Effects of Cultural Differences on Trust Reparation in a Computer Mediated Communication Setting

Trust development is a critical aspect of computersupported cooperative work (CSCW). Trust is especially important in distributed work environments because of the limited amount of social presence afforded by computer-based communication media. Although several studies have studied trust development in computer-mediated environments, very few have researched the reparation of trust, following a breach. Users from different cultural backgrounds may react in very different ways in a trust breach situation. This paper focuses on the effect of cultural differences on how people reconcile following a breach of trust breach n a computer-mediated exchange. Preliminary results from the study are reported here, involving American and Chinese participants in a trust game. Results from this research have significant implications for CSCW, especially when users come from different cultural backgrounds. The findings also have implications for the design of CSCW interfaces.