Understanding the role of justice perceptions in promoting trust and behavioral intention towards ride-sharing

Abstract

• Examine the impacts of three justice perceptions on trust and behavioral intention towards ride-sharing. • Distributive, procedural, and interactional justice are significantly related to customers’ continuance intention and positive word-of-mouth. • Female customers depend more on interactional justice when formulating trust in ride-sharing. • Provide guidelines for ride-sharing platforms to build customers’ trust. While ride-sharing has recently gained great popularity, the uncertainties about this service have decreased users’ trust and impeded their behavioral intention. Our study aims to examine the impacts of three justice perceptions on trust and behavioral intention towards ride-sharing. Based on a scenario-based survey of actual users of the DIDI platform, our study indicates that distributive, procedural, and interactional justices are significantly related to customers’ continuance intention and positive word-of-mouth, and these relationships are mediated by trust, perceived benefit, and perceived risk. A multi-group analysis demonstrates that females depend more on interactional justice when formulating trust in ride-sharing. Our study provides guidelines for ride-sharing platforms to build customers’ trust by enhancing their perceived distributive, procedural, and interactional justices. Furthermore, through the extended valence theoretical lens, it highlights the salient role of trust in mediating the relationships between the three justice perceptions and the two dimensions of behavioral intention.