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Enabling trust formation within agent-mediated virtual environments

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Abstract

In e-commerce, the role of trust becomes vital for establishing and maintaining customer relationships. Drawing from established theoretical work on trust and relationship marketing, this paper synthesises a series of trust constructs, determinant variables and trust building processes, and proposes a framework for the formation of trust in customer-business relationships. The framework is conceptualised in the context of an electronic servicescape, where trust is formed through iterative interactions with promises being made, enabled and fulfilled. Based on this framework, the paper illustrates how the application of agent and virtual reality technologies can provide the environment and facilitate the expressiveness demanded by such a servicescape.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, University of Athens, Panepistimioupolis, 157 71, Athens, Greece

    P. Papadopoulou, A. Andreou, P. Kanellis & D. Martakos

Authors
  1. P. Papadopoulou
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  2. A. Andreou
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  3. P. Kanellis
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  4. D. Martakos
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Correspondence to P. Papadopoulou.

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Papadopoulou, P., Andreou, A., Kanellis, P. et al. Enabling trust formation within agent-mediated virtual environments. Virtual Reality 5, 149–159 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01409420

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