Perceptions Of Trustworthiness Research Articles

Enhancing consumer perceptions of privacy and trust: a GDPR label perspective

PurposeThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces significant data protection obligations on all organizations within the European Union (EU) and those transacting with EU citizens. This paper presents the GDPR privacy label and uses two empirical studies to examine the effectiveness of this approach in influencing consumers' privacy perceptions and related behavioral intentions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper tests the efficacy of two GDPR privacy label designs, a consent-based label and a static label. Study 1 examines the effects of each label on perceptions of risk, control and privacy. Study 2 investigates the influence of consumers' privacy perceptions on perceived trustworthiness and willingness to interact with the organization.FindingsThe findings support the potential of GDPR privacy labels for positively influencing perceptions of risk, control, privacy and trustworthiness and enhancing consumers' willingness to transact and disclose data to online organizations.Practical implicationsThe findings are useful for organizations required to comply with the GDPR and present a solution to requirements for transparent communications and explicit consent.Originality/valueThis study examines and demonstrates the efficacy of visualized privacy policies in impacting consumer privacy perceptions and behavioral intentions.

Assessment of Factors Impacting the Perception of Online Content Trustworthiness by Age, Education and Gender

Online content trustworthiness has become a topic of significant interest due to the growth of so-called ‘fake news’ and other deceptive online content. Deceptive content has been responsible for an armed standoff, caused mistrust surrounding elections and reduced the trust in media, generally. Modern society, though, depends on the ability to share information to function. Citizens may be injured if they don’t heed medical, weather and other emergency warnings. Distrust for educational information impedes the transfer of knowledge of innovations and societal growth. To function properly, societal trust in shared in information is critical. This article seeks to understand the problem and possible solutions. It assesses the impact of the characteristics of online articles and their authors, publishers and sponsors on perceived trustworthiness to ascertain how Americans make online article trust decisions. This analysis is conducted with a focus on how the impact of these factors on trustworthiness varies based on individuals’ age, education and gender.

A study on factors influencing the perception of website privacy, trustworthiness and user’s purchasing intentions in Chennai City

Electronic commerce is growing popular across the world because of the convenience it brings to online sellers and online customers. However, as the electronic commerce rises, problematic issues like privacy concerns, dissatisfaction, incompetent deliveries, and the most important – trust issues – also surface. Numerous previous studies indicated that the purchase intention and behaviour of the online customers depend on their perceived risk and shopping experience in electronic commerce. Some studies also specifically stated that personal information, product quality, security, and business reputation are the usual factors which the customers evaluate to deem the online business as trustworthy. This paper aims to study the factors that influence consumer purchasing intentions and their perceptions of the trustworthiness of the privacy-related practices of E-commerce websites in Chennai city. The Primary data will be conducted from 100 respondents using convenience sampling technique. The data collected through questionnaire will be analysed by percentage analysis, cluster analysis and factor analysis. The findings will showcase the website attributes and individual characteristics and willingness to buy.

Trust Me: Interpersonal Communication Dominance as a Tool for Influencing Interpersonal Trust Between Coworkers

Perceptions of trustworthiness are an established antecedent of interpersonal trust. However, the trust and communication literatures provide fewer insights into possible proactive tools for positively influencing trustworthiness. Interpersonal communication dominance is a skill used to influence another individual in an interpersonal relationship. Using social information processing theory, we hypothesize and test a parallel mediation model specifying that the three dimensions of trustworthiness (i.e., perceived ability, perceived benevolence, and perceived integrity) mediate the relationship between interpersonal communication dominance and interpersonal trust. The results show significant indirect effects for interpersonal communication dominance on interpersonal trust through perceived benevolence and perceived integrity but not through perceived ability. Our findings suggest that using interpersonal communication dominance to increase perceptions of benevolence and integrity may be an important communicative tool for positively influencing interpersonal trust.

