Specific Trust Research Articles

Rely on whom you trust? Trust and financial planning for retirement

We study the role of trust in shaping financial planning for retirement under a three-pillar pension system. Using data from two waves of the China Retirement Readiness Index Survey and multiple measures of trust in various entities, we find that trust in government, employers, and financial institutions increases the probability of developing a financial plan involving government, employer, and self-provision, respectively, as well as the estimated proportions of retirement income derived from each source. Our study deepens the understanding of how specific trust affects planning practices in the context of multiple retirement income sources and a culture featuring filial piety.

WHOM DO WE TRUST? ON HOW WE ASSESS OTHERS’ TRUSTWORTHINESS

The aim of this paper is to integrate competing notions of trustworthiness in the literature on trust under a common framework. I defend a notion of trustworthiness around three criteria: competence, predictability, and responsiveness. These are both necessary and sufficient conditions for trustworthiness assessments. Competence means having the required abilities to fulfill one’s trust in a certain matter, but also the capacity to understand, assess, and choose the best way to apply those abilities in that matter. Predictability means both reliability and having the relevant reasons to fulfill one’s trust in that respective matter. Responsiveness captures the trustee’s intentionality about or directed at the trustor, her willingness to fulfill her trust. The three criteria are not fixed characteristics of the trustee; assessments of each will reflect aspects that are relevant under specific trust situations. The criteria seek to establish a common ground for trust research to reconcile different perspectives, while recognizing that trust is a highly contextual and relational notion.

Examining stakeholder trust levels in committing to climate change action

The research investigates the trust of stakeholders in the governmental, non-governmental and business sectors’ actions on climate change. Close-ended questionnaire were employed among 98 respondents and the collected data determined that trust levels varied quite significantly across the sectors. The specific trust drivers were identified through the survey that was conducted. The different findings offered insights that enhanced stakeholder engagement and tailored the policy development to the various regional sustainability goals. The extent to which the stakeholders and the general public find these sectors to be reliable and more importantly what factors make these reliable would come to get discussed here. These findings matter as these would help the readers understand how the trust of the stakeholders can be earned and maintained for a rather longer period of time.

Why does one trust? A 360-degree perspective on the role of position power in weighting trustworthiness factors

ABSTRACT The purpose of the current paper is to explore the influence of the perceived trustworthiness factors of ability, benevolence and integrity on general and specific trust across supervisors, subordinates and peers with the same focal referent. This study used a 360-degree approach to examine how positional power asymmetries influence the relationship between trustworthiness and trust for a general and situation-specific referent. Data were obtained from military supervisors (N = 200), peers (N = 123), and subordinates (N = 85). Measures of trustworthiness and trust of a common military officer were obtained. Supervisors and subordinates differed in their relative weighting of trustworthiness factors (i.e. ability, benevolence, and integrity) when evaluating general and specific trust. Peers evidenced no difference in the relative weighting of trustworthiness factors. The relationship between benevolence and specific trust was stronger for subordinates than for supervisors. One implication of our findings is that trust can develop differently in bottom-up versus top-down organizational relationships. This study provides evidence that supervisors and subordinates emphasize different aspects of trustworthiness when evaluating their trust of a focal officer, and this process was different for general versus specific trust referents. The study also extends previous research by replicating previous findings across raters.

A comprehensive decision assessment for trust evaluation in wireless sensor networks

Objective: This study endeavors to tackle the pressing issue of network security within Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) through the introduction of an innovative integrated Pythagorean fuzzy-based method for evaluating network nodes. The primary aim is to enrich decision making frameworks within WSNs by furnishing a robust methodology for identifying and eradicating malevolent nodes. Methods: investigation employs an integrated Pythagorean fuzzy-based methodology to appraise network nodes by scrutinizing specific trust attributes. Comparative assessment with alternative contemporary Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) trust models is conducted to gauge the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Results: The results underscore the efficacy of the integrated Pythagorean fuzzy-based approach in bolstering network security through the precise identification and elimination of malicious nodes. Comparative analysis with other MCDM trust models highlights the superiority of the proposed approach in evaluating network nodes based on trust attributes. Recommendations: In light of the findings, it is advised to integrate fuzzy decision analysis methodologies into decision making systems for WSNs to enhance network security. Additionally, future research endeavors could concentrate on refining and expanding upon the proposed methodology to effectively address emerging security challenges within WSNs.

