Promoting trust through linguistic features of provider profiles in the sharing economy

Authors Maarten ter Huurne, Jonas Moons, Amber Ronteltap, Rense Corten, Vincent Buskens
Published in International Journal of Electronic Business
Publication date 2021
Research groups Artificial Intelligence, Innovation of Movement Care
Type Article

Summary

Trust between providers and consumers in the sharing economy are crucial to complete transactions successfully. From a consumer's perspective, a provider's profile is an important source of information for judging trustworthiness, because it contains multiple trust cues. However, the effect of a provider's self-description on perceived trustworthiness is still poorly understood. We examine how the linguistic features of a provider's self-description predict perceived trustworthiness. To determine the perceived trustworthiness of 259 profiles, real consumers on a Dutch sharing platform rated these profiles for trustworthiness. The results show that profiles were perceived as more trustworthy if they contained more words, more words related to cooking, and more words related to positive emotions. Also, a profile's perceived trustworthiness score correlated positively with the provider's actual sales performance. These findings indicate that a provider's self-description is a relevant signal to consumers, even though it seems easy to fake.

On this publication contributed

Language English
Published in International Journal of Electronic Business
Year and volume 16 4
Key words sharing economy, trust, perceived trustworthiness, linguistic inquiry and word count, LIWC, linguistic features, C2C
Digital Object Identifier 10.1504/IJEB.2021.118501
Page range 391-417

Maarten ter Huurne

Maarten ter Huurne

Maarten ter Huurne

  • Researcher
  • Research group: Sustainable Communities