A framework for understanding trust factors in web-based health advice

Trust is a key factor in consumer decisions about website engagement. Consumers will engage with sites they deem trustworthy and turn away from those they mistrust. In this paper, we present a framework for understanding trust factors in web-based health advice. The framework is derived from a staged model of trust and allows predictions to be made concerning user engagement with different health websites. The framework is then validated via a series of qualitative, longitudinal studies. In each study, genuine consumers searched online for information and advice concerning their specific health issue. They engaged in free searching and were directed towards sites previously reviewed using the framework. Thematic analysis of the group discussions provided support for the framework and for the staged model of trust wherein design appeal predicted rejection (mistrust) and credibility of information and personalization of content predicted selection (trust) of advice sites. The results are discussed in terms of the merits of the framework, its limitations and directions for future work.     

Please advise: using the Internet for health and financial advice

The Internet is a popular source of information and advice especially within the fields of health and finance. Previous research has raised the issue of quality with respect to online information and has suggested differences between the way consumers and experts search for and appraise online information. However, many studies have asked students to act as ‘consumers’ or have relied upon artificial search tasks. This paper reports on research using ‘genuine’ consumers. The first study examines the trust markers held by genuine consumers in both the health and finance domains. The second study explores the perceptions of people who have actually used sources of online advice. The results indicate similarities between the trust markers of genuine consumers and experts. Trust markers differed between the two domains of health and finance and this was revealed in terms of the features of the sites visited. Genuine consumers may have different requirements and may be under different pressures compared to expert evaluators.     

Investigating information sharing behavior: the mediating roles of the desire to share information in virtual communities

Social networking sites are built and designed to provide online services and a platform for people to social interacts and exchange information. This study used the social capital theory as a foundation to explore the social interaction factors and individual factors such as shared value, community identification, and information privacy concerns, and examine the mediating role of the desire to give information between trust on websites/members and information sharing behaviour in the proposed model. This research sample consists of seven hundred and twenty-seven members who have used the Facebook fan page for at least 6 months. This study adopted structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses. The results of this study show that shared value, community identification, and information privacy concern directly influence trust on websites and members. Trust on websites and members directly influenced the desire to get/give information. Desire to give information directly influences information sharing behaviour. The desire to give information plays important mediating roles between trust on websites/members and information sharing behaviour. Finally, we provide conclusions and managerial implications of the findings.     

Trust perceptions of online travel information by different content creators: Some social and legal implications

Consumers are increasingly turning to the online environment to provide information to assist them in making purchase decisions related to travel products. They often rely on travel recommendations from different sources, such as sellers, independent experts and, increasingly, other consumers. A new type of online content, user-generated content (UGC), provides a number of legal and social challenges to providers and users of that content, especially in relation to areas such as defamation, misrepresentation and social embarrassment. This paper reports research that examined the level of trustworthiness of online travel information from these different sources. The study used a survey of Australian travel consumers (n = 12,000) and results support the notion that there are differences in the level of trust for online travel information from different sources. Respondents ‘tended to agree’ that they trusted information provided by travel agents, information from commercial operators and comments made by travellers on third party websites. However, the highest level of trust was afforded to information provided on State government tourism websites. These results suggest that greater trust is placed in online travel comments when they are on a specific travel website than when they are on a more generic social networking website. However, respondents were ‘not sure’ that they trusted comments made by travellers on weblogs and on social networking sites. Some 88% of respondents that had not visited UGC websites (or were unsure if they had) indicated that they thought that UGC would be useful in the future – suggesting that they feel that any concerns they may have in relation to legal and social problems resulting from its use will be resolved.     

Understanding the intention to follow the advice obtained in an online travel community

Online travel communities are an increasing phenomenon that is motivating great changes in consumer behavior in the travel sector. Travelers prefer to rely on peers’ recommendations and thus visit these communities to look for unbiased information. This work analyzes some of the precursors of the consumer intention to follow the advice obtained in an online travel community. Data show the relevant role of attitude toward the advice, trust in the online community that provides the advice and perceived usefulness of this information in order to determine the consumer intention to follow the advice obtained in the community. As well, trust and usefulness have been found to influence consumer attitude, and usefulness is also directly affected by trust in the community that provides the advice. Finally, a specific personal attribute - namely, consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence -, moderates the effects of the antecedents of the intention to follow the advice obtained in a travel community. Based on these results, some implications for practice are widely discussed.     

Do websites influence the nature of voting intentions? The case of two national elections in Greece

This paper aims to contribute to the growing body of research on online political marketing by investigating the use of websites as a marketing tool in the 2007 and 2009 general elections in Greece. The two main research objectives are firstly to establish the key factors affecting voters’ trust when it comes to using politicians’ websites and secondly to examine whether and to what extent the influence of trust-building factors changes over-time, as the online environment matures. The key findings of this research are that users tend to visit the websites of favoured candidates, which reinforces their positive perceptions of them, while as far as the websites themselves and their content and the services provided are concerned there is still room for improvement.     

