Intention and competence for trust development and deterioration

Abstract

Trust research distinguishes between intention and competence as the key antecedents of trust. Yet, we do not know exactly how people perceive and use this information for building initial trust and maintaining future trust. This thesis studies how trustee intention and competence influence trust from its initial development to its deterioration after trust violation. Specifically, Chapter 2 investigates how information about a person’s benevolence bias people’s judgment of competence and trust in this person’s competence. Drawing on desirability bias, this chapter finds a positive impact of benevolence on developing competence-based trust. However, withholding benevolence does not harm competence-based trust. In addition, Chapter 2 finds that exhibiting competence does not affect the judgment of benevolence and its ensuing trust. Chapter 3 investigates the causal inference of competence in building overall trust. Chapter 3 reveals that the impact of competence on overall trust building hinges on the impact of benevolence. While competence benefits from co-occurring benevolence for building overall trust, its positive impact diminishes when benevolence decreases. As a result, exhibiting incompetence with benevolence is more trusted than exhibiting competence without benevolence; incompetence is equally trusted as competence when benevolence is absent. Chapter 4 investigates the influence of existing trustworthiness of competence and integrity on the change of trust after trust violation. Chapter 4 finds that prior competence benefits trust by buffering the impact of competence related trust violation, whereas prior integrity harms trust by amplifying the impact of integrity related trust violation. Outcome dependency partially moderates the relationship between prior trustee quality and the aftermath trust. Overall in the context of initial trust development and trust deterioration after trust violation, the findings from this thesis contribute to the understanding the underlying mechanism of the conceptual trust model, the feedback loop in people’s trust decisions, and the dynamics of trust overtime. The implications on the trust related research are discussed.