Development of a Model of Antecedents of Trust and Distrust: Validating through Health Information Websites

The primary focus of this proposal is to theorize and validate the factors leading todistrust, a critical barrier to Internet business, despite the increasing acceptance ofonline business activities in the digital economy. This will be validated in the context ofonline healthcare, which is gaining increasing popularity due to information asymmetryof increasingly well-educated and questioning common folks who seek to verify advicesof medical providers through second- or multiple opinions, supposedly well-meaning butun-validated health-related articles and recommendations, and also difficulty of accessby common folks to access affordable yet high quality healthcare. While online trust hasbeen well-studied and validated in various studies of Internet commerce, with well-understoodantecedents, that of distrust has received relatively less research attention.In this proposal, the antecedents that lead to distrust are abstracted from past referentresearch and a conceptual cognitive model of antecedents of distrust will be empiricallyvalidated. The model integrates past conceptualizations of Internet deception, attributiontheory, trust and distrust. A number of studies will be conducted. The main study seeksto validate the distrust (versus trust) cognitive model on users of healthcare websites(specifically health recommendations and advice, such as for ailment treatments) inGreater China. The research can contribute to a better understanding of factors leadingto distrust formation. Further, a follow-up study explores whether trust can besustained, and distrust repaired.