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Trust is Earned (Unless Your Website is Flawed): How Presentation Flaws and Delays Affect Swift Trust Between Individuals
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Most of the information security management research involving fear appeals is guided by either protection motivation theory or the extended parallel processing model. Over time, extant research has extended these theories, as well as their derivative theories, in a variety of ways, leading to several theoretical and empirical inconsistencies. The large body of fragmented, and sometimes conflicting, research has muddied the broader understanding of what drives protection- and defensive motivation. We provide guidance to the security discourse by offering the first study in the literature to employ two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling (TSSEM), which combines covariance-based structural equation modeling and meta-analysis. IS researchers have traditionally used meta-analysis for structural equation modeling for such purposes—an approach that has several serious statistical flaws. Using 341 systematically selected empirical security articles (representing 383 unique studies) and TSSEM, we pool a large series of five datasets to test six models, from which we examine the effects of constructs and paths in the security fear-appeals literature. We compare and test six versions of models inspired by issues in the broader fear-appeals literature. We confirm the importance of both the threat- and coping-appraisal processes; establish the central role of fear and that it has greater importance than threat; show that efficacy is a stronger predictor of protection motivation than is threat; demonstrate that response costs as currently measured are ineffective but that maladaptive rewards have a strong negative effect on protection motivation and a positive effect on defensive motivation; and provide evidence that dual models of danger control and fear control should be used.
In early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic forced employees in tech companies worldwide to abruptly transition from working in offices to working from their homes. During two years of predominantly working from home, employees and managers alike formed expectations about what post-pandemic working life should look like. Many companies are experimenting with new work policies that balance employee- and manager expectations regarding where, when and how work should be done in the future. In this article, we gather experiences of the new trend of remote working based on the synthesis of 22 company-internal surveys of employee preferences for WFH, and 26 post-pandemic work policies from 17 companies and their sites, covering 12 countries in total. Our results are threefold. First, through the new work policies, all companies formally give employees more flexibility regarding working time and location. Second, there is a great variation in how much flexibility the companies are willing to yield to the employees. The paper details the different formulations that companies adopted to document the extent of permitted WFH, exceptions, relocation permits and the authorization procedures. Third, we document a change in the psychological contract between employees and managers, where the option of working from home is converted from an exclusive perk that managers could choose to give to the few, to a core privilege that all employees feel they are entitled to. Finally, there are indications that as the companies learn and solicit feedback regarding the efficiency of the chosen strategies, we will see further developments and changes in the work policies concerning how much flexibility to work whenever and from wherever they grant. Through these findings, the paper contributes to a growing literature about the new trends emerging from the pandemic in tech companies and spells out practical implications onwards.
We conducted an incentivized lab experiment examining the effect of gain vs. loss-framed warning messages on online security behavior. We measured the probability of suffering a cyberattack during the experiment as the result of five specific security behaviors: choosing a safe connection, providing minimum information during the sign-up process, choosing a strong password, choosing a trusted vendor, and logging-out. A loss-framed message led to more secure behavior during the experiment. The experiment also measured the effect of trusting beliefs and cybersecurity knowledge. Trusting beliefs had a negative effect on security behavior, while cybersecurity knowledge had a positive effect.
Many critical and unexpected situations are handled by people that have never met. In the literature, development of immediate trust has been identified as a prerequisite for such temporary groups and leadership to function well. Limited experimental research has studied what leadership stimulates immediate trust between strangers. The present study investigate how four leadership styles, combining autocratic or democratic leadership behavior with low or high emotional stability, is related to immediate trust in a leader displayed through a 45-s video vignette of a car accident. A sample of 280 adults, randomly assigned to one of four conditions (1, autocratic/stable; 2, autocratic/unstable; 3, democratic/stable; 4, democratic/unstable) rated immediate trust after watching the vignette. The results show that autocratic and emotionally stable leaders were on average rated higher on immediate trust than all other leadership styles, after controlling for generalized trust.
Research in psychology has shown that both motivation and wellbeing are contingent on the satisfaction of certain psychological needs. Yet, despite a long-standing pursuit in human-computer interaction (HCI) for design strategies that foster sustained engagement, behavior change and wellbeing, the basic psychological needs shown to mediate these outcomes are rarely taken into account. This is possibly due to the lack of a clear model to explain these needs in the context of HCI. Herein we introduce such a model: Motivation, Engagement and Thriving in User Experience (METUX). The model provides a framework grounded in psychological research that can allow HCI researchers and practitioners to form actionable insights with respect to how technology designs support or undermine basic psychological needs, thereby increasing motivation and engagement, and ultimately, improving user wellbeing. We propose that in order to address wellbeing, psychological needs must be considered within five different spheres of analysis including: at the point of technology adoption, during interaction with the interface, as a result of engagement with technology-specific tasks, as part of the technology-supported behavior, and as part of an individual's life overall. These five spheres of experience sit within a sixth, society, which encompasses both direct and collateral effects of technology use as well as non-user experiences. We build this model based on existing evidence for basic psychological need satisfaction, including evidence within the context of the workplace, computer games, and health. We extend and hone these ideas to provide practical advice for designers along with real world examples of how to apply the model to design practice.