The Effect of Trustor Age and Trustee Age on Trustworthiness Judgments: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Perceived trustworthiness based on facial appearance plays an important role in interpersonal trust and cooperative behavior. Interpersonal trust behaviors involve both trustors and trustees. However, there is no clear conclusion on how the age of the two individuals affects interpersonal trust behaviors. Therefore, this study used the trust game task to explore the differences in trust behaviors between two different age groups in response to faces of different ages and analyzed whether such differences were apparent in the face processing stage. The behavioral results showed that only younger adults invested more money with older partners than younger ones; that is, younger adults trusted older faces more. The event-related potential (ERP) analyses showed that in the early stage of face processing, younger faces elicited more negative N170 than older faces; at the same time, older faces elicited more positive VPP than younger faces, and younger adults had more positive VPP than older adults. In the middle and late stages of face processing, younger faces elicited more negative FRN than older faces in younger adults but not in older adults. In addition, older faces elicited more positive LPP than younger faces in older adults but not in younger adults. The neural analyses suggested that age-related differences in facial trustworthiness judgments might occur in the later stages of face processing. Combining the behavioral and neural results, we found a dissociation between trustworthiness perceptions and trust behaviors in both younger and older adults, which may provide insight into how to prevent older adults from being deceived.

Exploring White individuals' perceptions of Black atheists' trustworthiness, racial identity, and feelings of warmth.

Anti-atheist bias in the United States is both persistent and pervasive. However, most experimental psychological research demonstrating anti-atheist bias have used White targets or targets whose race is not explicitly mentioned. Thus, it is unknown whether atheists of colour, who have two stigmatised identities (e.g., their race and atheist identification), are perceived differently from their ingroup counterparts with one stigmatised identity (e.g., Black Christian). Using a between-subjects experimental design we examined White Americans' (n=286; Mage =39.91, SD=13.17) perceptions of Black atheists' trustworthiness and racial identification relative to Black non-atheists. We also explored whether exposure to Black atheists versus Black Christians would influence White individuals' feelings of warmth towards Black Americans in general. There was no evidence that White individuals perceive Black atheists as less trustworthy or less racially identified than non-atheist Black individuals (i.e., Black Christians and Black individuals whose religious identity was not explicitly mentioned). Results did reveal, however, that White individuals had higher feelings of warmth towards Black Americans in general (and several other stigmatised groups) after exposure to a Black Christian versus Black individuals who were not Christian. Implications and future research directions are discussed, particularly focused on atheists who are multiply stigmatised.

Toddler-mother attachment moderates adolescents' behavioral and neural evaluation of trustworthiness.

This longitudinal study examined the prospective association between toddler–mother attachment to adolescents’ (n = 52; 34 boys; Mage = 13.22 years; 90% White) behavioral and neural responses during the evaluation of trustworthiness from unfamiliar, emotionally neutral faces. At 33 months, toddler–mother attachment status (secure vs insecure classification) was assessed using a modified Strange Situation procedure. Results revealed that attachment moderated the processing of trustworthiness facial cues. As faces became less trustworthy, adolescents with a secure (vs insecure) attachment history rated the faces as correspondingly less trustworthy and showed increasing (vs overall blunted) activation in brain regions involved in trustworthiness perception (i.e. bilateral amygdala, bilateral fusiform, right anterior insula and right posterior superior temporal sulcus). Findings suggest that a secure compared with insecure child–mother attachment in toddlerhood may be associated with greater capacity for, or openness to, processing potentially negative social information at both the behavioral and neural levels during adolescence.

