Title: Interpersonal versus institutional trust: consumers' trust to sharing services and its impact on continuance intention

Authors: Nezahat Ekici; Tuğba Özbölük

Addresses: Department of Marketing, Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Yunus Emre Campus, Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, 70200 Karaman, Turkey ' Department of Marketing, Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Bozok University, Erdogan Akdag Campus, Atatürk Avenue 7, Km, 66900 Yozgat, Turkey

Abstract: The influence of trust on consumers' sharing intentions is an essential topic in electronic commerce. However, research on interpersonal trust is very scarce. Therefore, this paper explores the impact of interpersonal trust on consumers' continuance intentions to use sharing economy services. Another research question of this paper is how the impact of this trust differs by the service platforms, which offer different products to share (pet, car, and accommodation). For this purpose, we conducted an online survey on 252 users from three separate sharing platforms. Findings reveal that trust in peer and trust in product play a significant role in consumers' continuance intentions regardless of platforms. Findings also show that disposition to trust indirectly affects the continuance intention of two platforms, which offer pet or car sharing. We found that trust in product affects continuance intention for car sharing. We also found that the effect of trust in peer on continuance intention for pet sharing platform is relatively strong. Revisiting the concept and measurement of trust in the context of sharing economy, this paper is regarded as an important contribution to an underexplored area.

Keywords: interpersonal trust; sharing economy; pet sharing; accommodation sharing; car sharing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2023.127289

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2023 Vol.14 No.1, pp.87 - 106

Received: 28 Dec 2020
Accepted: 30 Jul 2021
Published online: 30 Nov 2022 *