The broken windows theory of crime deterrence suggests that features in a community such as broken windows, graffiti, and petty crime send signals that criminal behavior is accepted as the norm. We extend the broken windows theory to information security by suggesting that poor web site design sends signals that insecure behavior is the norm. Extending the theory of planned behavior, we hypothesize that visual appeal and trust influence subjective norms such that users on a low quality web site will exhibit reduced intentions and behaviors of security. In a laboratory experiment we manipulate web site quality while participants create user accounts. Password entropy and self-reported password strength are compared for accounts created on the high and low quality sites. Our findings suggest that organizations may be able to promote secure behavior by creating systems that are high in visual appeal and trustworthiness.
In this study, we attempt to evaluate the user preferences for web design attributes (i.e., typography, color, content quality, interactivity, and navigation) to determine the trust, satisfaction, and loyalty for uncertainty avoidance cultures. Content quality and navigation have been observed as strong factors in building user trust with e-commerce websites. In contrast, interactivity, color, and typography have been observed as strong determinants of user satisfaction. The most relevant and interesting finding is related to typography, which has been rarely discussed in e-commerce literature. A questionnaire was designed to collect data to corroborate the proposed model and hypotheses. Furthermore, the partial least-squares method was adopted to analyze the collected data from the students who participated in the test ( n = 558). Finally, the results of this study provide strong support to the proposed model and hypotheses. Therefore, all the web design attributes were observed as important design features to develop user trust and satisfaction for uncertainty avoidance cultures. Although both factors seem to be relevant, the relationship between trust and loyalty was observed to be stronger than between satisfaction and loyalty; thus, trust seems to be a stronger determinant of loyalty for risk/high uncertainty avoidance cultures.
Waiting for the completion of a system process is an everyday experience. While waiting, system provides feedback to the user about ongoing process through temporal metaphors (Progress bar, Busy icons, etc.). One of the key performance requirement for temporal metaphors is to retain the user till the process completes. Researchers have evaluated these metaphors through subjective means, and objective assessment has not been well explored. In this paper, we present survival analysis as objective assessment method to evaluate temporal metaphors. Through a field experiment, we demonstrate the application of survival analysis and empirically establish that auditory progress bar (temporal metaphor for audio interfaces) works for callers of a distress helpline. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first study on distress callers. The paper further discusses the applicability of survival analysis for evaluating temporal metaphors and wait time experiments for other applications, tasks, and settings.
The Problem
The combination of flatter organizational structures, globalization, cost-saving initiatives, and the increased emphasis on knowledge sharing has been a contributor to the use of virtual teams in U.S. organizations.
The Solution
To perform efficiently in a virtual environment, team members must develop swift trust, which does not come inherently with team membership. Understanding the individual, team, organizational, and technological barriers affecting the development of swift trust is critical to an appreciation of how such barriers can be overcome.
The Stakeholders
In this article, we indicate how virtual human resource development (VHRD) can assist virtual teams, managers, and HR professionals overcome swift trust development barriers. The intended audience for this article includes HRD scholars, scholar-practitioners, practitioners, and students interested in understanding how trust is fostered in virtual teams and how HRD practitioners can make a valuable contribution to the effectiveness of virtual teams.
Despite the critical need to know how consumers' perceptions of Web sites influence their behavior, and especially their intention to revisit or purchase, there is no extant general measure for evaluating Web sites and no consensus on what such an instrument should measure. The authors used the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Technology Acceptance Model to develop the WebQual instrument for consumer evaluation of Web sites. They refined it through a literature review and interviews with Web designers and users, and tested it using four samples of Web consumers. WebQual includes 12 dimensions (informational fit-to-task, tailored information, trust, response time, ease of understanding, intuitive operations, visual appeal, innovativeness, emotional appeal, consistent image, on-line completeness, relative advantage) and shows strong measurement validity. It is a highly validated instrument that can provide both wide- and fine-grained measurements of organizational Web sites.
Arguably, the most critical time frame for organizational participants to develop trust is at the beginning of their relationship. Using primarily a cognitive approach, we address factors and processes that enable two organizational parties to form relatively high trust initially. We propose a model of specific relationships among several trust-related constructs and two cognitive processes. The model helps explain the paradoxical finding of high initial trust levels in new organizational relationships.