Health Websites that people can trust – the case of hypertension

Traditionally health advice has been anchored in face-to-face settings but increasingly patients are using the Internet for their health advice needs. This means that patients are now offered inconsistent advice from a range of sources and must determine which sites to trust and which to reject. To understand how consumers make these choices, 13 participants diagnosed with hypertension took part in a longitudinal study in which they searched for information and advice relevant to their condition. A content analysis of the group discussions revealed support for a staged model of trust in which mistrust or rejection of Websites is based on design factors and trust or selection of Websites is based on content factors such as source credibility and personalization. Based on this model, a set of guidelines for developing trust in health Websites is proposed and key differences between face-to-face communication and web-based systems are discussed.     

The influence of user affect in online information disclosure

Personal consumer data is the fuel for information driven programs that may differentiate a firm from its competitors and create strategic advantages. However, a tension exists between the user’s desire to protect personal information and the needs of online businesses for consumer data that drive customer relationship and business intelligence applications. This study explores the roles of positive and negative affect on users’ trust and privacy beliefs that relate to the online disclosure of personal information. A model is tested using the responses of 301 Internet users who visited one of two commercial websites. The results indicate that positive affect has a significant effect on users’ website trust and privacy beliefs that motivate online information disclosure and this effect is more pronounced for users with high Internet security concerns. The idea that positive mood-inducing website features can motivate user behavior has the potential to guide the development of websites for effective information disclosure and data collection.     

Tracing College Students’ Acceptance of Online Health Services

The popularity of online health information has increased because of its easy accessibility. The present study employs longitudinal data to investigate perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and trust in the online health information context. More specifically, the authors classified trust as both trust in the provider and in the website for health information. In light of this discussion, the purpose of this study is twofold: (1) To better understand the multidimensional and dynamic nature of trust in the online health information context and (2) To carry out a longitudinal investigation to study the technology acceptance model (TAM) in the online health information context. This study focuses on college students’ behaviors related to online health information services; this is because engagement with online health information is a dynamic area for research among young populations. By analyzing the longitudinal data, the authors found that both trust in website and trust in provider can integrate TAM variables well to influence college students’ behavior for seeking out online health information. Moreover, when college students gain more experience with online health information servers, perceived ease of use becomes less important to form positive behavior intentions.     

Internet,News, and Political Trust: The Difference Between Social Media and Online Media Outlets

What is the relationship between Internet usage and political trust? To answer this question, we performed a cross‐sectional analysis of Eurobarometer survey data related to 27 countries and a supervised sentiment analysis of online political information broadcast during the Italian debate on the reform of public funding of parties. The results disclose the differences between Web 1.0 websites and Web 2.0 social media, showing that consumption of news from information/news websites is positively associated with higher trust, while access to information available on social media is linked with lower trust. This has implications for the debate on social media as a public sphere and for the tension between professional and citizen journalism.     

The Relative Importance of Usability and Functionality Factors for E‐Health Web Sites

With the growing usage of the Internet, the demand for online health care information and advice as well as the number of health‐related Web sites are increasing. In case of online health information and advice, the user interface replaces face‐to‐face communication. To ensure that the users' needs are met, it is critical to balance functionality and usability in the design of the Web site. The present study seeks to identify the complex interrelationships among the various factors of usability and functionality concerning e‐health Web sites. Two Turkish e‐health Web sites were assessed for evaluation in this study. The findings show that the users of the health information Web sites give a higher priority to functionality and its factors, whereby the highest relative importance is on “services/facilities” and “personalization/categorization of information.” The most important usability factors related to the e‐health Web sites are “memorability” and “interaction.” © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Online trust: a stakeholder perspective, concepts, implications, and future directions

Online trust is important in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-business. Consumers and businesses, feeling the pressure of economic downturn and terrorism, increasingly look to buy from and do business with organizations with the most trusted Web sites and electronic networks. Companies' perception of online trust has steadily evolved from being a construct involving security and privacy issues on the Internet to a multidimensional, complex construct that includes reliability/credibility, emotional comfort and quality for multiple stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, distributors and regulators, in addition to customers. Further, trust online spans the end-to-end aspects of e-business rather than being just based on the electronic storefront. Based on a review of selected studies, we propose a stakeholder theory of trust, articulate a broad conceptual framework of online trust including its underlying elements, antecedents, and consequences, and propose some promising future research avenues in online trust. This paper will help information systems professionals better understand the online trust perspectives of multiple stakeholders, the antecedents and consequences, thereby enabling them to build more trustworthy Web sites.     

Brand interactions and social media: Enhancing user loyalty through social networking sites

This paper aims to investigate how user loyalty can be achieved and maintained through social networking sites. More specifically, we intend to test the relationships between brands, user loyalty and social media. The research thus provides insights into user-brand relationships through social media and argues how loyal customers can be through social networking websites. Although there are considerable numbers of studies about loyalty; there exists very limited work studying user loyalty through social networking websites. This research presents clearly the reasons for engaging with brands online and examines user behaviors and loyalty. Research provided strong evidence that majority of the social network users follow brand fan pages via social media, even though they have different reasons to do so. The study also measures users’ behavioral and attitudinal loyalty behaviors. Their level of trust to the information they obtained about brands through social media is also established. The hypotheses tested show that brands and customer satisfaction are both positively related to users’ behavioral loyalty.     

