The effect of cultural adaptation on perceived trustworthiness: Americans adapting to Chinese Indonesians

Abstract

This experiment investigates the effect of cultural adaptation by American business people on their trustworthiness as perceived by Chinese Indonesians. The sample consists of 140 Indonesian professionals born and raised in Indonesia, who read one of the four stories that differ in degrees of Americans’ cultural adaptation: none, moderate, high using English, and high using the native (i.e., Indonesian) language. The results show that there is no difference among the four adaptation levels on disconfirmation of the adaptor’s stereo types. The high adaptation using English condition is perceived to be more situationally caused than is the high adaptation using the native language condition, which in turn is perceived to be more situationally caused than is the moderate adaptation condition, and the high adaptation using English condition is perceived to be more situationally caused than is the no adaptation condition. The high adaptation using the native language and the high adaptation using English conditions are perceived to be trustworthier than is the moderate adaptation condition, which in turn is perceived to be trustworthier than is the no adaptation condition; these results contradict the findings of some earlier studies but are consistent with those in the cases of Americans adapting to Thais and Japanese in Pornpitakpan (1998), to People’s Republic of China Chinese in Pornpitakpan (2002b), and to Malaysians in Pornpitakpan (2004). Marketing implications are discussed.