InTerperSonaL TruST anD pLaTform CreDIbILITY In a CHIneSe muLTIbranD onLIne CommunITY Effects on Brand Variety Seeking and Time Spent

Online communities offer attractive opportunities and challenges to advertisers. Using a revised source credibility framework, this study proposes that interpersonal trust and platform credibility are core to consumer search and consumption behaviors that allow advertisers to harvest value from online communities. We postulate that (1) quality Web features, and user instrumental and relational need fulfillment are antecedents of interpersonal trust and platform credibility; (2) interpersonal trust is distinct from, and an important driver of, platform credibility; and (3) both constructs drive a user’s online community usage and brand variety seeking behavior. An online survey of 899 consumers in China supports these propositions and offers both research and managerial implications for this new media platform. 104 The Journal of Advertising potential fraud, stronger trust among members for one another should increase traffic to the online community. Accordingly, we posit that platform credibility (the extent to which an online community Web site is perceived to be a credible medium) and interpersonal trust (trust among members) are integral to Web site visit frequency and intermember communication in an online community. Using platform credibility as the pivotal construct for our understanding of Web community behavior, we develop and test a model that encompasses the antecedents and effects of both drivers in the context of a multibrand online consumption community. In so doing, we pursue three objectives. First, we delineate how platform credibility and interpersonal trust operate. Second, we propose and examine how three antecedents—Web site features, users’ instrumental need fulfillment, and users relational need fulfillment—operate as antecedents to the two core constructs. Third, we investigate the consequences of platform credibility and interpersonal trust in terms of the time users spend in the community and their brand variety seeking behavior, both constructs of interest to advertisers and researchers. We thus organize our paper as follows: We present a conceptual framework in which we delineate the nature, antecedents, and consequences of platform credibility and interpersonal trust, followed by a discussion of our major hypotheses. Then we discuss the research design—an online survey of 899 consumers in a multibrand community in China, our study context. Finally, we note the study findings and their implications. ConCepTuaL frameworK platform Credibility Figure 1 displays our proposed model, including the antecedents and consequences of platform credibility and interpersonal trust. Credible sources enhance persuasion in various media formats (Bochner and Insko 1966; DeBono and Harnish 1988; Homer and Kahle 1990), and classical research efforts identify several pertinent characteristics of information sources, such as competence, expertise, and attractiveness (e.g., Hovland and Weiss 1951). Subsequent studies have also examined media characteristics such as objectivity, fairness, and lack of bias (Gaziano and McGrath 1986; Zhu and He 2002). Decades of research confirm that expertise and trustworthiness are the two most salient components of credibility (Fritch and Cromwell 2001; Ibelema and Powell 2001). Expertise refers to the extent to which a source provides correct information, and trustworthiness refers to the extent to which an audience perceives the source to be valid (Hovland and Weiss 1951). fIgure 1 results of Structural equation analysis Model Fit: χ(213) = 474.02, GFI = .96, AGFI = .94, CFI = .97, NFI = .94, RMSEA = .04.