Trustbuilders and Trustbusters - The Role of Trust Cues in Interfaces to e-Commerce Applications

This paper investigates how interface design can help to overcome the proclaimed ‘lack of trust’ in e-commerce sites. Based on existing social science knowledge on trust, and our own exploratory study using Grounded Theory methods, we developed a model of consumer decision making in online shopping. Due to the separation in space and time when engaging in ecommerce, there is an increased need for trust, rather than the oft-proclaimed lack of trust. Based on this model we then review design guidelines through empirical tests. We focus on approaches that aim to increase trust by increasing the social presence of an interface. We identified cues in the user interface that help to build trust to some extent (trustbuilders), and some cues that have a great potential for destroying trust (trustbusters).