Representations of lesbian and bisexual women’s sexual and relational health in online video and text-based sources

The Internet is the preferred source of health information followed by healthcare providers, friends and family, print media, and television (Baxter & Egbert, 2008). Yet, previous research about online sexual health resources for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer) groups, especially lesbian and bisexual (LB) women, primarily consists of introductions and reviews of related websites rather than critique of the quality of the information present (e.g. Clark, 2003; Finlon, 2002; McKay, 2011). Thus, the goals of this study were to examine the LB women’s sexual and relational health content in online sources and identify the degree to which the online sources considered LB women’s identity and standpoint when presenting sexual and relational health messages. The analysis includes a comparison of text-based and video-based online messages related to LB women’s sexual and relational health. We argue that there is an overall lack of quality in the online sexual and relational health messages for LB women, and that websites are not comprehensive enough in their coverage of LB women’s sexual and relational health.     

Building effective online game websites with knowledge-based trust

Knowledge-based trust is trust that is grounded in knowledge about another party developed through repeated interaction. Knowledge-based trust is especially important for online business environments where there are repeated transactions between fixed pairs of consumers and merchants. Building on previous studies of trust, this paper examines the proposition that players’ knowledge about website characteristics (i.e., security and interface design) and about website outputs (i.e., online game quality and service quality) has an effect on the development of trust in the context of online game websites. The impact of trust on building an effective online game website is also investigated. A conceptual model of knowledge-based trust is tested with questionnaire responses of 253 online game players. Overall, the results indicate that all of these four classes of knowledge engender trust and that trust helps develop effective online game websites.

The relationship between website quality,trust and price premiums at online auctions

This study measures the value of website quality in terms of its impact on trust, intention to transact and price premiums. Prior research on online auctions has focused on the use of reputation systems for building trust in online auction vendors and subsequently to generate price premiums. This study examines the extent to which trust can be induced by improving the quality of online auction listings. A survey of 701 eBay users is conducted which compares the price premiums of two nearly identical online auction businesses, one that has online auction listings with a perceived high quality and the other that has substantially lower perceived quality. Results of this study indicate that website quality can explain 49% of the variation in the trust for eBay sellers. In fact, it shows that sellers with good website quality are all perceived to be equally trustworthy regardless of their eBay reputation; whereas sellers with poor website quality are not perceived to be trustworthy even if they have a high eBay reputation score. The results also show that the trust resulting from increased website quality increases intention to transact and results in price premiums of 12% (on average) for sellers with higher quality listings. Theories from marketing, economics, and social psychology are used to explain why website quality induces trust in unknown vendors without providing any concrete evidence regarding the vendor’s past history.     

The Role of Status Seeking in Online Communities: Giving the Gift of Experience

This article examines online gift giving in the form of opinion, information, and advice that individuals post on websites. Research has highlighted altruism and reciprocity as the key motives behind such gift giving. We argue that informational gift giving is also strongly driven by status and status seeking, and that status sentiments are more likely to sustain virtual communities. Using theories of status seeking and self-presentation, we investigate the ways in which consumers construct status in online consumer communities. The data reveal insights into the strategies behind constructing a digital status and the rise of online systems to promote celebrity status within online communities.     

Factors affecting female user information adoption: an empirical investigation on fashion shopping guide websites

With the prosperity of online shopping platforms, similar or even the same products tend to have a large variety of sources to be purchased from. More and more consumers seek the product information from online review websites before making a purchase, as they are willing to provide reviews or share their purchase experience. These behaviors turn the online review websites into vertical and community-based sales channels. Based on the Information Adoption Model, this study conducted an empirical investigation to analyze female users’ information adoption process when using fashion shopping guide website. The results show that information quality and source credibility have significant impact on information usefulness, which in turn contributes to information adoption. In addition, users with different levels of purchasing motivation demonstrate different dependence on information quality and source credibility.     

基于商品特征关联度的购物客户评论可信排序方法

电子商务网站中,海量无序的用户评论可能导致消费者客户“迷失”其中,无法识别评论的可信和真假。针对这个问题,提出了一种根据用户评论的可信度对其重新排序的方法。首先,针对网站商品广告信息,关注在线用户评论内容是否和商品功能属性密切相关,设计了基于HTML脚本格式的购物网站中商品关键特征提取算法,给出了基于自然语言处理的用户评论特征词提取方法;然后,利用词语相似度来分析商品特征和用户评论内容之间的关联度,提出了购物客户评论的可信度计算方法;最后,通过实例分析,实现了大量购物客户评论的可信排序,使得用户无须浏览全部或者大部分之后就能判断哪些评价可以信任或者具有实际的参考价值,降低了信息搜索成本,提高了决策效率。