Analysis of the Chinese Trust Industry

Chinas financial market is one of the largest in the world. The trust industry makes up a great proportion of that market. Analyzing the Chinese industry with examples of top trust companies will improve our understanding of the market. We analyze the entire Chinese trust industry by presenting the case of specific trust companies. The paper contains a definition of the trust industry and products, a comparison of the Chinese trust industry with the American trust industry, an analysis of trust products in China, an analysis of risks of the Chinese trust industry, a comparison of the trust industry with other financial industries in China, and description of Chinese governments policies on the trust industry.

The Development of the Trust in Self-Driving Vehicles Scale (TSDV)

Self-driving vehicles (SDVs) are an emerging technology in which consumers have low levels of trust. Researchers/designers can understand and improve consumer trust through research and iterative design, but doing so effectively requires reliable measures. Although general trust-in-automation measures exist, a measure tailored to SDVs may provide a more accurate tool. This study presents work undertaken to create a domain specific trust measure for SDVs. Candidate items were given to 400 participants who rated their trust in an SDV portrayed in a narrative describing a ride in said vehicle. The Trust in Self-driving Vehicles Scale (TSDV) was created by analyzing participants’ responses using psychometric methods. Four factors were extracted from participants’ responses. Five items were retained for each factor to create the TSDV. Initial evidence of the validity of the instrument is presented through the TSDV’s ability to discriminate between a trustworthy and non-trustworthy vehicle, as portrayed in use scenarios.

The Impact of Chinese-style Modernisation on the Social-psychological Behaviours of Chinese Individuals: Evidence from Sociological and Psychological Research

As an important social transformation in China, Chinese-style modernisation has driven China into the ranks of modernised countries at a surprising speed for 40 years. From the perspectives of sociology and social psychology, the present article reviews the grassroots social governance model of Chinese-style modernisation and the changes in the traditional culture that have deeply affected people’s minds and social behaviour. The research findings indicate that Chinese-style modernisation has created a miracle in macro-material production, but at the grassroots level, while the material living standards of the people are gradually improving, their social dignity and spiritual life cannot be synchronised. First, as an indicator of measuring people’s quality of life and social development level, Chinese people’s sense of happiness declined in general, and the gap in happiness between different groups of Chinese people is widening. Second, the sense of fairness among people in the modernisation process has decreased, leading to some negative attitudes among the public and exacerbating social risks. Third, the general level of trust among the Chinese people is declining, but the specific trust manifests complex patterns, showing an increase in calculated (benefit-based) trust and a decrease in identified (kinsfolk-based) trust. In particular, people’s trust in the central government has remained high; however, they do not have the same level of trust in local and grassroots governments. All these demonstrate that the authoritarian type of governance and the historical practice of spiritual culture endorsed in Chinese-style modernisation have brought new possibilities for human society in future development, but there are also many problems and difficulties of dogmatism, formalism and bureaucracy in grassroots governance and cultural compromises of the East and the West. Chinese-style modernisation needs to do more in order to further enhance the sense of gain, happiness and trust among grassroots people, in addition to pursuing the aim of raising overall strength of the country.

How Does Trust Influence Farmers’ Low-Carbon Agricultural Technology Adoption? Evidence from Rural Southwest, China

Carbon emission reduction in agriculture is an important link to achieving green agricultural development and a rural ecological environment, and Low-Carbon Agricultural Technology (LCAT) of farmers is an important means to achieve carbon emission reduction in agriculture. Based on data obtained from a survey of 540 farmers in Sichuan province in 2021, the Tobit model was used to empirically analyze the effect of trust on farmers’ LCAT adoption. The results show that (1) the trust level of farmers is high and the order is special trust > institutional trust > general trust. At the same time, the intensity of adoption of LCAT by farmers is not high, and the average number of LCAT adopted by each family is 1.13. Among them, straw-returning technology was adopted to a high degree, with 54.63% of farmers using it. (2) Farmers’ trust significantly enhances farmers’ LCAT adoption behavior, and the magnitude of the effect is characterized by specific trust > general trust > institutional trust chain. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the influence of farmers’ specific trust and institutional trust in plain areas on the intensity of LCAT adoption is stronger than that of farmers in non-plain areas, and the influence of general trust of farmers in non-plain areas on the intensity of LCAT adoption is stronger than that of farmers in plain areas. The impact of specific trust, general trust, and institutional trust on LCAT adoption was stronger for the new generation of farmers than for the older generation of farmers. (4) Herding effect plays a mediating role in special trust, institutional trust, and LCAT adoption. This study can deepen our understanding of the relationship between farmers’ trust and LCAT adoption behavior, and then provide theoretical reference and practical basis for the promotion of LCAT and the improvement of farmers’ LCAT adoption level from the perspective of trust.

Was the response to COVID-19 in the West disappointing in terms of comparative outcomes achieved?