Strategies of German Bundesliga and English Premier League clubs for the COVID-19 crisis: the case of international broadcasting fans

During the COVID-19 pandemic that paused sports worldwide, the German Bundesliga League (GBL) and English Premier League (EPL) took two different strategic approaches to agree with their players on returning to play. To become better informed and prepared for future crisis management, this study examines consumer responses to these opposing strategies. We also identify how perceived organizational legitimacy, trustworthiness, reliance, and justifiability have an impact on consumer multimedia consumption of the games. A sample of 503 participants responded to an online questionnaire regarding the contrasting decisions taken by the GBL and the EPL during the global health crisis. SEM with multi-group analysis was conducted to test the research hypotheses. When comparing the two selected sport leagues, the league that reached an agreement with their players experienced higher levels of perceived legitimacy while needing fewer perceptions of trustworthiness, reliance, and justifiability to obtain higher multimedia consumption intention from consumers.

The effects of transparency perceptions on trustworthiness perceptions and trust

ABSTRACT Transparency is recognised as vital to ensuring employee trust in managers. However, prior measures of transparency have made it difficult to discern the precise influence of transparency on trust. We posit that separate dimensions of transparency perceptions (disclosure, clarity, and accuracy) uniquely influence perceptions of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity). We also posit that trustworthiness, as the proximal predictor of trust, mediates the transparency-trust relationship. Using a recently published measure of transparency that captures its dimensions, we find support for our predictions that transparency differentially influences trust via trustworthiness across two samples with unique referents (direct manager and top-management-team). Our results show that employees place trust in different ways depending on how much information they perceive their managers to be sharing (i.e. disclosure), what they perceive their managers to be revealing (i.e. accuracy), and how they perceive their managers to be revealing it (i.e. clarity). Thus, managers who are seen as satisfying some dimensions of transparency but not others (e.g. disclosure and accuracy, but not clarity) might not foster needed trustworthiness perceptions for employees to justify placing trust in the manager, with practical implications for managers seeking to develop trust in situations that require them to demonstrate specific trustworthiness attributes.

Supplemental Material for The Effects of Trustworthiness Manipulations on Trustworthiness Perceptions and Risk-Taking Behaviors

Supplemental Material for The Effects of Trustworthiness Manipulations on Trustworthiness Perceptions and Risk-Taking Behaviors

Effects of celebrity, social media influencer, and peer endorsements on consumer responses toward a celebrity-owned brand: the role of source credibility and congruency

Considering the growing popularity of celebrity-owned brands through social media advertising, this study investigates how different types of product endorsers [i.e., celebrities, social media influencers (SMI) and peer internet users] influence consumers' judgements toward celebrity-owned brands on Instagram. Results indicated that perceived expertise was important in consumers' evaluation of product endorsement messages, whereas perceptions of endorsers' trustworthiness did not differ across the three conditions. In terms of endorsement effectiveness, celebrities and SMIs had more significant impacts on consumer responses than fellow consumers when endorsing a brand owned by the celebrity, in which perceived expertise mediated the relationship between endorser type and advertising effectiveness. In addition, the endorser-consumer congruency is more prominent to SMI endorsements than to peer endorsements, whereas the endorser-product congruency is more crucial to peer endorsements than to celebrity endorsements. Theoretical and practical implications for researchers and marketers are discussed.

The Effect of Big Five Personality Traits on Leader Member Exchange and Organization Citizenship Behavior in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities

The Effect of Big Five Personality Traits on Leader Member Exchange and Organization Citizenship Behavior in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities

Development of a Credible Virtual Clinician Promoting Colorectal Cancer Screening via Telehealth Apps for and by Black Men: Qualitative Study.

