An integrated view of particularized trust in social commerce: An empirical investigation

With the prevalence of social media and social networking, social commerce is becoming increasingly popular in both business and research areas. As in other types of e-commerce context, trust is also indispensable in social commerce. In this study, two types of trust have been discussed. This study represents an initial attempt to provide an integrated view of particularized trust in social commerce, including particularized trust antecedents, trust transfer and trust performance, so as to promote trust formation in social commerce. Using data collected from 614 social commerce users, we demonstrate that trust disposition, quality-assured shared information, familiarity and endorsement by other members are four antecedents of particularized trust. The results also indicate particularized trust can be transferred into system trust, and particularized trust only exerts positive effect on social WOM intention while system trust only exerts positive effect on social shopping intention. Furthermore, we prove perceived similarity can strengthen the relationship between trust disposition and particularized trust as well as the relationship between quality-assured shared information and particularized trust.