Agency beliefs mediate trust across cultures in e-commerce

Past research has identified differences in trust judgement between Western and Eastern cultures. In addition, some studies have shown that trust can be established through the trustee???s personal reputation of integrity, or through structural assurance mechanisms such as social monitoring and sanctioning. Nonetheless, the relative importance of personal versus structural cues in trust judgement across cultures is not clear. The present thesis examined cultural differences in the relative importance of personal and structural trust cues in trust judgement in the socially and economically relevant context of e-commerce. Results from 4 studies revealed that Americans prefer using personal integrity in trust judgement, whereas Asians prefer structural cues (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, these cultural differences can be explained by relative prevalence of the two types of agency beliefs, individual versus group agency across cultures (Studies 3 and 4)