BackgroundTraditionally, promotion of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening among Black men was delivered by community health workers, patient navigators, and decision aids (printed text or video media) at clinics and in the community setting. A novel approach to increase CRC screening of Black men includes developing and utilizing a patient-centered, tailored message delivered via virtual human technology in the privacy of one’s home.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to incorporate the perceptions of Black men in the development of a virtual clinician (VC) designed to deliver precision messages promoting the fecal immunochemical test (FIT) kit for CRC screening among Black men in a future clinical trial.MethodsFocus groups of Black men were recruited to understand their perceptions of a Black male VC. Specifically, these men identified source characteristics that would enhance the credibility of the VC. The modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability (MAIN) model, which examines how interface features affect the user’s psychology through four affordances (modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability), was used to assess the presumed credibility of the VC and likability of the app from the focus group transcripts. Each affordance triggers heuristic cues that stimulate a positive or a negative perception of trustworthiness, believability, and understandability, thereby increasing source credibility.ResultsIn total, 25 Black men were recruited from the community and contributed to the development of 3 iterations of a Black male VC over an 18-month time span. Feedback from the men enhanced the visual appearance of the VC, including its movement, clothing, facial expressions, and environmental surroundings. Heuristics, including social presence, novelty, and authority, were all recognized by the final version of the VC, and creditably was established. The VC was named Agent Leveraging Empathy for eXams (ALEX) and referred to as “brother-doctor,” and participants stated “wanting to interact with ALEX over their regular doctor.”ConclusionsInvolving Black men in the development of a digital health care intervention is critical. This population is burdened by cancer health disparities, and incorporating their perceptions in telehealth interventions will create awareness of the need to develop targeted messages for Black men.

Effects of COVID-19 on customer service experience: Can employees wearing facemasks enhance customer-perceived service quality?

Wearing a facemask is an effective part of personal hygiene management (WHO, 2020). Not only can it offer healthy people some protection against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection, but it can also reduce the spread of the virus. Wearing facemasks, as a part of the various regulations and guidelines encouraged by the Chinese government and hospitality firms, has been widely accepted by the public in the post-COVID-19 era in China. But few studies have considered the effects of employees wearing facemasks on the customer service experience. Based on signaling theory, this experimental study explores the effects of hotel employees wearing facemasks on customer perceptions of service quality. The results indicate three main effects. (a) Having employees wear facemasks can improve perceptions of customer service quality. (b) Customers commonly feel that female employees wearing facemasks could provide higher service quality than male mask-wearing employees, but the improvement in customer perception with male employees wearing facemasks is greater than the situation between facemask-less and facemask-wearing females. (c) Customer perceptions of employee expertise, employee trustworthiness, and hotel trustworthiness play serial mediating roles. Recommendations to help hotel managers improve customers’ service evaluations during the COVID-19 pandemic are provided.

Consensual and idiosyncratic trustworthiness perceptions independently influence social decision‐making

AbstractTrustworthiness perceptions are based on facial features that are seen as trustworthy by most people (e.g., resemblance to a smile) and features that are only seen as trustworthy by a specific perceiver (e.g., resemblance to a loved one). In other words, trustworthiness perceptions reflect consensual and idiosyncratic judgment components. Yet, when examining the influence of facial cues on social decision‐making previous studies have almost exclusively focused on consensual judgments, ignoring the potential role of idiosyncratic judgments. Results of two studies, with 491 participants making 15,656 trust decisions, showed that consensual and idiosyncratic trustworthiness judgments independently influenced participants’ likelihood to trust an interaction partner, with no significant differences in the magnitude of the effects. These results highlight the need to consider both consensual and idiosyncratic judgments. Previous work, which only focused on the effect of consensual judgments, may have underestimated the overall influence of trustworthiness perceptions on social decision‐making.

A fork in the road: Perspectives on sustainability and decentralised governance in digital institutions

A digital institution is a set of computer-based rules that perform intermediating roles upon which one or more person’s well-being depends. This article argues that governance, the processes and customs by which rules are agreed, is critical to the sustainability of the digital institution and therefore of society more broadly. The objective of this work was to interrogate whether emerging decentralised architectures (blockchain) can offer new perspectives on digital sustainability in the form of decentralised governance. Firstly, the literature on decentralised modes of governance was synthesised. Then, existing digital institutions were reviewed, categorised and mapped onto a multi-domain layered conceptual framework that draws out three distinct modes for enactment of changes to digital institution rules; direct, integrated, and fork-based. We concluded that the coupling of decentralised governance approaches with fork-based or integrated enactment stands to enhance digital sustainability through increased perception of trustworthiness afforded through independently verifiable and cryptographically secure audit trails.

