Interactive effects of advising strength and brand familiarity on users' trust and distrust in online recommendation agents

PurposeThis paper investigates the effects of advising strength of a recommendation agent on users' trust and distrust beliefs and how the effects are moderated by perceived brand familiarity.Design/methodology/approachA research model is evaluated using a laboratory experiment with 149 partici...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Information technology & people (West Linn, Or.) Or.), 2021-11, Vol.34 (7), p.1920-1948
Main Authors:	Liu, Tao, Wang, Weiquan, Xu, Jingjun (David), Ding, Donghong, Deng, Honglin
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Attribution theory Beliefs Brands Consumers Credibility Design Dishonesty Familiarity Information technology Recommender systems Trust Websites Welfare
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	PurposeThis paper investigates the effects of advising strength of a recommendation agent on users' trust and distrust beliefs and how the effects are moderated by perceived brand familiarity.Design/methodology/approachA research model is evaluated using a laboratory experiment with 149 participants.FindingsResults reveal that a strong advising tone leads to higher trust in terms of users' credibility and benevolence beliefs and lower distrust in terms of their discredibility beliefs (the trustor's concerns regarding the trustee's dishonesty and competence in engaging in harmful behavior) when perceived brand familiarity is high. By contrast, when brand familiarity is low, strong advising tone results in low trust in terms of users' credibility belief and high distrust in terms of their beliefs in discredibility and malevolence (concerns regarding the trustee's conduct in terms of a malicious intention that can hurt the trustor's welfare).Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the trust and distrust literature by studying how each of the dimensions of trust and distrust can be affected by an RA's design feature. It extends the attribution theory to the RA context by studying the moderating role of brand familiarity in determining the effects of the advising strength of an RA. It provides actionable guidelines for practitioners regarding the adoption of an RA's appropriate advising strength to promote different types of products.
ISSN:	0959-3845 1758-5813