance, Moral Hazard, and Rent Extraction , 2014, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[43]  Giana M. Eckhardt,et al.  Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing , 2012 .

[44]  P. Pavlou.  INTEGRATING TRUST IN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE WITH THE TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL: MODEL DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION , 2001 .

[45]  Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa,et al.  Is Anybody Out There? Antecedents of Trust in Global Virtual Teams , 1998, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[46]  Dan J. Kim,et al.  A trust-based consumer decision-making model in electronic commerce: The role of trust, perceived risk, and their antecedents , 2019 .

[47]  Thomas R. Eisenmann,et al.  Strategies for Two Sided Markets , 2006 .

[48]  Straub,et al.  Editor's Comments: An Update and Extension to SEM Guidelines for Administrative and Social Science Research , 2011 .

[49]  Henry H. Emurian,et al.  An overview of online trust: Concepts, elements, and implications , 2005, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[50]  M. Deutsch.  Trust and suspicion , 1958 .

[51]  Manon Arcand,et al.  Collaborative Consumption or the Rise of the Two-Sided Consumer , 2016 .

[52]  Christof Weinhardt,et al.  Trust in the Sharing Economy , 2016 .

[53]  Robert J. Vokurka,et al.  The empirical assessment of construct validity , 1998 .

[54]  Charles J. Kacmar,et al.  The impact of initial consumer trust on intentions to transact with a web site: a trust building model , 2002, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..