Should Institutional Trust Matter in Information Systems Research?

Overview 5 6 Given the importance of trust in online environments, information systems research has recently embraced trust research (e.g., 7 Ba and Pavlou 2002; Gefen et al. 2003, Jarvenpaa et al. 1999; McKnight et al. 2002; Stewart 2003). However, despite the 8 enormous interest in the topic of trust by IS researchers (with 129 published papers listed in ABI/INFORM), most of this research 9 seems more appropriate for marketing or management journals, as interpersonal and interfirm trust have little to do with the 10 information technology artifact. In contrast, with few exceptions (McKnight et al. 1998; Pavlou 2002; Pavlou and Gefen 2004), 11 IS research on institutional trust is still sparse. Institutional trust is defined as the trustor’s belief that effective third-party 12 guarantees are in place to assure the trustee’s behavior will be consistent with the trustor’s confident expectations. Institutional 13 trust is perhaps more appropriate for IT-enabled environments where there is often minimal prior interaction and people mainly 14 interact with new and unknown entities under the aegis of third parties who provide an institutional context. Also, there is 15 evidence that IT can build effective institutional structures that engender trust in impersonal contexts (Pavlou 2002; Pavlou and 16 Gefen 2004). 17 18 Given these facts, why do IS researchers keep focusing on interpersonal and interfirm trust while disregarding institutional trust? 19 Are we doing ourselves a disfavor by examining trust that is perhaps more relevant for management and marketing scholars, while 20 not focusing on institutional trust that is more relevant for IS scholars? Should institutional trust matter more in IS research? To 21 address these issues, this panel aims to examine whether, how, and why institutional trust matters in IS research by sparking a 22 debate on the following three related questions: 23 24 1. Is institutional trust really important when compared to other trust-building means in IT-enabled environments? 25 26 2. How can the design of the IT artifact be used to build institutional trust? 27 28 3. How should IS researchers pursue the study of institutional trust? 29