Assessing Internet Source Credibility

Transcription

1 Assessing Research-in-Progress Thomas F. Stafford University of Memphis Robin S. Poston University of Memphis Jason Rhea University of Memphis ABSTRACT Little work in IT trust has extended the source credibility model from mass communications to the context of online media. Existing constructs arise from reference discipline concepts of interpersonal trust, but consumers view the Internet differently than they view individuals. We develop an model that compares the effects of Trusting Intentions and Cosmetic Credibility on Purchase Intentions for an Internet security application provided by an Internet Service Provider. Results indicate that aspects of are conceptually different from constructs demonstrated in both prior IS research and mass communications research. We find that the popular operationalization of trusting dispositions of buyers for the Internet medium is conceptually different from the popular IS operationalization of trust drawn from interpersonal buyer-seller interaction research. We also determine that characteristics of Internet sites are more predictive of subsequent purchase intentions than are user trusting intentions. Keywords Online Trust,, IT Trust INTRODUCTION Trust is a critical construct in ecommerce research. Buyers typically will not purchase online if they do not trust online retailers (Gefen et al., 2003; Gefen et al., 2006). Without considering trust, understanding why buyers engage in ecommerce is problematic. Trust serves to balance against uncertainty arising from online security threats such as malware and viruses, as well as hackers and interpersonal fraud in the form of phishing and pharming (Dinev and Hu, 2007; Hu and Dinev, 2005). Trust also salves concerns for privacy in online activities (Dinev and Hart 2006) as well as buyer concerns about opportunistic behaviors of sellers (e.g, Doney and Cannon, 1997; Ganeson, 1994). Transaction-specific suspicion of opposite parties in commercial exchanges is a theoretical staple of institutional economics (e.g, Williamson, 1985), which has been applied in relationship marketing research to explain the importance of trust in overcoming transaction-based risks (Dwyer, Schurr and Oh, 1987; Ganeson, 1994). The literature that has considered trust in online contexts has typically operationalized from interpersonal contexts (e.g., Gefen et al., 2006), although some approaches adopt an institutional perspective (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995; McKnight, Choudhury and Kacmar, 2002; McKnight, Cummings and Chervany, 1998). None, however, view online trust as dependent on the online medium and its related technologies, and this study offers a model of trust in online media developed specific to the online context. THEORETICAL ORIGINS OF THE TRUST CONSTRUCT Buyers and sellers routinely categorize each other (cf., Stafford, 1996; Stafford et al., 1995) which is why trust is a compelling research topic for online contexts. Consumers are typically considered to be suspicious of sellers, in line with a schemer schema (Wright, 1986), so trust is a highly compelling construct for business relationships of all sorts. Yet, trust as generally defined and theorized in MIS research may well be misspecified as a construct for many of its uses, despite some exceedingly detailed development in the literature (for a summary, see Gefen et al., 2006). The issue regards a primary Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,

2 divergence in the nature of trust as a theoretical concept about a half century ago in the reference disciplines from which the currently-popular IS trust construct has been derived, and fresh considerations of the path not chosen in that theoretical divergence provides some very subtle distinctions between how people trust each other, one-to-one, and how people may likely trust each other through intermediating technologies. Perhaps people simply regard the machinery of the Internet as the source of the commercial communications they consider and disregard the humans behind it? In distinguishing between operationalizations of trust developed for interpersonal contexts with operationalizations tailored to mediated contexts, media models that consider trust as a component of source credibility can probably supplement what we have already learned from interpersonal contexts. Intermediated operationalizations can also enhance what we hope to learn about the nature of buyer trust in the Web sites where ecommerce occurs. The source credibility model of mass communications research can be useful in intermediated contexts (Fogg, 2003; Fogg and Tseng, 1999), but the trustworthiness and expertise measures directly adapted directly from prior mass media contexts do not fully capture the richness and complexity of the online metamedium and the domain for these dimensions must be newly resampled for the emergent online context (Fogg, 2004). This is because the dimensions of source credibility studied to date were designed for assessing old media, its effects and communicators, whereas the new media bundled in the context of the internet are quite different holistic as opposed to monolithic and old measures simply can t represent the richness of new mediated contexts. New measures must be developed. That is