Identify The Antecedents Of Distrust In A Website

It has been widely accepted that distrust is qualitatively different from trust. In particular,"low trust" or "no trust" does not equal distrust. Likewise, high trust does not imply an absence of distrust. Moreover, distrust has a more serious negative impact on the individual’s decisions than trust does. Thus, it is necessary and important to have a clear understanding of the antecedents of trust and distrust in order to manage both. Yet scholarly knowledge about the antecedents of distrust is scarce, while the antecedents of trust have received extensive attention. Furthermore, little empirical research has explored how website factors impact on the formation of distrust in a user.Therefore, the main objective of this study is to explore the antecedents of distrust and to determine the ways in which website factors form distrust in a user. Drawing upon Fishbein and Ajzen’s Theory of Reasoned Action (1975), Weiner’s Casual Attribution Theory (1985) and Deception Detection Model, we propose a new theoretical framework to explain how website factors impact on perceptions of the attributes of a given website, which in turn form user distrust. In the distrust formation model, distrust is triggered by website evaluations in two areas, namely deceptiveness and incompetence. These two attributions are determined by three categories of website factors:institution-based factors, quality-based factors and reputation-based factors.The proposed research model of distrust formation in the online context is verified by an online survey with348valid responses. The empirical results provide strong support for the research model. The findings of this study suggest that the antecedents of distrust are distinct from those of trust, which is further confirmed by a post-hoc analysis. Institution-based factors, namely situational abnormality and lack of structural assurance, contribute to distrust formation, since they are attributed to the perceived deceptiveness of a website. Quality-based factors contribute to distrust formation by different attribution processes:while information incongruence and technology deficiency are attributed to either the deceptiveness or incompetence of a website, interface design is only attributed to the incompetence of the website. Only one reputation-based factor, namely lack of portal affiliation, contributes to distrust formation. The results show that negative WOM does not play a significant role in the formation of distrust.