Digital Trust and the Reconstruction of Trust in the Digital Society: An Integrated Model based on Trust Theory and Expectation Confirmation Theory

Abstract

Digital trust is born with the evolution of digital society. It is an inescapable topic in the digital society and it is developed from traditional interpersonal trust and institutional trust and has been extensively used in the Internet space. At present, the research on digital trust is rare. Based on the Trust Theory and the Expectation Confirmation Theory, this paper puts forward an integration model with user satisfaction as the intermediary variable. Besides, this paper develops a set of scales for evaluating digital trust combined with maturity scales and points out that digital trust consists of digital cognitive trust and emotional trust. This paper assumed that user perception and user expectation indirectly affect digital trust through user satisfaction and used SPSS 23.0 to do reliability, validity test, and exploratory factor analysis. The results found that user satisfaction plays a mediating role by fitting, evaluating, and optimizing the structural equation model with AMOS23.0. User satisfaction is a partial intermediary between user perception and digital trust, and it is the complete intermediary between user expectation and digital trust. These results demonstrate two things. Firstly, in the digital society, the construction of users' digital trust is based on users' satisfaction. The government should provide diversified and high-quality e-government services as far as possible. Secondly, digital trust is directly or indirectly affected by user perception and user expectation. The government should build a safe, green, and harmonious digital environment for users and make e-government services consistent with users' expectation.