the purpose of this paper: to begin the process of demonstrating the credibility in its new online context. Simply adapting earlier measures of media-based source credibility to online contexts is not sufficient (Fogg, 2004) since too much time has passed and media have changed too much since their development. If mediated models of trust are to be used in online research in supplement to the currently employed interpersonal models, constructs developed specifically for the online context will be required. The process starts with new domain sampling and exploratory construct development (e.g., Stafford, Poston and Paul, 2012). The process continues with modeling such constructs in important business contexts to demonstrate their efficacy. The paper proceeds as follows: first, there is review of varying dimensions of trust currently seen in the IS literature ranging from both interpersonal and institutional perspectives. Then, the source credibility model of mass communications is reviewed for application to the Internet context. As part of this discussion, the most recent work on exploring the new domain of media-based Internet trust is reviewed (e.g., Stafford et al., 2012), whereupon we adopt emerging exploratory constructs for developing a model of customer subscription to an anti-spyware application offered by their Internet Service Provider. This model benchmarks emerging intermediated dimensions of with important business outcomes. We then conclude with a discussion of potential applications of such validated measures in ecommerce and Information and Communications Technology research. PARALLEL PATHS IN THE LITERATURE Researchers not familiar with communications theory or the literature on personal selling may not recognize the subtle but important distinctions between the sort of trust that develops between human exchange partners in sales relationships, and the types of trust that exist in mediated contexts. The important point is that human communications are often carried by intervening media, and this suggests that the credibility of communications media should be considered as part of online trust. An important consideration, however, is that the way in which Internet users view their online exchange partners is probably not the same as how individual persons view other individual persons in interpersonal contexts. The confidence that buyers have in Internet sites is better represented by an emergent concept of intermediated rather than interpersonal trust (e.g., Fogg, 2003; Reeves and Nass, 1996). This divergence of the several theoretical meanings of trust resembles the divergence in the communications theory literature between interpersonal communication and mass communication some years ago (Rogers and Valenti, 1993). This divergence arose from Schramm and his students discussions (e.g., Berlo, 1977; Schramm, 1971) of the communication process model that was popularized by Shannon and Weaver s (1949) Information Theory thesis. It is this subtle but important distinction between interpersonal and intermediated communication that drives the need to explore source effects conceptualizations of credibility and its subsidiary concept, trustworthiness, in the context of consumer interactions with the Internet. The view of trust that has been largely missing in the MIS research comes from the Yale School research team led by Carl Hovland. At the close of World War II these scholars conducted a massive study on the topic of Nazi propaganda (best characterized in Hovland et al. 1953). The source credibility perspective that arose from this represents the mass communication side of the mass/personal communication theory divergence in Internet trust research. The Yale theorists provided starting points which would guide mass communications theorists through two generations of inquiry into the nature of source credibility as the overarching concept in which trust was embedded (this evolution is well documented by Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,

3 McGuire s 1973 and 1985 essays). Marketing researchers adopted this emergent source credibility model to understand how mediated persuasion worked. This led to a source effects model in which the characteristic of trust was embedded, along with several other important factors such as expertise and attractiveness (see Ohanian s 1990 celebrity endorser article for a succinct review). While communications theorists and market researchers were expanding the Yale source effects model, organizational psychologists were thinking about how the process of negotiation between suspicious transaction parties worked. Their theoretical contribution led to a view of trust as a single construct (see the earlier studies from Deutsch, 1960, or Lindskold, 1978, and the more recent study from Mayer et al., 1995). The organizational psychology research represents the personal communication side of the theoretical divergence of trust research, and this is the path that has informed much of what we currently know about trust in the IS literature (cf., Gefen, 2002; Gefen et al., 2003; Komiak et al., 2005; Lim et al., 2006; McKnight et al., 1998; 2002; Nicolau and McKnight, 2006; Pavlou, 2002; Pavlou et al., 2007; Stewart, 2003; Wang and Benbasat, 2007). When considering prominent trust research in MIS, only