The Impact of Product Tagging on Trust and Purchase Intention: A cross-cultural perspective in visual e-commerce

The present study aims to examine the opportunity of in-app shopping, more specifically, analyzing the influence of product tags and cultural background on consumers’ trust and purchase intention. For this purpose, a comparison was made between European and South American female consumers from two cultures: the Netherlands and Paraguay. A total of 225 subjects, 143 from the Dutch background and 82 from the Paraguayan background, participated in an experimental survey where they judged an Instagram product page (product tag: present vs. absent). The analysis of the results revealed that the Paraguayans had higher purchase intentions than the Dutch. Additionally, the presence of a text appeal in the visual product presentation had a direct positive effect on consumers’ purchase intentions and perceived trust in the shopping environment, for both the Dutch and Paraguayan cultural groups. In virtual web shops, perceiving trust is a decisive point for purchase intentions. This study contributes to the fast-growing investigations on social media effectiveness and visual marketing as an informative and persuasive tool. The findings pinpoint the synergic value of visual and textual cues of product presentation online in the atmospheric trust of in-app shopping.

Research on the Trust Mechanism of Individual Consumers in Rural Financial Markets Based on the Dynamic CGE Model

In order to obtain the complete equilibrium state of rural financial market and ensure the stable development of rural financial consumer market, this paper introduces CGE model and analyzes the dynamic trust mechanism of individual consumers in rural financial market. In this paper, the single variable evolutionary fuzzy clustering algorithm is used to analyze the orthogonal eigenvector solutions of individual consumers; the big data of individual consumers under the mode of perceived trust is automatically clustered, so as to obtain the fuzzy analogy function of individual consumers in the rural financial market; and finally the prediction value of consumer trust is obtained. The results show that trust, customer satisfaction, and service quality are positively correlated. Under the same sample expectation constraints, the dynamic CGE model is more robust, and the individual consumer trust mechanism of rural financial market in the study area has higher advantages.

Perceived Trust and Confidence for Cryptocurrency Adoption

This chapter seeks to examine the influence of public perceptions of trust in people and confidence in institutions on cryptocurrency adoption, taking into account the individual-level demographic factors and the regional-level contextual factors. Data is obtained from three large-scale international surveys and national databases and analyzed using R software. The multivariate results demonstrate that individuals' public perceptions of trust and confidence significantly contribute to cryptocurrency adoption. Lower perceived trust in people and higher perceived confidence in civil service and international regulatory bodies increase cryptocurrency adoption, while perceived confidence in political and financial institutions discourages cryptocurrency adoption. Additionally, the univariate results find significant comparisons of gender and perceived trust differences on the predictors of cryptocurrency adoption. This chapter discusses and provides insights on the social impact and future of cryptocurrency adoption, particularly among the upper- and lower-middle-income countries.

AIC Algorithm for E-Wallet Payment in the COVID-19 Pandemic in Vietnam

The COVID-19 pandemic is continuously developing owing to the development of a new strain of coronavirus. Society is difficult with people's needs being higher, especially in daily spending and consumption, but many consumers are also tending to not want to keep too much cash on hand. In addition, the world is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, and Vietnam, in particular, has pushed businesses to focus on developing a cashless payment application called an e-wallet to pay bills to meet consumer needs. This chapter is based on concepts and theories of the technology acceptance model related to intention to use the e-wallets to form the research model comprising the independent factors of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, social influence, and perceived trust. This study uses the optimal choice of the AIC algorithm, and all the factors are acceptable.

Analysis of the Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment in Perceived Trust and Work Performance

As a potential motivation, psychological empowerment stimulates employees' work behaviors, and it determines the degree of effort and duration of employees' work. Only when employees are psychologically empowered, will they have an impact on their behavior when they believe that they are trusted. This paper chose to set the independent variable as the employee's perceived trust and the dependent variable as the company's work performance, and explored the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the two. The psychological empowerment of employees had a positive impact on work performance. Employees with high psychological empowerment tended to be proactive in their work, and had more input in the work, which in turn encouraged employees to have higher work performance. The four dimensions of psychological empowerment can positively affect employee task performance, and the ability and influence of psychological empowerment had a positive impact on relationship performance. Psychological empowerment as a whole perception played a part of the mediating role between the perception of superior dependency and task performance, and it played a part of the mediating role between perception of superior dependency and relationship performance. As a whole perception, psychological empowerment played a part of mediating role between perceived information disclosure and task performance, and part of mediating role between perceived information disclosure and relationship performance. In the study of perceived trust and work performance, this article focused on the mediating role of psychological empowerment, and further understood the internal mechanism of perceived trust.

