Imitation and Learning under Uncertainty

Abstract

Trust is important in organizations, e.g. in teams or small working groups in which the performance of team members depends on the performance of other members in the group and in which team members have only an incentive to perform well if they trust that others perform as well. Existing theories regarding effects of communication on trust problems stress the influence of information about behaviour of potential partners. Effects of imitation are less extensively elaborated in the literature. In this article, the authors develop a theory about imitation in combination with other network effects on trust. They propose a distinction between imitation and other types of learning, contrasting trustors who only know that other trustors have been trustful in transactions with a trustee with trustors who also know that this trustee was in fact trustworthy. The theory predicts that both imitation and learning have an effect in trust situations and that these effects depend on uncertainties for the trustor. The authors designed a vignette experiment that enables the distinction between imitation and learning for different levels of uncertainty. The experiment provides strong support for learning effects on trust and some support for imitation effects. There is only limited evidence that the imitation effects depend on uncertainty.