Trust Transfer in the Sharing Economy - a 1 KATJA HUTTER Survey-Based Approach LUTZ JOHANNING STEPHAN KAISER Fabien Rozzi, the Impact of the Gig-Economy on U.S
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Junior Management Science 3(2) (2018) 1-32 Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2018 Advisory Editorial Board: DOMINIK VAN AAKEN JUNIOR FREDERIK AHLEMANN CHRISTOPH BODE ROLF BRÜHL MANAGEMENT JOACHIM BÜSCHKEN LEONHARD DOBUSCH RALF ELSAS DAVID FLORYSIAK SCIENCE GUNTHER FRIEDL WOLFGANG GÜTTEL CHRISTIAN HOFMANN Jingyi Zhang, Trust Transfer in the Sharing Economy - A 1 KATJA HUTTER Survey-Based Approach LUTZ JOHANNING STEPHAN KAISER Fabien Rozzi, The Impact of the Gig-Economy on U.S. 33 ALFRED KIESER Labor Markets: Understanding the Role of Non- Junior Management Science NATALIA KLIEWER Employer Firms using Econometric Models and DODO ZU KNYPHAUSEN-AUFSEß the Example of Uber SABINE T. KÖSZEGI ARJAN KOZICA TOBIAS KRETSCHMER Anna Theresa Bührle, Effects of fiscal R&D incentives on 57 HANS-ULRICH KÜPPER R&D expenditure REINER LEIDL ANTON MEYER David Burgschwaiger, Similar Chords, Different Tune? 80 GORDON MÜLLER-SEITZ The Effects of Different Solution Formulations on GÜNTER MÜLLER-STEWENS the Identification of Collaborative Opportunities BURKHARD PEDELL in Selective Revealing: A web-based Experiment MARCEL PROKOPCZUK TANJA RABL Jaakko Nurkka, Market reactions to the servitization of 121 SASCHA RAITHEL product offerings - An event study on the ASTRID REICHEL software as a service model KATJA ROST MARKO SARSTEDT DEBORAH SCHANZ Christopher Khoury, When Family Businesses Sell 151 ANDREAS G. SCHERER STEFAN SCHMID UTE SCHMIEL CHRISTIAN SCHMITZ PHILIPP SCHRECK GEORG SCHREYÖGG LARS SCHWEIZER DAVID SEIDL journal homepage: www.jums.academy THORSTEN SELLHORN ANDREAS SUCHANEK ORESTIS TERZIDIS ANJA TUSCHKE SABINE URNIK STEPHAN WAGNER BARBARA E. WEIßENBERGER ISABELL M. WELPE HANNES WINNER CLAUDIA B. WÖHLE THOMAS WRONA THOMAS ZWICK Published by Junior Management Science e. V. Trust Transfer in the Sharing Economy - A Survey-Based Approach Jingyi Zhang Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Abstract The sharing economy is experiencing explosive growth around the globe in which trust plays a crucial role and builds the foundation of the services. With the rise of the sharing economy and the increasing numbers of cross-contextual users, this research aims at the lack of trust transference possibilities across the Peer-to-Peer applications and has the goal to find out whether and how trust can be transferred between the platforms, so that new users do not have to create their reputation from scratch every time they join a new platform. First, this research provides an in-depth literature review of trust transfer theories. Secondly, a conceptual research model for the role of the imported trust in the context of the sharing economy is outlined and analysed by proposing and evaluating a questionnaire using structural equation modeling. Throughout the study, a three-dimensional scale of trust, i.e. ability, benevolence and integrity, is validated in the context of the sharing economy. The experimental study shows that both the overall and subdimensional trust in the provider is directly affected by the overall trust in the platform, the perceived reputation as well as the perceived social presence. The study also provides empirical evidence for the existence of trust transferability. The findings show that in addition to the immanent ratings, imported ratings also significantly affect the perceived reputation of the provider positively. Finally, this paper discusses further details of the trust transfer processes and broadens implications for future research. Keywords: Sharing Economy, Trust, Trust Transfer, Reputation, Peer-to-peer 1. Introduction trust is the currency of the new economy (Botsman, 2012). Jack Ma, the executive chairman of Alibaba Group1 empha- Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no sized as well that trust is the most important element at P2P vehicles ... Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, [ ] marketplaces where people do not even trust face to face, has no inventory. Airbnb, the world’s largest ac- especially in countries like China. commodation provider, owns no real estate. - While a multiplicity of independent P2P platforms is de- (Bear, 2015) veloping, a problem has been identified – the technically One of the most remarkable developments of the 21st cen- independent platforms are not connected with each other, tury global marketplace is indeed the rapid growth and the i.e. new users have to establish their reputation every time evolution of the sharing economy (Bert et al., 2016). Today, from scratch when they join a new platform (Zacharia et al., ordinary people can rent or short-term everything from high- 2000), even though they have well-documented trust history end houses to cars, luxury handbags to musical instruments, on other participating platforms. The research objective of designer pets to power boats. Sharing economy has estab- this work is to find out if, and how the trust between differ- lished itself as a competitive sector with huge potential and ent sharing economy applications transfers. This article