Traditionally, trust has been seen as a result of personal knowledge of an individual's past behavior. In this view, trust develops gradually over time based on an individual's cognitive assessment of the other person's behavior. However, high levels of trust have been observed among members of virtual teams, who often have little prior history of working together and may never meet each other in person. To integrate these two seemingly contradictory views of trust, this study manipulated team member characteristics and team member behavior to empirically test a two-stage theoretical model of trust formation and the influence of information and communication technologies (ICT) on trust formation. The results indicate that category-based processing of team member characteristics and an individual's own disposition to trust dominated the initial formation of swift trust. Once individuals accumulated sufficient information to assess a team member's trustworthiness, the effects of swift trust declined and knowledge-based trust formed using team members' behaviors (perceived ability, integrity, and benevolence) became dominant. The use of ICT increased perceived risk of team failure, which reduced the likelihood that team members would engage in future trusting behaviors.
Research in face-to-face teams shows conflicting results about the impact of behavioral controls on trust; some research shows that controls increase the salience of good behavior, which increases trust while other research shows that controls increase the salience of poor behavior that decreases trust. The only study in virtual teams, which examined poorly functioning teams, found that controls increased the salience of poor behavior, which decreased trust. We argue that in virtual teams behavioral controls amplify the salience of all behaviors (positive and negative) and that an individual's selective perception bias influences how these behaviors are interpreted. Thus the link from behavioral controls to trust is more complex than first thought. We conducted a 2 × 2 experiment, varying the use of behavioral controls (controls, no controls) and individual team member behaviors (reneging behaviors designed to reduce trust beliefs and fulfilling behaviors designed to increase trust beliefs). We found that behavioral controls did amplify the salience of all behaviors; however, contrary to what we expected, this actually weakened the impact of reneging and fulfilling behaviors on trust. We believe that completing a formal evaluation increased empathy and the awareness of context in which the behaviors occurred and thus mitigated extreme perceptions. We also found that behavioral controls increased the selective perception bias which induced participants to see the behaviors their disposition to trust expected rather than the behaviors that actually occurred.
Effective visual design of e-commerce websites enhances website aesthetics and emotional appeal for the user. To gain insight into how Internet users perceive human images as one element of website design, a controlled experiment was conducted using a questionnaire, interviews, and eye-tracking methodology. Three conditions of human images were created including human images with facial features, human images without facial features, anda control condition with no human images. It was expected that human images with facial features would induce a user to perceive the website as more appealing, having warmth or social presence, and as more trustworthy. In turn, higher levels of image appeal and perceived social presence were predicted to result in trust. All expected relationships in the model were supported except no direct relationship was found between the human image conditions and trust. Additional analyses revealed subtle differences in the perception of human images across cultures (Canada, Germany, and Japan). While the general impact of human images seems universal across country groups, based on interview data four concepts emerged-aesthetics, symbolism, affective property, and functional property-with participants from each culture focusing on different concepts as applied to website design. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Virtual teams have different interactions than face-to-face teams because they rely on information and communication technologies, which can impede or assist certain human cognitive processes. Past research has shown that although virtual teams exchange more information than face-to-face teams, poor decisions often result, because team members do not consider the unique information they receive from others. Drawing from cognitive psychology, our research explored a unique way to improve team decision-making through the use of cognitive priming. We proposed that priming group members to pay attention to others or to engage in counterfactual thinking would improve team members’ cognition and, therefore, team performance. Prior research with individuals and brainstorming teams has shown these forms of priming to improve performance; however, no research has attempted to use priming to improve the outcomes of virtual team decision-making, which requires deeper interaction and cognitive involvement than brainstorming. We performed two lab experiments using primes that have been found to improve the individual decision-making process. We found that priming had some impact, but it did not significantly improve decision quality. Various reasons are discussed to explain why priming techniques may not be as powerful in teams as in individuals, and future research ideas are suggested to build on our initial work on priming in virtual team decision-making.
This paper aims to provide an integrative review of the experiment-based literature on the antecedents of initial trust in a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce setting. To that end, we present a framework that classifies trust-inducing website features according to three broad dimensions, namely visual design, social cue design and content design, because comparing studies with different empirical set-ups requires conceptual clarity. To synthesize the literature we use an advanced vote-count procedure combined with a sign test. We find that the literature provides sound empirical support for our general hypothesis that web design cues effectively enhance consumers’ initial trust towards unfamiliar online vendors. E-tailers should thus consider embedding human-like cues (i.e., facial photos, video streams) into their interfaces, as well as integrating assistive web applications (i.e., avatars, recommendation agents). Interestingly, we also find that internally provided e-assurance structures (such as privacy/security policies and vendor-specific guarantees) can be as effective as paid e-assurance mechanisms (such as third-party trust endorsements). Our overview also reveals that the effectiveness of certain trust-signalling features within the visual and social cue design dimensions is still under-researched. The support for the positive effect of such website atmospheric cues is therefore still weak.
