Social Trust and E-Commerce
Experimental Evidence for the Effects of Social Trust on Individuals’ Economic Behavior
DIANA C. MUTZ is the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This article was originally prepared for presentation to the 2003 annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Nashville, TN. The author is grateful to the National Science Foundation and to the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center for funding portions of this study.
Address correspondence to the author; e-mail: mutz{at}sas.upenn.edu.
In this study, an experimental design embedded in a national survey is used to examine the impact of social trust on participation in e-commerce. To what extent does generalized trust in people influence economic behavior, particularly in newly established realms such as the Internet? Although some previous work has posited a role for social trust in encouraging both e-commerce and economic development more generally, evidence has been based on cross-sectional associations and, primarily, at the aggregate level of entire countries. While these relationships have been suggestive, studies have yet to confirm a causal role for social trust in influencing e-commerce. Would increasing levels of social trust actually encourage greater e-commerce participation? This study combines the representativeness of a national survey with the internal validity of an experimental design to answer this question.