Building Online Trust through Socially Rich Web Interfaces

This paper investigates how human warmth and sociability (social presence) can be integrated through the Web interface to positively impact online trust. An empirical study was undertaken to explore the impact of various levels of socially-rich text and picture design elements on the perception of online social presence and its subsequent effect on online trust and its antecedents. Higher levels of social presence are shown to positively impact the perceived usefulness, enjoyment and trust of commercial Websites. Implications of these finding for practitioners and future research are outlined.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: PST
• Authors: Milena M. Head, Khaled Hassanein
• Keywords: Online Social Presence, Online Trust, PST 2004, PST 2008, Social Presence