The Establishment And Influence Of Trust In The Sharing Economy

The sharing economy continues to maintain a high-speed development since its emergence,which has brought revolutionary innovation and challenges in various traditional industries,such as sharing transportation and sharing accommodation.The sharing economy is a social and economic ecosystem where demand is matched with the supply of idle resources and cognitive surplus from massive and scattered individuals or organizations,which are mediated by the network technological platform.However,the establishment of laws and regulations related to the sharing economy lags behind the business practice,and the outbreak of many negative events will destroy participants’ trust and confidence in the sharing economy,correspondingly affecting their willingness to participate in the sharing economy.How to ensure the sustainable and healthy development of sharing economy is very important.Many online trust literatures show that trust plays a key role in reducing the complexity of online transactions and promoting successful online transactions.However,owing to trust depending on context of exchange activities,there are different ways to build trust in traditional business,e-commerce,and the sharing economy.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the trust-building mechanism in the new context of the sharing economy.Trust is built on the relationship between people.The mechanisms and influencing factors of trust-building change with the different trust relationships.It is essential to distinguish clearly the trust relationship structure in sharing economy.Moreover,the trust relationship develops dynamically with time.The mechanism and influencing factors of trust-building also change with different trust stages,e.g,initial trust and robust trust.Besides,digital trust and participation willingness are important research topics in e-commerce and the sharing economy.However,there are few studies to explore digital trust and the influence differences from the perspective of comparative analysis.To fill the above research gaps,this dissertation explores the following questions:(1)Can the antecedents of trust-building in e-commerce be applied in the sharing economy?If these antecedents have changed,what are they?(2)What are the antecedents of trust-building in different trust relationship structures in the sharing economy?(3)Do the antecedents of trust-building have different influences on initial and robust trust in the sharing economy?(4)Do the antecedents of trust-building have the same influences on trust in different platform cases?This dissertation adopts the qualitative method of theoretical analysis and the quantitative method of empirical analysis to study the trust-building mechanism from the perspective of consumers and suppliers in the sharing economy.First,it analyzes the influence of context changes of the sharing economy on trust and risk compared with e-commerce.Second,based on the dynamic evolutionary game theory,this dissertation analyzes the trust-building process of consumers and suppliers and the equilibriumin conditions in the P2P mode of the sharing economy.Furthermore,in the empirical analysis,this dissertation discusses the establishment mechanism of trust in the sharing economy from four trust-building paths:institutional-,interactional-,and personal-based trust,and environmental factors.From the perspective of time dynamic comparison,the influencing factors of consumer’s initial trust and their influence differences on initial trust and robust trust are analyzed.From the perspective of platform case comparison,the influencing factors of consumer’s robust trust and their influence differences in the different platform cases are analyzed.Finally,the expert evaluation and analytic hierarchy process are applied to evaluate the influence factors of supplier’s initial trust.The main research results are as follows:(1)The structural assurances of the platform are the most important measures to build the trust of consumers and suppliers in the sharing economy,which are the key factors to promote their participation in the sharing economy.(2)Perceived transaction safety,perceived benefits,and perceived risk are important and stable factors that affect the consumer’s initial trust in the platform and suppliers in the sharing economy.Perceived information quality,perceived service quality,and perceived benefits are important and stable factors that affect the consumer’s robust trust in the platform and suppliers in the sharing economy,while perceived system quality has no significant impact on the consumer’s robust trust in the platform.The influencing factors from the personal-based characteristics,including disposition to trust,experience of online trading,social referral,and familiarity,are not stable and significant influential factors in the consumer’s trust of the sharing economy.(3)From the difference analysis of time comparison and platform comparison,the following research results are obtained:(a)perceived benefits and perceived risk have more significant impact on the consumer’s initial trust in the platform than robust trust in the platform;the impact of perceived benefits and perceived risk has no significant difference on the consumer’s initial trust and robust trust in suppliers.(b)In the consumer’s initial trust in the sharing economy,the conumer’s trust in the platform has a more significant impact on the willingness of participation.In the consumer’s robust trust in the sharing economy,the consumer’s robust trust in suppliers has a more significant impact on the willingness of participation.(c)In addition to familiarity which influence is affected by the using frequency in the samples,there is no platform difference in the samples of DiDi chuxing and Meituan Dache in terms of the influence of other trust antecedents on robust trust in the sharing economy,and the influence of the consumer’s robust trust on the consumer’s loyalty.(4)Both in initial trust and robust trust,the consumer’s trust in the platform has significant trust transfer to the consumer’s trust in suppliers.The innovations of this dissertation are as follows:(1)Based on the comparison of key elements of the transaction process,the context similarities and differences between the sharing economy and e-commerce are summarized.Moreover,the influence of these context changes on trust and risk in the sharing economy is analyzed.This analysis provides an important reference for the study of trust mechanism in the sharing economy.(2)A three-party trust game model based the sharing economy platform is established by using the evolutionary game theory.From the theoretical view of the trust mechanism establishment in the sharing economy,this dissertation analyzes the importance of the institution-based trust to the trust establishment in the sharing economy.(3)From the perspective of the dynamic comparison of time,this dissertation analyzes the influencing factors of initial trust in the sharing economy and the influntial differences of these factors in robust trust and initial trust.A comparative analysis perspective of different platform cases is used to study the influntial differences of the antecedents of robust trust on the different platforms.This is the innovation of the dissertation in the research perspective.(4)The multi-group empirical comparison method is adopted to study the consumer’s trust in the sharing economy,and the expert evaluation and Analytic Hierarchy Process method is used to study the supplier’s trust in the sharing economy.This is the innovation of the dissertation in the application of research methods.(5)Some new conclusions about the trust-building in the sharing economy are found from the empirical analysis of the dissertation,which is different from the trust-building in e-commerce.It provides an important supplement to the research of trust-building in the sharing economy.This is the theoretical innovationa of the research problem.