The present study tested the proposal that reducing computer system response times from a few seconds to sub-second levels results in dramatic increases in user productivity. Subjects completed data-entry and problem-solving tasks using a computer statistical package, under a range of computer response times from 0⋅1 to 5 seconds. Results indicated that some increase in productivity does occur as system response time decreases; however, (1) the size of the effect is considerably smaller than previously indicated, (2) the effect occurred only for data-entry tasks, disappearing in problem-solving situations and declining in strength as the data-entry task became more complex, and (3) the relationship between response time and productivity was linear rather than exponential, as was indicated previously. These results suggest that an attentional'automatic processing model of the user is more appropriate than a model proposing that users do not need time to think between entries to the computer.
Recent theoretical developments have enabled the empirical study of trust for specific referents in organizations. The authors conducted a 14-month field study of employee trust for top management. A 9-month quasi-experiment found that the implementation of a more acceptable performance appraisal system increased trust for top management. The 3 proposed factors of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity) mediated the relationship between perceptions of the appraisal system and trust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispositions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities), (b) steeper negative gradients (the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or time than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity dominance (combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire). We review evidence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on negativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. We then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We suggest that I feature of negative events that make them dominant is that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities.
Dissatisfied customers may express their dissatisfaction behaviorally. These behavioral responses may impact the firms' profitability. How do we model the impact of emotions on satisfaction and subsequent customer behaviors? There are essentially two approaches: the valence-based approach and the specific emotions approach. The authors indicate theoretically and show empirically that it matters to distinguish these approaches in services research. Dissatisfaction and the specific emotions disappointment and regret were assessed and their influence on customers' behavioral responses (complaining, switching, word-of-mouth, and customer inertia) was examined, using a sample of over 900 customers. It was found that emotions have a direct impact on behavior, over and above the effects of dissatisfaction. Hence, the authors argue against incorporating emotions such as regret and disappointment into a general (dis)satisfaction measure (i.e., the valence-based approach), and in favor of a specific emotions approach to customer dissatisfaction. Implications for services marketing practice and theory are discussed.
An increasing number of people rely on secure websites to carry out their daily business. A survey conducted by Pew Internet states 42% of all internet users bank online. Considering the types of se- cure transactions being conducted, businesses are rigorously testing their sites for security flaws. In spite of this testing, some design flaws still remain that prevent secure usage. In this paper, we exam- ine the prevalence of user-visible security design flaws by looking at sites from 214 U.S. financial institutions. We specifically chose financial websites because of their high security requirements. We found a number of flaws that may lead users to make bad security decisions, even if they are knowledgeable about security and ex- hibit proper browser use consistent with the site's security policies. To our surprise, these design flaws were widespread. We found that 76% of the sites in our survey suffered from at least one design flaw. This indicates that these flaws are not widely understood, even by experts who are responsible for web security. Finally, we present our methodology for testing websites and discuss how it can help systematically discover user-visible security design flaws.
A global virtual team is an example of a boundaryless network organization form where a temporary team is assembled on an as-needed basis for the duration of a task and staffed by members from different countries. In such teams, coordination is accomplished via trust and shared communication systems. The focus of the reported study was to explore the antecedents of trust in a global virtual-team setting. Seventyfive teams, consisting of four to six members residing in different countries, interacted and worked together for eight weeks. The two-week trust-building exercises did have a significant effect on the team members' perceptions of the other members' ability, integrity, and benevolence. In the early phases of teamwork, team trust was predicted strongest by perceptions of other team members' integrity, and weakest by perceptions of their benevolence. The effect of other members' perceived ability on trust decreased over time. The members' own propensity to trust had a significant, though unchanging, effect on trust. A qualitative analysis of six teams' electronic mail messages explored strategies that were used by the three highest trust teams, but were used infrequently or not at all by the three lowest trust teams. The strategies suggest the presence of "swift" trust. The paper advances a research model for explaining trust in global virtual teams.
Trust is a crucial factor in e-commerce. However, consumers are less likely to trust unknown Web sites. This study explores how less-familiar e-commerce Web sites can use branding alliances and Web site quality to increase the likelihood of initial consumer trust. We use the associative network model of memory to explain brand knowledge and to show how the mere exposure effect can be leveraged to improve a Web site’s brand image. We also extend information integration theory to explain how branding alliances are able to increase initial trust and transfer positive effects to Web sites. Testing of our model shows that the most important constructs for increasing initial trust in our experimental context are branding and Web site quality. Finally, we discuss future research ideas, limitations, implications, and ideas for practitioners.