Benbasat has acknowledged the importance of source effects theories, and then only to call for research in that area (e.g., Xiao and Benbasat, 2007). Of the researchers calling on the concept of credibility (e.g., Ba and Pavlou, 2002; Pavlou and Dimoka, 2006; Fogg, 2003; Fogg and Tseng, 1999; Fogg et al., 2001; Xiao and Benbasat, 2007), only Fogg and his colleagues are drawing directly from the Yale School tradition, and then simply to observe that there have not been any large quantitative studies done on the nature of Web site credibility (Fogg et al., 2001). The Role of Source Credibility Online When considering trust in the realm of ecommerce, the well-respected communications theory paradigm of source credibility offers new perspectives yet to be considered (Xiao and Benbasat, 2007, p. 201). The only prior consideration of anything approaching the source credibility concept comes from Joe Cannon s components of trust conceptualization for personal selling contexts (e.g., Ba and Pavlou, 2002; Pavlou and Dimoka, 2006). Credibility and benevolence combine to form interpersonal trust in this view. Doney and Cannon (1997) evolve their credibility concept from Ganeson s (1994) interpretation of Lindskold (1978) the expectation that a partner s statements can be relied upon. This objective credibility of Lindskold operationalizes as reliance upon the veracity of another and is conceptually similar to the meaning of trust found in research based on Mayer et al. s (1995) definition. Even so, this characterization of credibility based on personal veracity is not conceptually similar to the mass communications source credibility paradigm which operationalizes credibility in terms of the combined effects of trusworthiness, expertise and attractiveness. The fundamental basis of source credibility in mass communications has always been found in the combination of trustworthiness (what Lindskold calls objective credibility ) and expertise (Hovland et al., 1953). More recent considerations have been augmented this view with the source attractiveness model, consisting of likeability, similarity and attraction characteristics (e.g., McGuire, 1973; 1985; Ohanian, 1990), in addition to the more traditional expertise and trustworthiness constructs. The Differing Aspects of Trust Trust has frequently been considered in the MIS literature to be the expectation that others will not behave opportunistically in the face of vulnerability of the trusting party (Gefen et al., 2003). This represents the interpersonal view of trust as adopted from the personal selling literature, which, in turn, relies on a transaction costs perspective of institutional economics (e.g., Anderson and Narus, 1990). This view of trust has been applied in organizations in the context workplace employee interactions (Mayer et al., 1995), or investigated in sales dyads between buyers and sellers (Doney and Cannon, 1997). It has, however, remained an interpersonal construct when used in MIS research for use in mainly impersonal ecommerce contexts. The problem with using conceptualizations of interpersonal trust brought from research on the nature of personal selling or workplace relationships is that trust plays an entirely different role in buyer-seller interactions than it does anywhere else in life. Buyer-seller interactions are characterized by background psychological categorization processes in which trust is required to overcome natural suspicions that buyers have of sellers (Fiske and Pavelchak, 1986; Stafford, 1996). Buyers routinely stereotype sellers and do this so automatically and generally that they are often not aware of the process (Stafford, 1996). The economic concept of transaction-specific risks (Williamson, 1985) suggests that risk is inherent in all commercial exchanges, particularly those taking place online (cf., Bakos, 1998; Glassberg and Merhout, 2007; Malone et al., 1987; 1989). But, taking interpersonal trust constructs from the sales literature while construing their operation to be consistent with the institutional construct of risk in online transactions raises issues of ecological validity in such context-modified theoretical scenarios. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,

4 Except for studies that specifically focus on Internet mediated personal selling, such as an online auction with an identified human seller (cf., Ba and Pavlou, 2002; Pavlou and Dimoka, 2006; Pavlou and Geffen, 2004), it is hard to make a case for constructs based on personal selling rubrics of trust being contextually similar to ecommerce scenarios. Human computer interaction can be person-like (Reeves and Nass, 1996; Xiao and Benbasat, 2007) but is still distinct from human interpersonal interaction. Hence, trust that technology users place in their machine interactions should be studied in a unique and independent context. Based on exploratory research that sampled the domain of, while providing two key dimensions of trust-like characteristics in online contexts (e.g., Stafford et al., 2012), we propose a model that compares the effects of a dimension of trusting intent combined with a dimension of Web site cosmetic characteristics as a signal of credibility in motivating behavioral intentions of Internet customers to subscribe to a computer security application that their Internet Service Provider was offering. METHOD The scenario in which the exploratory dimensions of were fitted for modeling against business outcomes involved a prominent Internet Service Provider, America Online. The provider wished to investigate the characteristics of its customers which might lead to successfully launching a new spyware protection service being offered by subscription. It was suspected by executives that trust factors would have important effects on purchase intentions. Our involvement ranged from consultation on questionnaire construction to analysis and testing of causal hypotheses related to the credibility dimensions adapted from Stafford et al. (2012). The scale indicators for AOL s desired set of behavioral intention indicators (Purchase Intentions), as well as the two constructs (Trusting Intentions and Cosmetic Credibility) are listed in the Appendix. The indicators for the constructs are adapted directly from Stafford et al. (2012), while the Purchase Intentions indicators were supplied by AOL at their request, in order to examine the influence of source credibility components on characteristics considered to be related to potential subscription to the proffered service. It was expected that both constructs would be strongly related with each other, and that each would also have significant causal links to the AOL behavioral indicator set, characterized as Purchase Intentions. A structural model specified to these expectations was fitted, with data drawn from 1006 AOL subscribers who were recruited by the provider from their online research site, Opinion Place. Subjects participated in exchange for American Airlines frequent flyer points. America Online randomly assigns subjects to studies based on a sequential rotation of assignment to their pool of active research studies (Stafford and Gonier, 2004), but due to customer privacy requirements demographic information was not provided to us for reporting. However, AOL s own demographic summaries of their research respondent population routinely benchmarks their subject pool to both the general Internet population and the America Online user population. These statistical summaries are summarized in Table 1. Gender Male Female Opinion Place (participants) 35% 65% AOL (members) 45% 55% Internet (general users) 49% 51% U.S. Population 48% 52% Age % 25% 30% 23% 12% 16% 18% 27% 24% 16% 14% 21% 26% 23% 15% 12% 20% 21% 15% 32% Married 58% 62% 66% 57% Table 1. AOL Opinion Place Demographics 1 1 AOL demographic profiles are provided by and used with permission from AOL Opinion Place, and are the result of ongoing in-house demographic profile studies of their membership to support commercial research generality. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,

5 The model, fitted in Lisrel 8.51, is shown in the Figure, and provides an excellent fit to the data, in accordance with commonly-reported fit indices and parameters. Modeling provided results in line with expectations with one notable exception: while Trusting Intentions and Cosmetic Credibility were highly related to each other, as expected, and while Cosmetic Credibility significantly predicted Purchase Intentions, Trusting Intentions did not. Since this construct is conceptually similar to McKnight s trusting intention/trusting belief characterization (e.g., McKnight et al., 1998), the distinction between customers inherent capabilities for trusting an online company and the completely different trust engendered by the appearance and performance of the online site are worth considering. PI 6 PI 5 PI 4 PI 3 PI 2 PI Purchase Intention χ 2 = (.000), df = 227 χ 2 /df = 3.44, GFI =.93, AGFI =.92 NFI =.93, CFI =.95, SRMR =.045 RMSEA = (.73).34 (7.59) Trusting Intentions.46 (16.32) Cosmetic Credibility CC7 CC6 CC5 CC4 CC3 CC2 CC1 TI 10 TI 9 TI 8 TI 7 TI 6 TI 5 TI 4 TI 3 TI 2 TI 1 FIGURE. Model of DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Trusting an Internet Service Provider to offer a useful anti-spyware utility for subscription purposes seems to be most highly related to the effect on customers of the Provider s Web presence, as opposed to the customer s inherent predisposition to trust an online provider. The seeming goodness of the technological interface would appear to be a highly influential credibility component in motivating intentions to subscribe to a commercial technological offering. The lack of influence of Trusting Intentions is curious; on interpretation might be that, in ecommerce operations, good Web design and effectively Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,

