Trust (as the word is used in business, information systems, marketing): Trust is the willingness of a person or and organization to be vulnerable to the actions of another person or organization because they have an expectation that the other side will do something for them. The person or organization trusting may not be able to monitor or control the other side (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman, 1995).
Trust (as the word is used in the legal context): ‘A legal arrangement in which a person or organization controls property and/or money for another person or organization’ (Cambridge dictionary).
Individual trust: Trust based on individual factors specific to a particular person. The individual may have some factors encouraging them to trust and others to distrust and must set their priorities (Nolan et al. 2007).
Dispositional trust: A person trusts others in general because of their individual psychology, not because of sociological factors. Based on research in psychology (McKnight & Chervany, 2002).
Institutional trust: Institutional trust means that a person trusts another person or organization based on the situation, environment or the structures involved. Institutional trust is based on theories from sociology that suggest behaviours are not caused by factors within the person but by the situation (McKnight & Chervany, 2002).
Situational trust: Trust based on the situation, not the individual’s psychology (McKnight & Chervany, 2002).
Distrust: When a person believes that if they are vulnerable to another person or organization something negative will happen. Distrusting beliefs are separate to trusting beliefs and a person can have both at the same time. In some situations, trusting beliefs are more influential but in other situations distrusting beliefs are more influential (McKnight, Lankton, Nicolaou, & Price, 2017).
Trustech: Technology that builds and protects user, or consumer, trust. The importance of trust and the technology that supports it, have increased over the years. We are at a point now where a specialised term is needed to represent the technology that supports trust. After similar terms such as Fintech and Insurtech comes Trustech (Zarifis, 2022).
References
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734.
McKnight, D. H., Lankton, N. K., Nicolaou, A., & Price, J. (2017). Distinguishing the effects of B2B information quality, system quality, and service outcome quality on trust and distrust. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 26(2), 118–141.
McKnight, H., & Chervany, N. L. (2002). What Trust Means in E-Commerce Customer Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Conceptual Typology. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 6(2), 35–59.
Nolan, T., Brizland, R., & Macaulay, L. A. (2007). Development of Individual Trust within Online Communities, Journal of IT and People, 20(1), 53-71.
Zarifis A. (2022). ‘We should look more closely at Trustech, the technology that builds trust’, Trust Update. Available from: https://www.trustupdate.com/uncategorized/we-should-look-more-closely-at-trustech-the-technology-that-builds-trust/