Web page loading speed continues to vex users, even as broadband adoption increases. Several studies have addressed delays in the context of Web sites as well as interactive corporate systems, and have recommended a wide range of ¡°rules of thumb.¡± Some studies conclude that response times should be no greater than 2 seconds while other studies caution on delays of 12 seconds or more. One of the strongest conclusions was that complex tasks seemed to allow longer response times. This study examined delay times of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 seconds using 196 undergraduate students in an experiment. Randomly assigned a constant delay time, subjects were asked to complete 9 search tasks, exploring a familiar and an unfamiliar site. Plots of the dependent variables performance, attitudes, and behavioral intentions, along those delays, suggested the use of non-linear regression, and the explained variance was in the neighborhood of 2%, 5%, and 7%, respectively. Focusing only on the familiar site, explained variance in attitudes and behavioral intentions grew to about 16%. A sensitivity analysis implies that decreases in performance and behavioral intentions begin to flatten when the delays extend to 4 seconds or longer, and attitudes flatten when the delays extend to 8 seconds or longer. Future research should include other factors such as expectations, variability, and feedback, and other outcomes such as actual purchasing behavior, to more fully understand the effects of delays in today¡¯s Web environment.
Through 2 experiments, we examined both international differences and the effects of high-end graphical enhancements on the perceived usability of World Wide Web (WWW) sites. To accomplish this goal, we recruited Internet users from Switzerland and the United States to explore 1 of 2 versions of a Web site with the goal of retrieving specific information from the site. The first Web site was a self-contained subset of a large corporate Web site, and the second was a systematically simplified version of the first. After retrieving the required information from the site, participants responded to questions regarding their perception of the Web site's usability and its information presentation. Their responses provided detailed insights into significant differences between WWW users from 2 different cultures with respect to how they perceive the same Web sites. The importance of basic user demographics is documented, and empirical evidence is provided that devalues some high-end graphical enhancements.
This research concentrates on visual complexity and order as central factors in the design of webpages that enhance users' positive emotional reactions and facilitate desirable psychological states and behaviors. Drawing on existing theories and empirical findings in the environmental psychology, human-computer interaction, and marketing research literatures, a research model is developed to explain the relationships among visual complexity and order design features of a webpage, induced emotional responses in users, and users' approach behaviors toward the website as moderated by users' metamotivational states. A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the model and its associated hypotheses. The results of the study suggested that a web user's initial emotional responses (i.e., pleasantness and arousal), evoked by the visual complexity and order design features of a webpage when first encountered, will have carry-over effects on subsequent approach behavior toward the website. The results also revealed how webpage visual complexity and order influence users' emotions and behaviors differently when users are in different metamotivational states. The salience and importance of webpage visual complexity and order for users' feelings of pleasantness were largely dependent on users' metamotivational states.
Online retail has become more prominent around the world in the last decade. As a result, online retailers' website performance is increasingly important. Previous literature has extensively studied customer sensitivity to service speed and wait times in offline services. In “Need for Speed: The Impact of In-Process Delays on Customer Behavior in Online Retail,” Gallino, Karacaoglu, and Moreno extend this literature to online retail. They study the impact of delays in online retail on customer behavior. They estimate sizable negative effects of website slowdowns on online sales and conversion rates. Moreover, they explore how customer sensitivity to online delays varies throughout customers' shopping journeys. They find that the impact of waiting times varies along the different stages of the shopping journey, with customers becoming more sensitive to slowdowns at the checkout stage. Their findings have implications for website design decisions. This research is especially relevant in the current regulatory environment with ongoing policy debates about net neutrality.
The efficacy of direct messages such as threats, warnings, reminders, and training for influencing information security intentions is well established. Despite the pervasiveness of these approaches, users’ poor adherence to security best practices remains a significant problem. Thus, it is critical that new approaches for improving security intentions are explored. System quality is known to play an important role in many aspects of information systems interactions, however, its effect on security intentions has not been established. In this paper, we develop and test a theoretical model that extends protection motivation theory and the theory of planned behavior to describe how system quality evokes positive social norms, lowers threat appraisal, and increases coping appraisal to influence intentions of secure behavior. The hypotheses were tested using a laboratory experiment. The results suggest that system quality positively influences social norms and coping appraisals to enhance security intentions. Threat appraisals, however, were unaffected. These findings illustrate how system quality can influence users’ security intentions and perceptions of the efficacy of their actions without using direct messaging to warn, train, or reassure them. This technique gives researchers and developers new tools that can influence users to engage in desired behaviors.
