Trust Repair Research Articles

Timing is not Everything: The Effects of Pre-Negotiation Trust, Apologies, and Time in Trust Repair

Timing is not Everything: The Effects of Pre-Negotiation Trust, Apologies, and Time in Trust Repair

How can Combined Trust Repair Tactics Improve Trust after Distributive Injustice

How can Combined Trust Repair Tactics Improve Trust after Distributive Injustice

Vulnerability to Investment Risk: How CEOs Seek to Repair Trust in Communication with Investors (WITHDRAWN)

Vulnerability to Investment Risk: How CEOs Seek to Repair Trust in Communication with Investors (WITHDRAWN)

Green Washing and Brand Crises: Modelling Consumer Trust Repair

This study proposes an innovative approach to rebuilding consumer trust following the negative impact of greenwashing, which often leads to a conflicted relationship between corporations and consumers. Through a novel integration of previously unconnected concepts, such as trustworthiness dimensions (Integrity, benevolence, and competence), credibility, empathy, forgiveness, consumer trust repair, revived brand equity, and repurchase intention, this study offers a nuanced and enhanced understanding of the consumer trust repair process. The current research seeks to integrate disparate concepts and theories into a cohesive whole, resulting in a modified version of the consumer trust repair process. Prior studies have examined the phenomenon of consumer trust repair in a relatively narrow and parochial manner and have failed to provide a holistic process-based model. This study, however, attempts to provide a comprehensive, process-based model of consumer trust repair. Through this holistic approach, this research makes a valuable and meaningful contribution to the field of consumer trust repair, providing brand managers with a deeper understanding of the consumer trust recovery process, which has been largely ignored in previous studies. This unique and comprehensive approach will surely capture readers' attention, as it offers a fresh perspective on a crucial issue facing the business world today.

The theory of mind and human–robot trust repair

Nothing is perfect and robots can make as many mistakes as any human, which can lead to a decrease in trust in them. However, it is possible, for robots to repair a human’s trust in them after they have made mistakes through various trust repair strategies such as apologies, denials, and promises. Presently, the efficacy of these trust repairs in the human–robot interaction literature has been mixed. One reason for this might be that humans have different perceptions of a robot’s mind. For example, some repairs may be more effective when humans believe that robots are capable of experiencing emotion. Likewise, other repairs might be more effective when humans believe robots possess intentionality. A key element that determines these beliefs is mind perception. Therefore understanding how mind perception impacts trust repair may be vital to understanding trust repair in human–robot interaction. To investigate this, we conducted a study involving 400 participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk to determine whether mind perception influenced the effectiveness of three distinct repair strategies. The study employed an online platform where the robot and participant worked in a warehouse to pick and load 10 boxes. The robot made three mistakes over the course of the task and employed either a promise, denial, or apology after each mistake. Participants then rated their trust in the robot before and after it made the mistake. Results of this study indicated that overall, individual differences in mind perception are vital considerations when seeking to implement effective apologies and denials between humans and robots.

The Theory of Mind and Human-Robot Trust Repair

The Theory of Mind and Human-Robot Trust Repair

How does people's trust in automated vehicles change after automation errors occur? An empirical study on dynamic trust in automated driving

AbstractWhen errors of automated vehicles (AVs) occur, drivers' trust can easily be destroyed, resulting in the reduction of the use of AVs. This study aims to examine how error of AVs declines driver's trust by impacting their subjective perceptions. A driving simulator experiment is conducted, in which 104 participants (male = 58; female = 46) experienced automated driving with automation errors and rated their trust. The results indicate that automation error will affect the driver's perceived predictability, perceived reliability, and perceived safety, which will lead to the decline of trust and abandonment of automated driving. With the occurrence of automation error of AVs, perceived safety plays a more critical role in drivers' trust. In addition, when automation errors occur in specific tasks with low risk, the trust of drivers will drop faster than that in high‐risk tasks. This paper has explored the internal effects of the decline of driver's trust after automation errors of AVs, and further considers the influence of different external risks on these perception factors and trust. This study can help AVs manufacturers to formulate different degrees of trust repair strategies according to different driving tasks and accident severity.