This paper features an analysis of country level data generated by the COVID-19 pandemic as revealed in data related to deaths, populations, infections, recovered cases, and tests, for a global sample of 208 countries, plus measures of their policy responsiveness and relative preparedness. A subsample of the 39 OECD countries is also analysed in an assessment including measures of GDP per capita, and indices of country specific trust levels, The cumulative data set is taken from the Worldometer data source. The GHS Index and Oxford Stringency Index are used as policy benchmarks. Other indicators used include GDP/capita, Trust and Personal Trust Indices from the OECD. The results suggest that the advanced economies in the West have not managed the COVID-19 pandemic particularly well and there is no evidence of reduced death rates in these countries when compared to the average performance. On a relative global comparison, the poorer nations, and those in Africa particularly, appear to have performed relatively well, subject to the obvious caveat about the accuracy of the data used in this study. The Oxford Stringency Index does not appear to be informative and countries with a higher GHS Index rating performed relatively poorly. There is a perverse positive relationship between the GHS rating and the number of deaths and cases. This pattern is repeated in the smaller sample of 38 OECD countries. There is no evidence that higher levels of trust or country wealth led to improved outcomes except in the case of case fatality rates (CFR) which are just under 2 percent for OECD countries as opposed to 3.8 percent for the total sample.

Excess Deaths and Excess Covid Booster Vaccine Doses – are they related?

This paper features an analysis of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country level data generated by the COVID-19 pandemic as revealed in data related to booster vaccinations, excess deaths, populations, infections, recovered cases, and tests, for a sample of 38 countries, plus measures of their policy responsiveness and relative preparedness, including various other indicators of trust, stringency and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. The paper uses OECD weekly data on excess deaths. The data on COVID-19 vaccine boosters administered was obtained from ourworldindata.org, the assessment includes measures of GDP per capita, and indices of country specific trust levels, the cumulative data set is taken from the Worldometer data source. The Global Health Security (GHS) Index and Oxford Stringency Index (STR) are used as policy benchmarks. Other indicators used include GDP/capita, Trust, and Personal Trust Indices from the OECD. Cross sectional regression analyses suggest that COVID-19 booster vaccines explain between 69 and 79 per cent of the variation in excess deaths in OECD countries as captured by excess deaths in the first week or averaged across the first three months of 2023. An adaptive lasso technique was used to screen the explanatory variables in multivariate regression analysis. This analysis suggested the addition of either the GHS or Stringency indexes, plus a version of the Trust Indices, but none of these added much to the explanatory power of the regressions which were dominated by the contribution of the measure of vaccine boosters. The results suggest a strong association between excess deaths and booster vaccinations across this sample of OECD countries.

Inspiring guests’ imagination of “home away from home” to choose Airbnb through brand storytelling

Purpose Airbnb attempts to stimulate consumer imagination and expectations of home through storytelling before their stay. The purpose of this study is to gain a holistic understanding of the psychological mechanisms by which brand storytelling can evoke consumer imagination of home away from home and their choice of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations. Design/methodology/approach By collecting 864 valid questionnaires through two rounds of surveys with Chinese consumers, this study examined the structural relations between narrative elements in the brand story (home characteristics, social interactions in advertising, advertising features), brand perception, self-image congruence and consumption intentions. Findings The results demonstrate that home characteristics, social interactions in advertising, and advertising features positively influence people’s brand perceptions, self-image congruence and consumption intentions through mental imagery processing. Practical implications This study offers helpful implications on how to create a home feeling in P2P accommodations and provides recommendations to promote the connection between consumers and the brand for P2P accommodation providers and hoteliers. Originality/value This study reveals the underlying mechanism of how various narrative elements in brand stories inspire the imagination and feeling of home in consumers during the prestay phase. By analysing the impact of specific trust systems and emotional needs on the construction of a feeling of home, this study is an important complement to existing studies on the study of home in P2P accommodation.

Enhancing component-specific trust with consumer automated systems through humanness design

