Distrust, Fear and Emotional Learning: An Online Auction Perspective

Glenn Robert Bewsell
2012 Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research  
This exploratory research explores the emotional perspective of online distrust, where distrust is a fear. Fear is one of the negative emotions where the situational state is motive-inconsistent and uncertainty is present. A review of literature explores distrust as a fear, emotions, emotional learning and identifies cognitive dimensions consistent with fear. These cognitive dimensions are motive-inconsistent situational state, uncertainty, goal-path obstacle, effort, and agency/control.
more » ... data is collected from an online auction community website to support this research. The dimensions consistent with fear are identified within the data collected and analyzed using qualitative analysis. Goal-path obstacles are identified within the data as; value incongruence, user isolation, user inefficacy, and financial. The goal-path obstacles identified are consistent with types of fear. The research findings are discussed in terms of the theory and offers suggestions to practitioners to improve the design of online auctions by reducing the effects of fear and emotional learning. Users make decisions to form online transactions based on incomplete information, such as dubitable online histories and a lack of personal knowledge. The placement of trust online is problematic, and the lack of trust is regarded as a major barrier to transacting online [15] . Current research mainly focuses on efforts to understand and improve online trust [13], [29] . Research into distrust is limited [14] and distrust may be even harder to define than trust [6] . Previous research into distrust investigates distrust as a construct [6], [8], [11], [14], [19], the relationship between distrust and trust [19], fears related to e-marketplace adoption [11], and fears related to economic loss and social harm [8]. The emotional perspective of distrust is worthy of research. A better understanding of people's emotions, fear and distrust can help address people's concerns with transacting online. When compared with other transactional domains, online auction is a good domain to explore and address these gaps. At online auctions, buyers and sellers are virtually anonymous, not expected to have personal knowledge of each other, and form transactions based on incomplete information. This research considers distrust as a motive-inconsistent situational state that is consistent with fear. This research attempts to address the questions: what factors are consistent with the negative emotional state of fear, what are the main obstacles when transacting online, what are the main types of fear when transacting online, and what builds fear when transacting online? Qualitative research and content analysis of data collected from the user community is used to identify factors related to fear and distrust at online auctions. The contribution of this exploratory research is to expand the emotional perspective of distrust. This research explores key cognitive dimensions to emotion and fear, explores emotional learning and provides practitioners with a better understanding of distrust as a fear. Theoretical Perspective This section discusses trust, the main perspectives of distrust, trust and distrust, emotions and fear, emotional learning, distrust building in eCommerce, and the motivation to study distrust at online auctions. the quantities, types and values of items being auctioned; ii) the other user receives recent negative feedback; or iii) the other user's account becomes suspended. User inefficacy obstacles are where the user does not have the power to adequately address and resolve obstacles. User interactions with the acquisition network, the auction site or the mediator do not provide acceptable results. The user lacks the power to resolve the obstacle and user inefficacy and self-efficacy are impacted.
doi:10.4067/s0718-18762012000200002 fatcat:zmzljtob3rbozmmab46dyffx2u