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ABSTRACT
Media capabilities influence consumers’ trust in online exchanges. However, in the sharing economy, where consumers interact with service providers through a platform, conventional models of trust must be revisited. Our research identifies how media synchronicity and anonymity influence the relative importance of institution-based trust in sharing economy exchanges. We collected data from 248 ride-hailing customers and 288 cryptocurrency users to test a moderated mediation model of trust. We find that in the sharing economy media synchronicity and anonymity lead customers to develop trust toward service providers directly and undermine the impact of institutional trust mechanisms. This indicates that in sharing economy exchanges, trust can be built directly with the service provider, or alternatively, indirectly through the platform. Consequently, organizations in the sharing economy can strategically design their systems to engender trust by choosing between (1) emphasizing the platform’s reputation or (2) encouraging direct communication between the consumer and service providers.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2023.2229118
Notes
i This quotation is an excerpt from Ernest Hemingway’s letter to Dorothy Connable on February 17, 1953.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew Harrison
Andrew Harrison ([email protected]; corresponding author) is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. His research interests include online fraud, deception, media capabilities, and virtual worlds. Dr. Harrison is currently engaged in projects studying the influence of media capabilities on deceptive communication, training approaches for online fraud deterrence, and information communication technology use to support diversity and social inclusion. He has published in MIS Quarterly, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Information Systems, Business Horizons, and other scholarly journals.</BIO1>
Akmal Mirsadikov
Akmal Mirsadikov ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Wichita State University. He received his Ph.D. in MIS at Iowa State University. His research interests include computer mediated communication, deception detection, website credibility, information security, and privacy. Dr. Mirsadikov’s work has appeared in the AIS Transactions on HCI, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, and Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, among others.</BIO2>
Truong (Jack) Luu
Truong (Jack) Luu ([email protected]) is a Ph.D. student of Information Systems from the Department of Operations, Business Analytics, and Information Systems at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. His research focuses on understanding social phenomena, such as trust and privacy concerns, associated with disruptive/emerging technologies such as the sharing economy, decentralized finance, and AI. He has published, or has forthcoming research in, Journal of Management Information Systems, Computers in Human Behavior, and Journal of Information Science. He was also awarded the University of Cincinnati’s Digital Futures Fellowship for his work in decentralized finance research.