This study investigates how website design features, web page order and visual complexity, influence users’ initial website aesthetic impressions and how such impressions subsequently enhance engagement and intention to use the website. A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses using different levels of web page order (high vs. low), visual complexity (high vs. low), and exposure time (one-second vs. no-time-constraint). Overall, the results from structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis suggest that web page order significantly influences visual appeal, engagement, and intention. In addition, the results of multigroup SEM analysis reveal that users evaluate website design very quickly (within 1 s), and that these evaluations remain remarkably consistent over time.
It is well established that delays in system response time negatively impact productivity, error rates and user satisfaction. What is less clear is the degree to which these effects deter users from engaging with a system. Usability guidelines provide rough response time targets for minimizing these effects across various types of interactions. However, developers faced with technical limitations or cost constraints that prevent them from meeting such targets are given no data with which to estimate the impact that system response delays will have on user engagement. In this work, we demonstrate a methodology for using crowd sourcing platforms to examine (1) the relative impacts of different delay types and (2) the effects of marginal changes in system response times. We compare two common network delay types, those caused by limited bandwidth (increased download times) and those caused by network latency (lag in responsiveness), and present how these delays reduce engagement in the context of a crowd sourced image classification task. Furthermore, we model how financial incentives interact with system response delays to impact user engagement. Finally, we show how such models can be used to optimize the cost of system design choices.
Several authors have suggested that trust is important to empowerment. This research develops the theoretical relationship between empowerment and trust. Trust, defined as a willingness to be vulnerable, was found to contribute to managers’ taking greater risks in their relationships with their employees through increased delegation of authority. Results show strong support that trust for an employee is a function of the employee’s perceived ability, benevolence, and integrity, as well as the manager’s propensity to trust.
Users are vital to the information security of organizations. In spite of technical safeguards, users make many critical security decisions. An example is users' responses to security messages - discrete communication designed to persuade users to either impair or improve their security status. Research shows that although users are highly susceptible to malicious messages (e.g., phishing attacks), they are highly resistant to protective messages such as security warnings. Research is therefore needed to better understand how users perceive and respond to security messages. In this article, we argue for the potential of NeuroIS - cognitive neuroscience applied to Information Systems - to shed new light on users' reception of security messages in the areas of (1) habituation, (2) stress, (3) fear, and (4) dual-task interference. We present an illustrative study that shows the value of using NeuroIS to investigate one of our research questions. This example uses eye tracking to gain unique insight into how habituation occurs when people repeatedly view security messages, allowing us to design more effective security messages. Our results indicate that the eye movement-based memory (EMM) effect is a cause of habituation to security messages - a phenomenon in which people unconsciously scrutinize stimuli that they have previously seen less than other stimuli. We show that after only a few exposures to a warning, this neural aspect of habituation sets in rapidly, and continues with further repetitions. We also created a polymorphic warning that continually updates its appearance and found that it is effective in substantially reducing the rate of habituation as measured by the EMM effect. Our research agenda and empirical example demonstrate the promise of using NeuroIS to gain novel insight into users' responses to security messages that will encourage more secure user behaviors and facilitate more effective security message designs.
With the growth of product search engines such as pricegrabber.com, Web vendors have many more casual visitors. This research examines how Web vendors may foster “swift trust” as a means to convert casual visitors to paying customers. We examine whether perceptions of Web sites’ appearance features (normality, social presence and third-party links) and functionality features (security, privacy, effort expectancy and performance expectancy) positively relate to swift trust in a Web vendor. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we empirically test the proposed relationships. Based on an analysis of 224 respondents, we found appearance and functionality features explained 61% of the variance in swift trust. The article concludes with a discussion of findings and implications. Purchase this article to continue reading all 21 pages >
The aim of this research is to study the content of trustful and distrustful user experiences on the web to identify website characteristics that enhance trust or cause distrust. We collected users’ reports about critical incidents and quantitative questionnaire data by means of an online survey. Results from N = 221 participants suggest that distrust is mostly an effect of graphical (e.g., complex layout) and structural (e.g., pop-ups) design issues of a website, whereas trust is based on social factors such as reviews or recommendations by friends. The content of a website affects both trust and distrust: privacy issues had an effect on distrust and security signs enhanced trust. Furthermore, we show how trustful and distrustful user experiences differ in terms of perceived honesty, competence, and benevolence. High honesty and competence characterize a trustful experience, whereas a distrustful experience is associated with missing honesty and missing benevolence. We discuss how different website characteristics help to enhance trust or to prevent distrust and how this impacts the allocation of design resources.
