Benefits First: Consumer Trust Repair in Mobile Commerce

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore trust repair strategies and the outcomes in mobile (m-)commerce. Consumer trust in m-commerce is a calculus-based form of trust; service failures, “inaction” and “excessive actions” are the typical trust decline situations. Three strategies of the fulfillment of consumers’ psychological contract for compensation, arousal, and regulation are proposed as trust-repaired solutions regarding the abovementioned three situations. The experimental results demonstrate that trust cannot be repaired by a single relational psychological contract strategy and that it can be repaired by both a single transactional and interactive strategy; the interactive strategy is more effective in competence-based decline. Second, in integrity-based decline, both the single and interactive strategy negatively influence trust repair; the relational strategy has the strongest effect. The “boomerang effect” shows that the more m-vendors repair, the more the trust decreases. Third, trust can be repaired, respectively by arousal and regulation strategy regarding corresponding situations of inaction and excessive actions. Finally, the trust repair paradox (TRP) has not been verified in m-commerce.