Social Presence as a Conduit to the Social Dimensions of Online Trust

Trust is considered to reduce uncertainty, and, therefore, is a prerequisite for people to engage in online transactions. Social presence potentially bridges the discrepancy between offline and online commerce in terms of face-to-face interaction. These concepts are often studied under the assumption that social presence in itself increases trust. In addition, these studies typically treat trust as a unidimensional concept. The proposed research targets the influence of social presence on trust by taking account of the multidimensional nature of the latter, as well as the attributions made to the salient person. It is expected that behavioural information, i.e., the expressed preference of a referent in a product choice task, will only affect social trust dimensions if the salience of this referent is increased by means of displaying an image. Data will be available at the time of the conference.