As one of the most commonly experienced problems on the Internet, download delay is a significant impediment to the success of e-commerce websites. While some research has examined how such delays can be reduced and how much delay online users will tolerate, little research has taken a theoretically grounded approach to managing perceptions of the wait. Based on time perception theories, we develop a research model of the effects of actual wait time, amount of information, and direction of attention on perceptions of the wait. Two empirical studies were conducted using an experimental travel website to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that with shorter waits, providing additional visual content, such as a travel picture, may make the wait feel longer. However, with longer waits, additional visual content that distracts the user from the passage of time makes the wait feel shorter and reduces users' negative affect toward the wait. Further, the benefits of providing visual content in longer waits are enhanced as more content is provided. Visual content should also be chosen to distract the user from time and temporal processing, as reminding users of the passage of time can encourage temporal processing and make the wait feel longer, especially in longer waits or when the amount of temporal visual content is high. Our findings extend time perception theories and contribute to the literature by identifying a potential paradigm shift, from the retrospective to the prospective paradigm, when waiting times are prolonged. Post hoc study results confirm the practical contribution of our research, demonstrating that several key findings are counter-intuitive to professional web designers.
In this study 2,684 people evaluated the credibility of two live Web sites on a similar topic (such as health sites). We gathered the comments people wrote about each siteís credibility and analyzed the comments to find out what features of a Web site get noticed when people evaluate credibility. We found that the ìdesign lookî of the site was mentioned most frequently, being present in 46.1% of the comments. Next most common were comments about information structure and information focus. In this paper we share sample participant comments in the top 18 areas that people noticed when evaluating Web site credibility. We discuss reasons for the prominence of design look, point out how future studies can build on what we have learned in this new line of research, and outline six design implications for human-computer interaction professionals.
Scholars in various disciplines have considered the causes, nature, and effects of trust. Prior approaches to studying trust are considered, including characteristics of the trustor, the trustee, and the role of risk. A definition of trust and a model of its antecedents and outcomes are presented, which integrate research from multiple disciplines and differentiate trust from similar constructs. Several research propositions based on the model are presented.
One of the characteristics of online consumer behaviour is the low cost of searching for alternatives. Therefore, customer loyalty is harder to achieve in the online context than in the offline one. If a website has high information, system and service quality, customers may have greater willingness to maintain, deepen and broaden their relationship with a particular online service provider. This study develops and empirically tests a model examining the relations between website quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer relationship length, depth and breadth with the online financial services. Using survey data from 656 online customers of a Taiwanese securities corporation, results indicate that website quality influences customer satisfaction and trust, except for the link between information quality and customer trust, and customer trust has a stronger impact on relationship depth and breadth than customer satisfaction. Integrating the results, this study concludes that website information quality is the most important factor in enhancing relationship length, while website system quality and service quality contribute a lot to relationship depth and breadth.
We developed a model of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce trust and tested it. We expected that two influences: internal (natural propensity to trust [NPT] and perception of web site quality [PWSQ]) and external (other's trust of buyers/sellers [OTBS] and third party recognition [TPR]) would affect an individual's trust in C2C e-commerce. However contrary to studies of other types of e-commerce, support was only found for PWSQ and TPR; we therefore discussed possible reasons for this contradiction. Suggestions are made of ways to help e-commerce site developers provide a trustworthy atmosphere and identify trustworthy consumers.
This study investigates website quality factors, their relative importance in selecting the most preferred website, and the relationship between website preference and financial performance. DeLone and McLean's IS success model extended through applying an analytic hierarchy process is used. A field study with 156 online customers and 34 managers/designers of e-business companies was performed. The study identified different relative importance of each website quality factor and priority of alternative websites across e-business domains and between stakeholders. This study also found that the website with the highest quality produced the highest business performance. The findings of this study provide decision makers of e-business companies with useful insights to enhance their website quality.
Individuals searching for information on the World Wide Web are more likely to lose interest in a site if download times exceed 10 s (Nielsen, 1996). Long download times result in increased frustration and dissatisfaction, as well as lost profits for e-commerce web sites. This study investigated the effect of web page download delays on user performance and frustration. Twenty-five participants were presented information location tasks on a web site with varying download delays. The effect of delays (1, 30, 60 s) on lostness, frustration, and task completion was examined. The results indicated a marginal effect of delay on lostness, with participants being less lost in the 60 s delay conditions than the 1 or 30 s delay conditions. Frustration was affected by longer delay times, with the 60 and 30 s delays being rated as significantly more frustrating than the 1 s delays. The proportion of tasks completed was also lower for the longer delay conditions. These findings indicate that, for web site efficiency, faster may not always be better. Designers are encouraged to consider the cognitive demands of the tasks performed with their web site.Relevance to industryStudies on web page download time are relevant to industry since it is important to identify specific recommendations for response times based on audience and task demands. In addition, a major complaint for users is download time on the Internet, so aspects that affect perceptions of download time are worthy of investigation.
