The components of trustworthiness for higher education: a transnational perspective

Abstract

Despite the strong theoretical foundation for the role of trustworthiness in building buyer–seller relationships, a lack of empirical evidence exists to validate the importance of trustworthiness in the Higher Education (HE) sector. Our research examines the drivers of trustworthiness across two distinct cultures – the UK and India, providing a significant contribution to the body of knowledge by understanding the role and nature of trustworthiness within HE. The results of the proposed model offer important insights into the process of understanding trustworthiness within the HE sector. First we establish the importance for HE institutes of building trustworthiness. Next, we empirically validate trustworthiness using data from two countries, and finally we confirm the vnproposed model using two sampling points, and provide directions for practitioners and theorists alike.

Keywords:

• trustworthiness
• trust
• higher education
• structural equation modelling
• education development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Alison Collins, David Fagg and Diana Fagg for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper.