An Exploration of Trust and Distrust in the Context of Social Commerce

Introduction

Social media (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) are internet-based applications that build on Web 2.0 technologies to allow the creation and exchange of user generated content in order to motivate interactions and collaboration (Al-Adwan & Kokash, 2019). Social media tools (e.g. forums, chat rooms, and social networks) enable new business models for electronic commerce referred to as social commerce (SC) (Molinillo et al., 2018). SC has three major attributes: social media technologies, community interactions, and commercial activities designed to enable sharing of information about products or services and their acquisition (Maia et al., 2018). Community interactions involve user generated content and user participation in forums, ratings, reviews, recommendations, and referrals (Lin et al., 2019). SC provides businesses with commercial activities, such as marketing, advertising, and customer service (Lee and Lau, 2020). The benefits from these activities include enhancing the corporate brand, increasing trust and customer loyalty, and establishing reputation and credibility (Porntrakoon, 2018; Lin et al., 2019).

In Thailand, there are 57 million internet users accounting for 2.5 percent of all internet users in Asia (Internet World Stats, 2020). In Thailand Facebook and other SC sites are used increasingly to review and share information about products and services (Porntrakoon, 2018). E-vendors may buy SC advertising services to promote their products and services in online communities. For example, at the end of the third quarter of 2020, Facebook had earned approximately USD 17.44 billion from advertising (Facebook, 2020).

Trust has been theorized in most studies as an important determinant of an individual’s attitude towards and use of an online system and numerous studies have identified antecedents to trust in online systems (Maia et al., 2018; Porntrakoon, 2018; Lin et al., 2019). McKnight and Chervany (2001) identified different trust related concepts such as disposition to trust, institution-based trust, trusting beliefs, and trusting intention. In most previous studies trust has been conceptualized as a single dimension with extreme values ranging from strong lack of trust through to strong trust. This study explores a different approach proposed by Lewicki et al. (1998), Ou & Sia (2009), Seckler et al. (2015), Kang & Park (2017), and Porntrakoon (2018) whereby trust and distrust are conceptualized as separate dimensions.

Adopting this different view of trust and distrust in the context of SC this study addresses three related research questions. In the context of SC in Thailand: Which constructs have been shown to be correlated with trust or distrust? Which of these correlations are significant? and What are the theoretical and practical implications of the findings? The findings of the study are expected to contribute to a theoretical understanding of the correlates with trust and distrust viewed as separate dimensions. This has not been investigated adequately in studies of SC. Also, the findings have practical implications for those with professional responsibilities related to SC (e.g. users, providers, e-vendors, and marketers).