Do risk attitude and trust moderate bank managers' risk perceptions in lending to micro, small, medium enterprises?

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to study the antecedents of risk perceptions of bank managers towards micro, small, medium enterprise (MSME) lending, in the situation of information asymmetry, where cognitive factors assume significance over organisational norms of lending.Design/methodology/approachThis study proposed and tested a conceptual model based on the factors identified from literature review and exploratory and quantitative study. Multinomial logistic regression technique is used for quantitative analysis.FindingsThe research postulates that information asymmetry, risk attitude, perceived trust and organizational norms have a significant relationship with branch managers' perceived risk in lending to MSMEs. The research emphasized that the risk attitude of managers and perceived trust moderate the relationship between information asymmetry and perceived risk. The findings and discussions enrich the knowledge about the alleviators of constraints to MSME funding in developing nations despite information asymmetry.Originality/valueAuthors have given holistic view on the risk perception in the financial decision-making process of bank lending. The research highlights the importance of cognitive factors in decreasing the negative impact of information asymmetry on risk perception.

Association between Perceived Trusted of COVID-19 Information Sources and Mental Health during the Early Stage of the Pandemic in Bangladesh

Unverified information concerning COVID-19 can affect mental health. Understanding perceived trust in information sources and associated mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic is vital to ensure ongoing media coverage of the crisis does not exacerbate mental health impacts. A number of studies have been conducted in other parts of the world to determine associations between information exposure relating to COVID-19 and mental health. However, the mechanism by which trust in information sources may affect mental health is not fully explained in the developing country context. To address this issue, the present study examined associations between perceived trust in three sources of information concerning COVID-19 and anxiety/stress with the mediating effects of COVID-19 stress in Bangladesh. An online cross-sectional study was conducted with 744 Bangladeshi adults between 17 April and 1 May 2020. Perceived trust in traditional, social, and health media for COVID-19 information, demographics, frontline service status, COVID-19-related stressors, anxiety (GAD-7), and stress (PSS-4) were assessed via self-report. Linear regression tested for associations between perceived trust and mental health. Mediation analyses investigated whether COVID-19-related stressors affected perceived trust and mental health associations. In fully adjusted models, more trust in social media was associated with more anxiety (B = 0.03, CI = 0.27–0.97) and stress (B = 0.01, CI = −0.34–0.47), while more trust in traditional media was associated with more anxiety (B = 0.09, CI = 0.17–2.26) but less stress (B = −0.08, CI = −0.89–0.03). Mediation analyses showed that COVID-19-related stressors partially explained associations between perceived trust and anxiety. These findings suggest that trusting social media to provide accurate COVID-19 information may exacerbate poor mental health. These findings also indicate that trusting traditional media (i.e., television, radio, and the newspaper) may have stress-buffering effects. We recommend that responsible authorities call attention to concerns about the trustworthiness of social media as well as broadcast positive and authentic news in traditional media outcomes based on these results.

