Understanding the trust building mechanisms in social media. Regulatory effectiveness, trust transfer, and gender difference

Pages498-517
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2018-0072
Date17 September 2018
Published date17 September 2018
AuthorYongqiang Sun,Yan Zhang,Xiao-Liang Shen,Nan Wang,Xi Zhang,Yanqiu Wu
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management
Understanding the trust building
mechanisms in social media
Regulatory effectiveness, trust transfer, and
gender difference
Yongqiang Sun and Yan Zhang
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Xiao-Liang Shen
Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Nan Wang
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Xi Zhang
College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, and
Yanqiu Wu
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose Although the impacts of trust on information disclosure have been well recognized, the trust
building mechanisms in social media are still underexplored. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to
explore two trust building mechanisms, namely, institution-based and transference-based trust building and
identify how these two mechanisms vary across gender.
Design/methodology/approach An onlinesurvey was conducted to collectdata. The partial leastsquares
method was used toexamine the relationships among regulatory effectiveness, three trustingperceptions and
disclosure intention. A cross-group path coefficient comparison method was used to test gender differences.
Findings The results suggest that regulatory effectiveness affects competence- and character-based trust
and these impacts are stronger for males than for females. Both competence- and character-based
trust influence general trust in members while their impacts vary. Competence-based trust is more important
for males while character-based trust is more important for females.
Originality/value This study contributes to social media literature by identifying the two trust building
mechanisms with special attention to the role of regulatory effectiveness and trust transfer. Further, this
study also sheds light on how these two mechanisms vary across gender.
Keywords Social media, Information behaviour, Information disclosure, Gender difference,
Regulatory effectiveness, Trust transfer
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social media as a collection of highly interactive platforms via which individuals
and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content
(Kietzmann et al., 2011, p. 241), has become an important channel for information
dissemination and communication in recent years (Chen, 2013; Yin et al., 2018; Zhan et al.,
2016; Sun, Liu, Chen, Wu, Shen and Zhang, 2017). As the sustainability of social media
heavily relies on the users who voluntarily contribute to the platform (Shen, Li, Sun and
Zhou, 2018; Wang et al., 2018), it is of great importance to explore the factors affecting
information disclosure behavior (Bazarova and Choi, 2014; Aharony, 2016). Among the
many predictors of information disclosure, trust has been found to be one of the most
important antecedents (Treiblmaier and Chong, 2011; Zhang et al., 2016).
However, most social media research concentrates on the impacts or the consequences of
trust on information disclosure (i.e. trust outcome relationship) through regarding trust as a
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 5, 2018
pp. 498-517
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-03-2018-0072
Received 26 March 2018
Revised 19 June 2018
9 August 2018
Accepted 20 August 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
498
AJIM
70,5
means to mitigate privacy risks and enhance interpersonal relationships (Mesch, 2012;
Chen and Sharma, 2013; Lin et al., 2016), the antecedents of trust or those factors which lead to
the formation of trust (i.e. antecedent trust relationship) have been lessstudied. Prior studies
in other research contexts (e.g. e-commerce) have identified a variety of trust building
mechanisms including knowledge-based mechanism, institution-based mechanism and
transference-based mechanism (Gefen et al., 2003). Knowledge-based mechanism depends on
usersaccumulated knowledge or internal/external usage experience ( Bansal et al., 2016; Shen,
Li, Sun and Wang, 2018), which can be reflected by frequency of information disclosure in this
study. Further, due to our research focus on the inter-relationship between different types of
trust belief, we regard the frequency as a control variable in the model. The other two
mechanisms, institution-based mechanism (Pavlou and Gefen, 2004; McKnight and Chervany,
2001; Fang et al., 2014) and transference-based mechanism (Wang et al., 2013; Chen and Shen,
2015; Stewart, 2003; Lim et al., 2006) are widely used as the trust building strategies.
Specifically, institution-based mechanism stresses on the structural assurance implemented by
third parties to protect users from potential risks (Fang et al., 2014; Gefen et al.,2003),while
transference-based mechanism emphasizes that a trustors (e.g. A) trust toward a trustee (e.g.
B) can be transferred to his/her trust toward anotherperson (e.g. C) who has a connection with
the trustee (e.g. B) (Wang et al., 2013; Stewart, 2003). Trust building mechanisms have been
taken as the foundation for e-commerce practitioners to design their strategies. Similar with the
security issue in the e-commerce context, privacy l eakage is increasingly prevalent and severe
on social media platforms. For example, Facebook admits that the personal information of 87m
users were leaked to a third-party, leading to a large-scale privacy scandal[1]. Such privacy
leakage has been proved to be the biggest inhibitor of user information disclosure (Krasnova
et al., 2010) and it could be eliminated by obtainin g user trust. Considering that it is feasible for
social media practitioners to leverage different mechanisms to establish trust in the social
media context, the first research objective of this study is to examine the trust building
mechanisms (e.g. institution- and transference-based mechanisms) in the social media context.
According to the previous literatures, there are two types of trust belief or perception in the
social media context: trust in institution and trust in members (Bellavista et al., 2008; Beldad and
Kusumadewi, 2015). Trust in institution refers to the trust toward the social media platforms
while trust in members captures the trust toward other users of the social media platforms,
respectively. Although prior studies have shed light on the independent impacts of these two
trust perceptions on information disclosure, the inter-relationship between them has not been
examined (Rus and Iglic, 2005). This study tries to depict the relationship between trust in
institution and trust in members through the transference-based trust building mec hanism.
Further, consistent with e-commerce literatures (e.g. Fang et al., 2014) which indicate that
regulatory effectiveness is the structural assurance implemented by social media platforms to
eliminate the risk of inappropriate collection, use and dissemination of usersdisclosed
information (Yang and Liu, 2014). This study will examine the role of regulatory effectiveness in
forming userstrust in institution through the institution-based trust building mechanism.
Furthermore, prior studies have provided increasing evidences that females and males
differ in their trust-related decisions (Awad and Ragowsky, 2008; Riedl et al., 2010).
Specifically, previous studies have suggested that males and females rely on different
trusting mechanisms and the impacts of trust on satisfaction (Robert and You, 2018),
intention (Awad and Ragowsky, 2008) and behavior (Chai et al., 2011) vary across gender.
Accordingly, we are wondering whether the institution-based and transference-based trust
building mechanisms vary across gender too. For example, institution-based trust building
mechanisms may play a more important role for males than for females because prior
studies have indicated that males pay more attention to the cognitive and instrumental
goals (e.g. Zhang et al., 2015). Therefore, the second research objective of this study is to
investigate the gender differences in trust building mechanisms.
499
Trust building
mechanisms in
social media

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