Do You Trust Me? An Examination of Trust in Computer-Mediated Exchange

Trust plays a critical role in our everyday lives from interpersonal communication to buyer-seller exchanges. Yet the concept of trust within the unique context of computer-mediated exchange (CME) has received little attention. To offer a theoretical contribution, we define key terms and synthesize relevant literature identifying four sources and seven dimensions of trust. Combining these sources and dimensions, we offer a trust taxonomy enabling the analysis of trust production methods in CME. Just as usability analysis attempts to create more usable exchange sites, trust analysis attempts to create more trustworthy sites. To offer an empirical contribution, we report on two case studies in which we inspect Yellow Page service ads and exchange sites for methods of trust production. The case studies demonstrate the use and broad applicability of the taxonomy, and the results serve as a reference for both the creation and comparison of exchange sites in terms of trust production.