The current study extends theory related to the truth effect and mere-exposure effect by detailing how increased familiarity with third-party vendor logos will increase consumer short-term trust in unfamiliar websites, based on short-term impressions. The study uses a controlled 254-participant experiment. The results indicate that familiarity with a third-party logo positively impacts the credibility and short-term (swift) trust of an unfamiliar website. Additionally, the study finds that credibility of a third-party logo positively impacts the swift trust a visitor has in a website. Overall, the study concludes that both familiarity and credibility of third-party logos positively impacts swift trust in consumer websites, and familiarity has a positive impact on increasing credibility.
This paper empirically explores customers’ trust in Internet banking based on a research model with several constructs such as structural assurance, perceived bank reputation, perceived website quality, and disposition to trust. The results suggest that these constructs significantly influence trusting beliefs and customers’ willingness to use Internet banking, which in turn have a positively impact on the establishment of customers’ trust in Internet banking. Trust building should strengthen customers’ confidence in Internet banking and facilitate the development of sustainable Internet banking services.
Although there has been a great deal of research on impression formation, little application of that research has been made to electronic commerce. A research model was constructed that hypothesized errors, poor style, and incompleteness to be inversely related to the users' level of perceived quality of an online store. Further, this perceived quality of the online store's Web site would be directly related to users' trust in the store and, ultimately, to users' intentions to purchase from the store. An experimental study with 272 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers supported all the hypotheses. In addition, it was found that the relationship between the factors and perceived quality was mediated by the perception of the flaws. The perception of flaws rather than the actual flaws influenced users' perception of quality. Supplemental analysis also seemed to indicate a pattern of diminishing effects with each subsequent flaw.
The research question examined in this paper is whether or not product price can be used as a proxy to predict how customers' trust will be influenced by different trust-assuring arguments displayed on a business-to-consumer e-commerce Web site. Drawing from the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and Toulmin's model of argumentation, we examine the effects on consumer trust of two levels of source and two levels of content factors, under two levels of product price, in a laboratory experiment with 128 subjects. Product price was predicted as a moderating factor that would influence the customer's motivation to scrutinize more closely the content of the trust-assuring arguments. The results suggest that customers are more influenced by the content of trust-assuring arguments when the price of a product is relatively high than when it is relatively low. Presumably, Internet stores employ a third party's trust-assuring arguments because customers are less likely to trust an unknown Internet store's own trust-assuring arguments. However, the results paradoxically may imply that when customers have more at stake (e.g., buying a high-price product), they do not necessarily have to rely only on an independent third-party source to form high trust beliefs about the store. When customers purchase a high-price product, they seem to form trusting beliefs by scrutinizing argument content rather than by depending on heuristic cues (e.g., an independent party's opinion) as the ELM would predict.
This study measures the value of website quality in terms of its impact on trust, intention to transact and price premiums. Prior research on online auctions has focused on the use of reputation systems for building trust in online auction vendors and subsequently to generate price premiums. This study examines the extent to which trust can be induced by improving the quality of online auction listings. A survey of 701 eBay users is conducted which compares the price premiums of two nearly identical online auction businesses, one that has online auction listings with a perceived high quality and the other that has substantially lower perceived quality. Results of this study indicate that website quality can explain 49% of the variation in the trust for eBay sellers. In fact, it shows that sellers with good website quality are all perceived to be equally trustworthy regardless of their eBay reputation; whereas sellers with poor website quality are not perceived to be trustworthy even if they have a high eBay reputation score. The results also show that the trust resulting from increased website quality increases intention to transact and results in price premiums of 12% (on average) for sellers with higher quality listings. Theories from marketing, economics, and social psychology are used to explain why website quality induces trust in unknown vendors without providing any concrete evidence regarding the vendor’s past history.
An electronic commerce marketing channel is fully mediated by information technology, stripping away much of a product's physical informational cues, and creating information asymmetries (i.e., limited information). These asymmetries may impede consumers' ability to effectively assess certain types of products, thus creating challenges for online sellers. Signaling theory provides a framework for understanding how extrinsic cues ᾢ signals ᾢ can be used by sellers to convey product quality information to consumers, reducing uncertainty and facilitating a purchase or exchange. This research proposes a model to investigate website quality as a potential signal of product quality and consider the moderating effects of product information asymmetries and signal credibility. Three experiments are reported that examine the efficacy of signaling theory as a basis for predicting online consumer behavior with an experience good. The results indicate that website quality influences consumers' perceptions of product quality, which subsequently affects online purchase intentions. Additionally, website quality was found to have a greater influence on perceived product quality when consumers had higher information asymmetries. Likewise, signal credibility was found to strengthen the relationship between website quality and product quality perceptions for a high quality website. Implications for future research and website design are examined.