Consumer automation is a suitable venue for studying the efficacy of untested humanness design methods for promoting specific trust in multi-component systems. Subjective (trust, self-confidence) and behavioural (use, manual override) measures were recorded as 82 participants interacted with a four-component automation-bearing system in a simulated smart home task for two experimental blocks. During the first block all components were perfectly reliable (100%). During the second block, one component became unreliable (60%). Participants interacted with a system containing either a single or four simulated voice assistants. In the single-assistant condition, the unreliable component resulted in trust changes for every component. In the four-assistant condition, trust decreased for only the unreliable component. Across agent-number conditions, use decreased between blocks for only the unreliable component. Self-confidence and overrides exhibited ceiling and floor effects, respectively. Our findings provide the first evidence of effectively using humanness design to enhance component-specific trust in consumer systems. Practitioner summary: Participants interacted with simulated smart-home multi-component systems that contained one or four voiced assistants. In the single-voice condition, one component’s decreasing reliability coincided with trust changes for all components. In the four-voice condition, trust decreased for only the decreasingly reliable component. The number of voices did not influence use strategies. Abbreviations: ACC: adaptive cruise control; CST: component-specific trust; SWT: system-wide trust; UAV: unmanned aerial vehicle; CPRS: complacency potential rating scale; MANOVA: multivariate analysis of variance

The welfare state in really hard times: Political trust and satisfaction with the German healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an enormous challenge for healthcare systems around the globe. Using original panel survey data for the case of Germany, this article studies how specific trust in the healthcare system to cope with this crisis has evolved during the course of the pandemic and whether this specific form of trust is associated with general political trust. The article finds strong evidence for a positive and robust association between generalized political trust and performance perceptions regarding the efficiency and fairness of the crisis response as well as individual treatment conditions. The article also shows that specific trust in healthcare remained relatively stable throughout 2020, but declined significantly in the spring of 2021.

An investigation of mobile health (mHealth) applications available to support knee arthroplasty rehabilitation and recommendations for implementation: A scoping review

Keywords: mHealth; Applications; Arthroplasty Purpose: Length of hospital-stay following total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is approximately 1-3 days, with associated costs of revisions around £75,000 per patient. Patient control of recovery, self-management and compliance to home-based rehabilitation is therefore of utmost importance. The use of mHealth applications (apps), to promote independence and self-management, provides potential for a cost-effective, patient-centred strategy to achieve this. The objective of this study was to scope and review the quality of publicly available, patient-focused apps for TKA, with the aim of identifying and recommending one for trial and clinical implementation within a Hampshire hospital. Methods: A scoping review was chosen to systematically map, synthesise and review the latitude of apps available via the Apple Store and Google Play. Apps were identified if they were free of charge to the user, suitable for use within the UK and in English; due to the ubiquitous nature of app usage, apps were selected if they targeted both total knee or hip arthroplasty. Quality analysis of each app was conducted using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS); a simple 4-dimension, objective, and reliable tool for classifying and assessing quality of mhealth apps. Results: Nine apps, from 692 screened, met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed using MARS. The mean overall MARS score (where 1 = inadequate and 5 = excellent) was 3.57 (SD = ±0.87). Four apps had a score above 4, three of which were identified as utilising an app platform already in use by NHS Trusts. Five apps had a score of less than 3. The highest rated app was the Northumbria Orthopaedic NHS Trust App (4.57) which utilised the app platform ‘My Patient Journey’. This app was noted to consider features that ensured the app was engaging and also likely to promote positive rehabilitative behaviours. Conclusion(s): This study provides an overview of mHealth apps available to health-care professionals and patients post-TKA. Further investigation into the use of this platform is required, to personalise and adjust it for specific Trust use. Randomised trials are now required in order to characterise the use and efficacy of this app on health knowledge, behaviours and use. Moreover, to understand their effectiveness in rehabilitation and improve quality of life following TKA, hereby reducing its burden on public health and clinical systems. Impact: The NHS finds itself in the midst of an mHealth revolution and mobile technology offers the opportunity to access clinical apps, evidence-based resources and advanced mobile communication in one device. The mobility of such apps enables patients to use them in their home setting, reducing the need for face-to-face contact and, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, has shown itself to be a technology that presents a future healthcare option. This study provides an overview of the mHealth apps available to a range of health-care professionals across all disciplines and patients post-TKA surgery; summarising their strengths and limitations to make recommendations for future implementation. The introduction of such management will take time, funding, a shift in clinician approach and patient expectation-management, in addition to further research to optimise delivery. Funding acknowledgements: This study is a final year physiotherapy dissertation, courtesy of University of Winchester. No funding was received from internal/external sources.

OXTR Gene DNA Methylation Levels Are Associated with Discounting Behavior with Untrustworthy Proposers.