Understanding User Perceptions of Trustworthiness in E-Recruitment Systems

Algorithmic systems are increasingly deployed to make decisions that people used to make. Perceptions of these systems can significantly influence their adoption, yet, broadly speaking, users understanding of the internal working of these systems is limited. To explore users perceptions of algorithmic systems, we developed a prototype e-recruitment system called Algorithm Playground where we offer the users a look behind the scenes of such systems, and provide how and why explanations on how job applicants are ranked by their algorithms. Using an online study with 110 participants, we measured perceived fairness, transparency and trustworthiness of e-recruitment systems. Our results show that user understanding of the data and reasoning behind candidates rankings and selection evoked some positive attitudes as participants rated our platform to be fairer, more reliable, transparent and trustworthy than the e-recruitment systems they have used in the past.

Facial Feature Manipulation for Trait Portrayal in Realistic and Cartoon-Rendered Characters

Previous perceptual studies on human faces have shown that specific facial features have consistent effects on perceived personality and appeal, but it remains unclear if and how findings relate to perception of virtual characters. For example, wider human faces have been found to appear more aggressive and dominant, whereas studies on virtual characters have shown opposite trends but have suffered from significant eeriness of exaggerated features. In this study, we use highly realistic virtual faces obtained from 3D scanning, as well as cartoon-rendered counterparts retaining facial proportions. We assess the effects of facial width and eye size on perceptions of appeal, trustworthiness, aggressiveness, dominance, and eeriness. Our manipulations did not affect eeriness, and we find the same perceptual trends previously reported for human faces.

Home–School Interaction: A Vignette Study of Parents’ Views on Situations Relevant to Trust

This paper addresses parental trust in schools (hereafter referred to as “parent trust”) in relation to different situations of school-based involvement. More precisely, the study seeks to examine how selected situations of parental school-based involvement (parent-teacher conferences and parents’ evenings) are relevant to trust, and what facets of trustworthiness are activated in each situation. In line with the ‘comprehensive model of trust’ briefly presented in the introductory paper of this special issue, this study aims at interconnecting two elements: “trust among parents and schools” and “promotion of trust” based on perceptions of trustworthiness as antecedents for trusting behavior. Building upon this model and a prior vignette study on parent trust in different situations of school-based involvement, the paper highlights the potential of further theoretical and methodological developments in educational trust research relevant for both research and practice.

"Safe Behind My Screen": Adolescent Sexual Minority Males' Perceptions of Safety and Trustworthiness on Geosocial and Social Networking Apps.

Dating and social media application ("app") use for sexual and romantic partner-seeking is increasingly ubiquitous among adolescent sexual minorities assigned male at birth (ASMM). Previous work suggests that ASMM use the Internet, including apps, for normative aspects of sexual identity exploration and development. However, there may be risks associated with their use of sexualized apps designed for adults and with sexual interaction with adult app users. Little is known about how they assess and mitigate risk or gauge the trustworthiness of potential partners on such apps. We recruited ASMM in the U.S. (N = 268; ages 15-18years, mean age = 16.9) to complete an online survey with open- and closed-ended questions about their perceptions of safety and trustworthiness of others while using apps to find partners. Participants perceived various risks on apps (e.g., physical harm, being "catfished") but did not appear to have clear strategies for measuring or mitigating it. They often assessed trustworthiness by observing other users' behavior or profiles. Participants frequently described interacting with older app users as risky or untrustworthy. Sexual health risks were seldom mentioned and the legal risks of sexual interaction with adults were never mentioned. Although app use may meet some of ASMM's sexual development needs, they may lack the knowledge and skills to do so safely in sexualized online adult spaces. These findings suggest that sex education for sexual minority adolescents should address online sexual safety.