A Study Of Consumer Trust's Antecedents And Trust's Influence On Participation Intention In Sharing Economy

With the development of sharing economy both at home and abroad,not owning but sharing kind of consumption is gradually going deep into people's lives and all aspects of society.However,as a new thing,the sharing economy has a variety of problems in its development process,in which the lack of trust has become a core problem that plagued its rapid development from the initial minority groups to the general public.Therefore,this study takes trust as the subject of research,exploring the determinants of trust in the sharing economy context and the influence of multiple constructs including trust on consumer participation.Through doing so,we could find ways to eliminate the existence of trust barriers in this new economic form and promote more people to participate in the sharing economy and thus promote the real rise of shared economy.Through the literature research,we found that the current research in the following two areas,"trust in the sharing economy:concept,dimension and antecedent" and "its influence on participation" is rare and incomplete.Therefore,based on the previous research,this study proposes a model of determinants of consumer trust in the sharing economy from the perspective of consumers themselves,the trading platform and the transaction object according to the theory of trust,technology acceptance model,planned behavior theory,innovation diffusion theory and perceived risk theory and combined with the unique characteristics of sharing economy.On this basis,we also study the influence of trust and other constructs on the consumer participation in sharing economy.We take the situational questionnaire research design and carry out the investigation and collect the sample data through the network questionnaire survey.Then the empirical data is analyzed through factor analysis,correlation analysis,regression analysis and structural equation model.Based on the results of empirical research,this study draws the following conclusions:Firstly,for the model of determinants of consumer trust in the sharing economy,consumer's trust propensity,perceived ease of use of the platform,perceived platform reputation,perceived insurance and consumer's perception of the trading object's reputation will have an impact on consumer trust.In addition,other three factors which are introduced specially into the sharing economy context,named personalized customization perception,perceived avatar impression and perceived personal profile,will also significantly affect consumer trust.Secondly,for the model of consumer participation,the direct relationship between compatibility,comparative advantage,subjective norms,trust,perceived risk and consumer's intention to participate are all proved,which is similar with the circumstance in the traditional online transaction situations.However,the perceived risk does not have an indirect impact on consumer's intention to participate mediated by trust.In addition,unlike the traditional online transaction situations,we find that compatibility will indirectly affect trust through comparative advantage and subjective norms,which means that the value compatibility plays a greater role in the sharing economy contexts.On the basis of the conclusion of this study,we also put forward a series of measures for the sake of the development and expansion of the sharing economy platform,especially the development of C2C online short rent platform.For example,the sharing economy platform should cooperate with other organizations to get through the personal credit system.Besides,the sharing economy platform should also adhere to the user-centric product design principles and provide users with a good ease of use experience.In addition,it should make full use of advertising and Internet operations to promote and establish a good brand image.At the same time,in order to eliminate the hidden dangers of the transaction and consumers' concerns,the sharing economy platform should also introduce institutional insurance policies.Other measures that sharing economy platform could take including:urging the sellers to maintain their reputation by training,incentives,etc.;providing a customized information module for the product or service;encouraging sellers to upload their avatars and providing them with a personal homepage;enhancing consumers' value recognition through publicity;increasing their comparative advantages from the aspects of price,convenience,personalization and social network etc.;encouraging consumers to recommend their friends and family to use and encouraging them to sharing links to their SNS as well;eliminating all kinds of uncertainties in the sharing economy situation as far as possible.