6 functioning transactions sites are far more effective in motivating user trust in an online offering than are attempts to leverage consumers inherent disposition to trust a business. Another interpretation might be that the tendency of individuals to trust applied more to other individuals than it does to discorporate representations of companies in their technologically-mediated online settings. It bears mention that Trusting Intentions is a measure of the predisposition a customer has for trust, as opposed to a customer s actual development of trust in an online business based upon their interface with the online presence. It may be the case that people differ in their propensity to trust, but that their inclination to trust is catalyzed by site-specific characteristics that serve to activate the judgment. (i.e., cosmetic factors). The role of ecommerce site familiarity in producing degrees of buyer trust leading to purchase (e.g., Gefen, 2000), is one such example. We characterize this broadly as the dichotomoy between the inclination to trust and the cosmetic factors of site appearances and performance; other rubrics can also be drawn to characterize similar processes in different contexts, though the explanatory power of the familiarity construct is limited here in this study of specific subscribers to an Internet service (i.e., our subjects were all already quite familiar with their chosen Internet Service Provider). Understanding the distinction between the predisposition to trust and the factors which catalyze this predisposition will certainly be a fertile area for further inquiry and more detailed investigation, but in view of the Internet-specific context of development for the two constructs (e.g., Stafford et al., 2012), this outcome suggests that there are subtle but important departures to be made from traditional conceptualizations of online trust that were adapted from interpersonal contexts (e.g., McKnight et al., 1998). Ongoing research that directly compares the effects and performance of the differing constructs between the two views will be instructive. People and machines interact in interesting ways, but in ways that are not always directly comparable to how people interact with other people, even if the commercial contexts are comparable, as in buyer-seller interactions. In our study we adapt and test two components that are conceptually related but contextually distinct from the concepts arising from the online trust literature. Interesting new viewpoints from which to consider ongoing experimentation can be based on such concepts. The role of interpersonal trust as a rubric for online trust can benefit from further deliberation, as can the mode and methods of trust signaling cues developed as part of Web site designs used to demonstrate quality and trustworthiness in online contexts to customers. CONCLUSION The body of literature on Internet trust generally arises from interpersonal models of trust brought from reference disciplines. Trust in online contexts, however, can be examined through both interpersonal and intermediated contexts. We provide an initial demonstration of the intermediated approach here. This study provides a theoretical platform for the ongoing development of, and work going forward can seek to compare the influence and effects of interpersonal and intermediated conceptualizations of Internet trust. The effects of technological components of company Web resources are worth consideration, just as are the lack of effects that customer predispositions to trust have on purchase intentions, benchmarked in the context of the strong influence of credibility components related to the intermediate context of online commerce. REFERENCES 1. Anderson, E. and Narus, J.A. (1990), A Model of Distributor Firm and Manufacturer Firm Working Partnership, Journal of Marketing, 54, 1, Ba, S. and Pavlou, P.A. (2002), Evidence of the Effects of Trust Building Technology in Electronic Markets: Price Premiums and Buyer Behavior, MIS Quarterly, 26, 3, Bakos, Y. (1998), Towards Friction-Free Markets: The Emerging Role of Electronic Marketplaces on the Internet, Communications of the ACM, 41, 8, Berlo, D.K. (1977), Communication as process: Review and Commentary, in Communication Yearbook, B. Rubin (ed.), New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 5. Dinev, T. and Hart, P. (2006), An Extended Privacy Calculus Model for E-Commerce Transactions, Information Systems Research, 17, 1, Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,

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10 APPENDIX Scale Indicators Purchase Intent PI 1 I agree the service is new and different PI 2 I agree that AOL is the appropriate provider for the service PI 3 I agree that it is believable that AOL could provide such a service PI 4 I agree that it is AOL s responsibility to provide such a service PI 5 I agree that I would feel positive about AOL if it provided the service PI 6 How likely are you to subscribe to the service? Trusting Intentions TI 1 I tend to believe information from Web sites as fact TI 2 It is natural for me to trust information from Web sites TI 3 It is comfortable for me to trust information from Web sites TI 4 I believe Web site technology can be trusted TI 5 I trust a majority of the information on the Internet TI 6 If a site performs well, I tend to believe it TI 7 If a site takes the human side, I tend to believe it TI 8 It is a habit for me to trust information from Web sites TI 9 If a site sounds smart, I tend to believe it TI 10 If a site gives interesting points of view, I tend to believe it Cosmetic Credibility CC 1 It says it is the official site CC 2 The site is linked to a site I already find believable CC 3 The site was recommend by a friend CC 4 The site looks professionally designed CC 5 The site provides quick responses to customer service questions CC 6 The site sends confirmation s to for my transactions CC 7 The site is arranged in a way that makes sense Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Chicago, Illinois, August 15-17,