Crisis, criticisms, and damaged credibility: A case study of organisational trust repair by a Victorian joint-stock bank

This article uses the organisational trust repair model developed by Gillespie and Dietz to examine how the Royal Bank of Liverpool, which suspended payments during the commercial crisis in 1847, escaped liquidation and resumed business. This case study uses newspaper reports and selected corporate records to explore the narratives of trust between bank management and different interest groups over the course of resuscitating the establishment. There are three important aspects which shaped the dynamics of trust repair in this case: (1) the bank’s appeal to its reputational past in the community to reassert its credibility; (2) the management’s tactful reconciliation of competing expectations from different parties, and (3) the renegotiation of boundaries between directors’ power and stakeholders’ rights. By exploring the professional standpoint, local attributes and moral discourses within which the bank was resuscitated, this article evaluates the firm’s strategies for rebuilding trust and its corporate legitimacy through a contemporary theoretical perspective, thus offering lessons for corporate trust repair in the twenty-first century.

“Sorry, it was my fault”: Repairing trust in human-robot interactions

The current study develops a three-fold categorization (i.e., logic, semantic, and syntax failures) for technical failures that are commonly observed in human-robot interactions (HRI), and investigates it along with four trust repair strategies: internal-attribution apology, external-attribution apology, denial, and no repair. The 743 observations conducted through an online experiment reveal some nuances in participants’ perceprions of competence- and integrity-based trust violations, which may reflect ontological differences between humans and machines. The analysis also shows significant main effects of failure types and repair methods on HRI-based trust.

Trust repair in a cultural context: undertaking a synthesis of trust life cycle through critical literature review

Trust is an important source to develop business understandings and relationships. It also greatly affects the social efficiency of business activities and transactions. The trust deficit is so prevalent in society; thus, it makes practical sense to explore its connotations, roots, linkages and effects. The subject of trust is very broad, however, in order to capture possible research gaps and explore the scope for future research, this study is limited to the level of examining mutual relationships among individuals at workplaces, and undertakes a critical literature review of the trust life cycle and trust repair process, examining empirical evidence with regards to trust, distrust, trust deficit and repair, seen through a cultural lens. Some limited research has identified core underlying variables (related to cognition, affect, and behavior, called “expectation assets”) which are supplemented by social and organizational factors, which also influence trust related expectations, and also influence the restoration and enhancement of trust. Research studies also highlight the relationship of trust with culture, with dominating perspective being ‘etic’, which relates to the understanding that trust is a global phenomenon affecting across various cultural domains and its effects can be observed as well as measured across cultures. Whereas, from an alternative ‘emic’ (culture-specific) perspective, though trust is a global phenomenon that cuts across all functional domains of a society, however, numerous differences exist that need to be taken into account while deciding trust levels as well as their intensity within a social setting

Study on the Discursive Strategies of Wired to Repair Trust in Blockchain

Digital trust involves not only human trust mediated by certain technology but trust in that technology. However, emerging technologies confront ever-growing skepticism. The blockchain debate is a typical example which may be led by its hypes from the mass media. If the place where blockchain is hyped is the place where the damaged trust in blockchain is repaired, Wired magazine, the voice of the industry, is an appropriate third-party repairer. Though previous studies have deeply investigated trust repair in interpersonal relationships, much remains unknown about how to measure trust in a specific technology and how to repair it if it is violated. This study aims to examine how Wired discursively repair trust in blockchain. To address the issue, 60 Wired stories on blockchain are collected as the corpus data. The corpus is annotated with the help of UAM CorpusTool. A discourse analysis is performed based on the annotation. Unlike the studies on interpersonal trust repair, the results show that the magazine puts more efforts on repairing the functionality and the helpfulness of blockchain partly due to the contextual variables. The discourse of the magazine, sitting on the rational side of trust, features open, objective, and straightforward. Together with the research standpoint of a third-party repairer, the repairing effect of trust-in-tech seems to be more predictable. The reparative strategies of EP & NN could be interpreted as a kind of justification to explain the violations of trust in blockchain, which the magazine mainly attributes to those externally unstable and uncontrollable factors. Above all, blockchain is a technological innovation with the aim to build a trustless world, but meanwhile, its development requires the escort from cyber-resilience which is built on the netizens’ digital trust.