Evaluating the sustainable use of mobile payment contactless technologies within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic using a hybrid SEM-ANN approach

PurposeWhile there is an abundant amount of literature studies on mobile payment adoption, there is a scarce of knowledge concerning the sustainable use of mobile payment contactless technologies. As those technologies are mainly concerned with security and users' trust, the question of how security factors and trust can influence the sustainable use of those technologies within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic is still unanswered. This research thus develops a theoretical model based on integrating the protection motivation theory (PMT) and the expectation-confirmation model (ECM), extended with perceived trust (PT) to explore the sustainable use of mobile payment contactless technologies.Design/methodology/approachThe developed model is evaluated based on data collected through a web-based survey from 523 users who used contactless payment technologies. Unlike the existing literature, the collected data were analyzed using a hybrid structural equation modeling-artificial neural network (SEM-ANN) technique.FindingsThe data analysis results reinforced all the proposed relationships in the developed model. The sensitivity analysis results showed that PT has the largest impact on the sustainable use of mobile payment contactless technologies with 97.2% normalized importance, followed by self-efficacy (SE) (77%), satisfaction (72.1%), perceived vulnerability (PV) (48.9%), perceived usefulness (PU) (48.2%), perceived severity (PS) (40.7%), response efficacy (RE) (28.7%) and response costs (RCs) (24.1%).Originality/valueThe originality of this research lies behind the development of an integrated model based on PMT and ECM to understand the sustainable use of mobile payment contactless technologies. The study provides several managerial implications for decision-makers, policy-makers and service providers to ensure the sustainability of those contactless technologies within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trust and consumer confidence in the safety of dairy products in China

PurposeThis study aims to explore the degree of Chinese consumers' trust and confidence in the Chinese dairy products supply chain and the relationships between trust and overall confidence in dairy products safety and quality.Design/methodology/approachThis study collected data from 1,278 respondents by field survey from five provinces of China. The data were analyzed using ordered logit model.FindingsThis study shows the following results: (1) Chinese consumer confidence in domestic dairy products and trust in actors of the dairy chain are at a moderate-to-low level. (2) Government regulators are considered to take the most responsibility, with both an optimism-enhancing and a pessimism-reducing effect (the former effect is greater), while perceived trust in dairy farmers and retailers has little effect. (3) Perceived care has both an optimism-enhancing and a pessimism-reducing effect, and the former effect is stronger. Competence and openness have an optimism-enhancing effect and a pessimism-reducing effect, respectively. (4) The importance of the three dimensions of trust related to optimism-increasing and pessimism-reduction is limited, except in the case of government regulators.Originality/valueThis study contributes to a better understanding of consumer trust in food safety and also help demonstrate to the actors and institutions involved in the dairy supply chain the best way to improve the performance of their duties to meet the consumers' needs for safe and quality dairy products.

Key factors driving customers’ restaurant dining behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose This study aims to identify key factors that affected US respondents’ dining behavior at restaurants during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach Due to the lack of a prior framework or model to test customers’ perceptions of dining-out behavior during this unprecedented time, this study used a mixed-methods approach, conducting two focus group discussions to generate potential restaurant attributes, followed by a US-based survey using an online panel. Using structural equation modeling, this study tested eight developed propositions. Findings The findings of this study indicated that the three key factors (i.e. restaurant dining environment, communication and hygiene and contactless features) made customers feel comfortable dining in the restaurant during the pandemic. Out of these three factors, only the restaurant dining environment and communication and hygiene were essential predictors for customers’ perceived trust toward the restaurant, leading to their willingness to pay more. This study used two moderators, customers’ perceived risk and support for restaurants to examine how they affected customers’ perceived trust and willingness to pay, respectively. Practical implications This study provides both theoretical and practical implications to the current body of knowledge in customers’ dining-out behavior and the development of operational strategies for restaurants to accommodate customers’ changing dining-out behavior due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To develop a holistic conceptual framework, this study incorporates two COVID-19-focused measurement items, perceived risk and support of the restaurant, to identify their moderating roles in the relationships among the five proposed measurement items. This study provides restaurant operators with insights into the altered dining-out behavior of their customers due to the COVID-19 pandemic and prepares them for the post pandemic environment. Originality/value During the unprecedented pandemic situation, few customers are willing to dine in restaurants. As local and national governments lifted the mandated COVID-19 protocols, restaurants opened their business slowly to cater to customers in compliance with the centers for disease control’s health and safety regulations. It is of utmost importance for restaurant operators to accommodate their customers’ needs when they dine in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a paucity of research that has examined customers’ comfort level when dining in restaurants and customers’ preferred dining environment during the pandemic.