con- thus, gained much importance in recent years. A prognosis tributes by developing a model where the linkage between of the consulting agency PWC showed that a potential rev- different platforms is proposed. E.g., a new user of Ebay enue opportunity of this industry would worth 335 billion would theoretically be able to link his profile of Airbnb to US-Dollar by 2025. As a matter of fact, Airbnb now already show his available reliability and trustworthiness, in order to averages 425,000 guests per night, nearly 22 % more than create a better reputation. Hilton Worldwide (Vaughan and Hawksworth, 2014). The core of the research question is how would trust If peer-to-peer marketplace is the future, it will require trust between the peers which is a crucial element because 1World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2015 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/jums/v3i2pp1-32 2 J. Zhang / Junior Management Science 3(2) (2018) 1-32 transfer throughout the platforms in detail. E.g. Would a and Bardhi, 2015; O’Connor, 2016). The former one sug- well-reputed Ebay seller be qualified as a trustworthy Airbnb gested the correct word in the broad sense of the term to host? And vice versa? It is obvious that more elements play be "access economy" because the market-mediated "sharing" important roles in this conducted research model. One may through a company as intermediary between individual con- enjoy a high reputation for his expertise in one domain, while sumers is no longer "sharing" in the traditional definition at having a low one in another, e.g. Linux Guru has high repu- all. Rather, consumers are paying to access someone else’s tation in Linux Forum but low reputation in Windows opera- goods or services. Thus, the term of sharing economy in this tions (Zacharia et al., 2000). work refers accordingly to a business model where the partic- The main part of the study’s development is derived from ipants share unused resources among them via peer to peer the established three trust dimensions - ability, integrity and services (Boeckmann, 2013; Kamal and Chen, 2016) and is benevolence as well as some trust (transfer) theories. A com- assumed to be a synonym of the word "peer-to-peer services". plete literature review of trust transfer is provided where The scope of sharing economy is wide. There are sharing various trust transfer situations are analysed, classified and economy models in various types throughout different areas. synthesized. Subsequently in the conducted study, data of To name a few examples, Blablacar 2, Uber 3 and Lyft 4 count trust transfer between four selected sharing economy plat- to automotive & transportation; Airbnb 5 and Couchsurfing forms was collected with 140 participants. The systematic 6 belong to Hospitality category; Retailing also sets its foot approach follows a matrix combination from the "target plat- in sharing economy with Kleiderkreisel 7 or Rent-the-runway form" to the "origin platform". Therefore, the observation 8; More platforms like TaskRabbit 9 provide even human and is based on the trust of the provider side (i.e., driver, host, knowledge resources in form of freelance labor to match local seller, lessor). Correspondingly, the participants take the role demand on everyday-tasks. Sharing economy enables more of the consumers, i.e., car passenger, guest, buyer or renter. efficient resources being money-and-time-saving and traffic- The reputation would be only considered based on the star- and-pollution-reducing. In this sense, it is considered as im- ratings. portant as the "Industrial Revolution" in terms of how people The rest of the work is structured as follows: section2 think about ownership (Botsman and Rogers, 2011) as we are discusses and provides introduction for the context of this currently living in a world facing problems of global warm- work’s background with focus on the sharing economy and ing, rising fuel prices and growing pollution (Belk, 2013). the trust dimensions. The next section3 summarizes and synthesizes the previous studies of trust transfer, defines and 2.2. Trust and its Dimensions discusses the trust transfer situation in the sharing economy President Ronald Reagan once said famously, "Trust but with a presentation of existing trust transfer solutions. Sec- verify" which is an obfuscation. Trusting means actually that tion4 then develops and presents the hypothesises in figure you do not have to verify. The roles of trust and risk have yet 4 regarding the "imported trust" underlying trust transfer. In to be identified and defused. Trust is risk mitigation (Green, section5, the study results and the design of the conducted 2015). If we could all decide purely based on faith or if experiment (and a preliminary questionnaire) are presented we could predict others’ behavior and intentions with defi- and the research model is described. Finally, the article con- nite certainty, then trust itself would not be necessary and cludes with a discussion, limitation and implications for fu- required, according to Lewis and Weigert(1985). ture research. Yet the fact is, we need trust and trust is very important, especially in the context of the sharing economy which was born with stacks of promises.