Individual differences in temporal and probabilistic discounting are associated with a wide range of life outcomes in literature. Traditional approaches have focused on impulsiveness and cognitive control skills, on goal-oriented personality traits as well as on the psychological perception of time. More recently, literature started to consider the role of social and contextual factors in discounting behavior. Between others, higher generalized trust in human beings and specific trust in people who will deliver the future/probabilistic rewards have been related to a stronger willingness to wait and to assume risk. Moreover, the tendency to trust others has been associated with the oxytocin receptor gene regulation that can be modified by life experiences. In this perspective, we hypothesized that differences in the tendency to wait and to take risks for a more desirable reward according to the proposer’s trustworthiness could be related to a different level of DNA methylation at the oxytocin receptor gene. Findings confirmed that participants are less willing to wait and to risk when the proposer is considered highly untrustworthy and revealed how higher oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation is associated with a stronger effect due to the presence of an untrustworthy proposer. Limits and future directions are outlined.

Understanding users' trust transfer mechanism in a blockchain-enabled platform: A mixed methods study

This study aims to identify and investigate the various trust targets and their transfer mechanism in a blockchain-enabled healthcare mutual aid platform. We first conduct a qualitative online interview toward initial users in the platform and identify three types of trust (i.e., trust in technology, trust in members, and trust in platform) that play salient roles in promoting users' usage intentions. We then develop a preliminary theoretical model based on the interview findings and conduct a survey to test our research model. The empirical results suggest that three platform mechanisms, namely member credibility, blockchain certificate, and structural assurance, significantly facilitate the three trust targets, which subsequently enhance individuals' behavioral intentions. A mediation analysis further demonstrates that the three trust targets partially or fully mediate the influences of three platform mechanisms on behavioral intentions through different path relationships. Our study contributes to the extant literature by uncovering the nomological network among three specific trust targets and explicating their antecedents as well as behavioral outcomes in the emerging context of blockchain-enabled applications.

Ripple+: An Improved Scheme of Ripple Consensus Protocol in Deployability, Liveness and Timing Assumption

Ripple acts as a real-time settlement and payment system to connect banks and payment providers. As the consensus support of the Ripple network to ensure network consistency, Ripple consensus protocol has been widely concerned in recent years. Compared with those Byzantine fault tolerant protocols, Ripple has a significant difference that the system can reach an agreement under decentralized trust model. However, Ripple has many problems both in theory and practice, which are mentioned in the previous researches. This paper presents Ripple+, an improved scheme of Ripple consensus protocol, which improves Ripple from three aspects: (1) Ripple+ employs a specific trust model and a corresponding guideline for Unique Node List selection, which makes it easy to deploy in practice to meet the safety and liveness condition; (2) the primary and view change mechanism are joined to solve the problem discussed by the previous research that Ripple may lose liveness in some extreme scenarios; (3) we remove the strong synchrony clock and timeout during consensus periods to make it suitable for weak synchrony assumption. We implemented a prototype of Ripple+ and conducted experiments to show that Ripple+ can achieve the throughput of tens of thousands of transactions per second with no more than half a minute latency, and the view change mechanism hardly incurs additional cost.

Understanding the Roles of Risk and Trust in the Context of Collaborative Consumption: A Test of Competing Models

Based on a survey of 266 ridesharing consumers in the United States, the study investigates relative impacts of trust and risk on intentions to continue using the service by comparing three alternative models via SEM analysis. We examine specific trust and risk sub-dimensions that are salient in the online-tooffline environment and identify a mechanism of their joint effects on consumer decision-making. Our findings show that risk does not directly affect intentions in this collaborative consumption context but is mediated by consumer trust. The results highlight the importance of trust-building efforts for ridesharing service providers.

Why are strangers trusted more during trade fairs? A literature review on the conceptual model of general trust formation

PurposeConsidering that low-level general trust may hinder communication, this study aims to detect the factors that can influence general trust between exhibitors and visitors during business-to-business trade fairs.Design/methodology/approachBased on a literature review and stakeholders’ behavior analysis, a conceptual model of general trust formation between exhibitors and visitors is proposed.FindingsThe preconditions of strangers’ general trust patterns mainly include their early experience regarding trust, institutional trust in the environment and trust propensity. Stakeholders’ treatment, trust transfer, on-site restraints, reward and punishment expansion and on-site personnel arrangement may facilitate the formation of general trust between exhibitors and visitors.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is a conceptual article that requires further investigation to verify the main factors that influence general trust and the impact of general trust on other trust components between exhibitors and visitors.Practical implicationsOrganizers, exhibitors and visitors should pay attention to participants’ selection, supervision, self-discipline and personnel management before and during trade fairs. International and small-scale, especially new trade fairs in developed and developing countries, must consider additional measures to improve general trust.Originality/valueThe existing literature has not focused on general trust in the trade fair context. In this paper, research on network and relationship marketing is further deepened in terms of a specific trust type. The interactions between stakeholders before and during fair may promote general trust among participants than in other settings, which partially explains why trade fair (even other two-sided markets) can increase social capital.