Three Strikes and you are out!: The impacts of multiple human–robot trust violations and repairs on robot trustworthiness

Robots like human co-workers can make mistakes violating a human’s trust in them. When mistakes happen, humans can see robots as less trustworthy which ultimately decreases their trust in them. Trust repair strategies can be employed to mitigate the negative impacts of these trust violations. Yet, it is not clear whether such strategies can fully repair trust nor how effective they are after repeated trust violations. To address these shortcomings, this study examined the impact of four distinct trust repair strategies: apologies, denials, explanations, and promises on overall trustworthiness and its sub-dimensions: ability, benevolence, and integrity after repeated trust violations. To accomplish this, a between-subjects experiment was conducted where participants worked with a robot co-worker to accomplish a task. The robot violated the participant’s trust and then provided a particular repair strategy. Results indicated that after repeated trust violations, none of the repair strategies ever fully repaired trustworthiness and two of its sub-dimensions: ability and integrity. In addition, after repeated interactions, apologies, explanations, and promises appeared to function similarly to one another, while denials were consistently the least effective at repairing trustworthiness and its sub-dimensions. In sum, this paper contributes to the literature on human–robot trust repair through both of these original findings.

“I Believe AI Can Learn from the Error. Or Can It Not?”: The Effects of Implicit Theories on Trust Repair of the Intelligent Agent

“I Believe AI Can Learn from the Error. Or Can It Not?”: The Effects of Implicit Theories on Trust Repair of the Intelligent Agent

Trust repair after a sales manager error

Sales managers need to maintain the trust of their salespeople to have productive working relationships. A positive and trusting working relationship can be threatened by a transgression on the part of the sales manager. An important challenge for sales managers concerns dealing with the aftermath of an error that damages the trust of a salesperson, especially when the error results in financial harm to that salesperson (e.g., unfair bonus/incentive allocation). A common restorative approach consists of the sales manager acknowledging the error and providing a financial compensation to the salesperson. Our study finds that instead of acknowledging the error, the sales manager should promise to make things right before providing financial compensation.

Repairing Integrity-Based Trust Violations in Ascription Disputes for Potential E-Commerce Customers

Trust violations of online sellers are widely reported in customer reviews and are often ascribed to the sellers’ lack of integrity. These reported violations reduce potential customers’ trust in the accused sellers, given the critical role of seller integrity in e-commerce. However, accused sellers and buyers often dispute the ascriptions of trust violations (e.g., sellers may argue that a violation is due to their lack of competence instead of their integrity). The trust repair literature has inadequately focused on effective strategies to repair reported integrity-based trust violations in ascription disputes. Drawing upon attribution theory and individuals’ cognitive sensemaking process regarding trust violations, we propose an account-based approach through re-ascription and stability attributions, enabling accused sellers to repair potential customers’ trust in them in the event of such disputes. We theorize the effectiveness of this approach by considering the contingent role of the accused seller’s reputation. The results of our laboratory experiments confirm the effectiveness of our approach in repairing potential customers’ trust for sellers with a high reputation but not for sellers with a low reputation. We further investigate the effectiveness of disclosing substantive amends (i.e., financial compensation) made by the accused seller to the victim as an alternative approach to repairing potential customers’ trust in sellers with a low reputation. The results reveal the significant effects of disclosing substantive amends on repairing potential customers’ trust in the seller, regardless of the seller’s reputation.

Effect of automation failure type on trust development in driving automation systems

The performance of a driving automation system (DAS) can influence the human drivers' trust in the system. This driving-simulator study examined how different types of DAS failures affected drivers' trust. The automation-failure type (no-failure, takeover-request, system-malfunction) was manipulated among 122 participants, when a critical hazard event occurred. The dependent measures included participants’ trust ratings after each of seven drives and their takeover performance following the hazard. Results showed that trust improved before any automation failure occurred, demonstrating proper trust calibration toward the errorless system. In the takeover-request and system-malfunction conditions, trust decreased similarly in response to the automation failures, although the takeover-request condition had better takeover performance. For the drives after the automation failure, trust was gradually repaired but did not recover to the original level. This study demonstrated how trust develops and responds to DAS failures, informing future research for trust repair interventions in designing DASs.

Antecedents, Consequences, and the Role of Third Parties in the Trust Repair Process: Evidence Taken from Orthodontics.

