Consumers’ Behavioural Intentions to Reuse Recommender Systems: Assessing the Effects of Trust Propensity, Trusting Beliefs and Perceived Usefulness

Abstract

Recommender systems (RSs) are widely utilised across industries as tools to provide users with recommendations based on their preferences. This paper reports on an examination of the influence of trusting beliefs on behavioural intentions to reuse RSs, emphasising the effects of trust propensity, perceived usefulness and product type. A distinctive contribution of this study is the research model, which integrated perceived usefulness as an antecedent of trusting beliefs. Data collected in Australia with 366 participants were used. A new approach (MICOM and PLS-MGA) was performed to assess the moderating effect of product type. The research results indicate that trust propensity has a positive and significant direct effect on consumers’ trusting beliefs in an ongoing relationship. The results also suggest that consumers’ trusting beliefs and perceived usefulness of RSs positively and significantly affect their intention to reuse RSs. Perceived usefulness of RSs is more important compared to trusting beliefs in predicting consumers’ behavioural intention to reuse RSs. Trusting beliefs partially mediate the impact of perceived usefulness on behavioural intentions to reuse RSs. The results also showed an insignificant difference between the effect of different product types on Australian consumers’ behavioural intention to reuse RSs. These results have implications for the design of RSs.