Understanding Trust in IT Artifacts

Abstract

This paper studies the role of trust and trustworthiness as it applies to inanimate software artifacts. Extrapolating from the meaning and theory of interpersonal trust and supporting theories, this study develops software artifact trustworthiness and trust scales for the context of antiviral software. The proposed constructs deal with trustworthiness beliefs in software predictability and performance, corresponding respectively to a partial conceptual overlap with the interpersonal trustworthiness beliefs of predictability and ability. Data collected from 232 users support the psychometric properties of the new scales and demonstrate their nomological validity. The analysis shows that in the case of this software artifact, trustworthiness but not trust, predicts user satisfaction. This is in apparent contrast to interpersonal trust in online contexts where trust and trustworthiness are mostly indistinguishable, and where in the few cases that trust was studied separately from trustworthiness, trust had always been a significant predictor. The importance of trustworthiness, but apparently not of trust, in a software artifact is discussed.