Orthodontic treatment has popularized in Taiwan. Healthcare institutions can be responsive in their coping strategies and determine whether third-party intervention should take place involving medical disputes related to orthodontics in order to repair patient trust. This study draws on orthodontic treatment to explore the effect of various trust repair strategies employed by healthcare institutions and third-party involvement positively affecting outcomes related to trust repair. Patients were recruited among those who have undergone orthodontic treatments, and 353 valid scenario-based questionnaires were collected through an online survey. Results revealed that: (1) the affective and informational repair strategies positively impacted trust repair while the functional repair strategy did not; (2) trust repair positively impacted patient satisfaction/word-of-mouth and mediated between repair strategies and satisfaction/word-of-mouth; and (3) third-party involvement moderated the relationship between trust repair and word-of-mouth. The findings suggest that rather than receiving monetary compensation, patients usually prefer that healthcare institutions acknowledge their fault, offer apologies, and engage in active communications to clarify the causes of medical dispute. Further, an objective third party should be involved to mediate the medical disputes to afford satisfaction all around.

Do accounting disclosures help or hinder individual donors’ trust repair after negative events?

PurposeThis study aims to examine whether and how voluntary accounting disclosures can repair individual donors’ trust in a charity after negative events.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt a qualitative research approach and conduct 32 semi-structured interviews with active Australian individual donors, with a hypothetical vignette design. Hypothetical negative events and corresponding accounting disclosures are presented to participants during interviews.FindingsThree types of individual donors are identified based on their decision-making patterns after negative events and primary trust relations with a charity-reasoned donor (giving-decision based on their analysis of the situation, competence-based trust), generalist donors (giving-decision based on trust in the charitable sector, institution-based trust) and emotional donors (giving-decision based on feelings and emotions about the charity, integrity-based trust). The research suggests that accounting disclosures can repair trust damage for reasoned donors and support institution-based trust for generalist donors, but do not seem able to repair trust damage for emotional donors and can potentially damage trust further.Practical implicationsOverall, the findings suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to communicating with individual donors after negative events is not likely to be very effective in repairing trust. Instead, charities may need to adapt disclosures to their different types of individual donors.Originality/valueWhile prior accounting studies have largely focussed on how charity managers themselves grapple with accountability or how negative events impact charitable donations, the authors demonstrate how accounting disclosures can play different roles in the trust-repairing process for different types of individual donors.

Building and rebuilding trust in higher education institutions (HEIs). Student's perspective

PurposeThe importance of trust in student–university relations is relevant not only for the quality of the educational process and the satisfaction with studying achieved by students, but also for the importance of positive evaluation of HEIs to others. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the stages and mechanisms that build trust in student–university relations, the causes of trust violation and trust repair practices.Design/methodology/approachPublic university students from Poland (16) and Germany (12) took part in the study based on semi-structured interviews. The research procedure followed an inductive approach. In addition, the critical events technique was used to identify trust violation and trust repair practices.FindingsThe study identifies the stages of the HEIs trust building process and the mechanisms upon which it is built. It attempts to catalogue trust violations, distinguishing three groups of “perpetrators” and categories of their differentiation in terms of their impact on trust. The study indicates ad hoc, informal methods of trust repair applied at HEIs and their conditions.Practical implicationsThis study provides useful guidance for managers on how to build and maintain trust in HEIs.Originality/valueThe issue of trust building in HEIs is relatively new and therefore has not been sufficiently recognised to date. This study is the first to the author's knowledge to comprehensively address the problem of trust building, pointing out the mechanisms on which the formation of trust in HEIs is based. This study provides a novel contribution to the limited literature on trust violation and trust repair in HEIs.

Explanations and trust: What happens to trust when a robot partner does something unexpected?

Performance within Human-Autonomy Teams (HATs) is influenced by the effectiveness of communication between humans and robots. Communication is particularly important when robot teammates engage in behaviors that were not anticipated by the human teammate which could degrade trust. However, the literature on trust repair focuses on the role of apologies which may not be appropriate for an unexpected behavior since this behavior may not be an error. Explanations are one method that can be used by robot teammates to avoid costly trust degradation when human expectations are violated. The current study used an Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) scenario to examine the role of explanation in a context wherein a robot teammate deviated from an expected behavior. The current study examined how trust, trustworthiness, and responsibility attribution were influenced by observing the robot teammate deviate from an expected behavior. Participants (N = 148) used an online platform to view videos of the robot: 1) following a planned search path, and 2) deviating from a planned search path. A debriefing event between the human and the robot followed each search activity. Four explanation conditions were tested in the debriefing phase following the behavioral violation. Results showed that trust and trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity) declined following the unexpected behavior. Accordingly, responsibility attribution shifted from the human to the robot following the unexpected behavior. Explanation strategies that focused on communicating why the event occurred by highlighting the robot's environmental awareness were most effective at buffering the decline in trust and trustworthiness.