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Antecedents and
Antecedents and consequences of consequences
trust in online product
recommendations
935
An empirical study in social shopping
Refereed article received
Kuo-Lun Hsiao 18 August 2009
Department of Information Management, Shu-Te University, Approved for publication
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic of China 14 March 2010

Judy Chuan-Chuan Lin

Department of Computer Science and Information Management,
Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
Xiang-Ying Wang and Hsi-Peng Lu
Department of Information Management,
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan,
Republic of China, and
Hueiju Yu
Department of Business Administration, Chinese Culture University,
Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to improve understanding of the reasons why people trust the
information about product recommendations on social shopping networks of websites, a new
e-commerce method which combines social networking and shopping, and to investigate the impact of
the trust on the consumers’ intention to purchase products from the online shop of a website.
Design/methodology/approach – An online survey instrument was developed to gather data, and
1,219 questionnaires were used to test the relationships in the proposed model.
Findings – The results indicated that perceived ability, perceived benevolence/integrity, perceived
critical mass, and trust in a website were four important antecedents of trust in product
recommendation in a social networking site. In addition trust in product recommendations can
influence the consumers’ intention to purchase from the website through increasing their intention to
purchase the products.
Research limitations/implications – The research model demonstrated the importance of trust in
product recommendations to online consumers’ transaction intention.
Practical implications – The results of the study showed that trust in product recommendations
will influence consumers’ purchase intentions. Therefore a social shopping website or the websites
transforming into social shopping websites should put more emphasis on ways to establish the virtual
communities or social networks which can provide the information about product recommendations
that consumers trust.
Originality/value – The study provides a comprehensive framework of the antecedents and effects
Online Information Review
of consumers’ trust in recommendations in the context of social shopping. Vol. 34 No. 6, 2010
pp. 935-953
Keywords Shopping, Social interaction, Trust, Internet, Shopping q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Paper type Research paper 1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684521011099414
OIR Introduction
34,6 With the change of consumer shopping behaviour and the popularity of social network
services, a new type of e-commerce called “social shopping” is emerging. This
e-commerce method which combines social networking and shopping can satisfy the
needs for searching information before shopping and sharing personal experiences
online after use (Stampino, 2007; The New York Times, 2006; Wikipedia, 2009). Unlike
936 many online shops that display products for sale, a few social shopping sites, such as
ThisNext and Kaboodle, provide blogs or virtual communities for users to share
shopping ideas, exchange opinions on specific products and recommend their
favourites. For consumers these opinions or recommendations can help them find new
product information of interest to them and assist them in making shopping decisions.
In addition it has been found that people are more likely to trust the information
provided by other shoppers like themselves more than that provided by companies
(eMarketer, 2008a). Therefore through consumers’ trust in the opinions or
recommendations shared by other shoppers, websites may increase their sales volume.
Recently trust has been studied as an important factor in e-commerce (Hoffman et al.,
1999; Noteberg et al., 1999), and it was found that most consumers use trusted websites
when purchasing online (Yahoo! Inc., 2006). Kim et al. (2008) found that customers’
intention to purchase products online was also influenced by trust in the web vendor.
For this reason online merchants continuously improve website quality and update
website services to enhance buyers’ trust. Moreover because of the trend of exchanging
shopping experiences online, online merchants are adding functions for customers to
review and rate the products in their online stores. According to a survey by Internet
Retailer in 2008, 36.7 percent of online merchants planned to include this service in
their websites by the end of 2008, as the third priority in expected new functions
(Brohan, 2009). This indicates that online merchants hope to drive more traffic and
sales not only by the function of multimedia but also by the service of peer-to-peer
recommendations.
However, although consumers’ trust in other shoppers’ recommendations on the
websites may affect consumers’ online purchase decisions, few studies have examined
which factors influence their trust in the information about product recommendations.
This issue is important since the phenomenon of social shopping is rising and online
shoppers are becoming accustomed to sharing their detailed observations as well as
personal opinions on a specific product. Accordingly the reasons why people trust the
recommendations on social shopping networks which other consumers provide merit
further investigation. In addition to trust in recommendations, trust in websites is
another important factor influencing online shopping behaviours (Wu and Chang,
2006). Hence this study attempts to examine the interrelationship between trust in
recommendations and trust in websites, and also investigate the impact of each kind of
trust on the intention to purchase products from a website.

Social shopping applications

Owing to the rise of social shopping, online shops/auction managers are developing
social shopping functions or launching social shopping networks on their websites.
Social shopping networks entail “creating places where people can collaborate online,
get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them”
(Rubel, 2005). Other people’s advice or recommendations about products play an
important role in social shopping. Once consumers trust the product recommendations Antecedents and
on the social shopping networks of websites, their intention to purchase the consequences
socially-recommended product is stimulated and thus they may buy from that website
(Gordon, 2007).
For example, eBay launched more than 600 micro-social networks called eBay
Neighborhoods in 2007 to enhance social shopping on its site (http://neighborhoods.
ebay.com/). Each one is organised around a different product (e.g. coffee, iPhones, and 937
Eames furniture). Content from eBay.com including eBay blogs, guides, reviews, and
product search is integrated into each eBay neighbourhood. In the neighbourhoods
shoppers can join discussions, meet other people who share the same consumer
obsessions and easily find the webpages of product auctions. If shoppers want to buy
the recommended product, they can simply join the product auction.
Crowdstorm (www.crowdstorm.co.uk) and Stylehive (www.stylehive.com) are two
other examples of social shopping sites. Crowdstorm mixes shopping with a voting
system, product commentary, blogging, and social networking. Constantly updated
rankings of the most recommended products is the main feature of Crowdstorm. Users
of Crowdstorm can see what product is most talked about or “buzzy” and what their
trusted friends have to say about the product according to the voting system and
product commentary. Stylehive is another type of social shopping site. It describes
itself as social bookmarking for products and shoppers. Stylehive lets users bookmark
their favourite products, add pictures, and share them with like-minded shoppers,
family, and friends. Users can use Stylehive to create personal wish-lists as well, which
can also be categorised and shared with family and friends.

Conceptual framework and hypothesis development

As shown in Figure 1 this study proposes a comprehensive framework to examine the
impact of the two aspects of trust – trust in product recommendation and trust in a
website – on the intention to purchase products from a website. The literature relevant
to our research was reviewed. On the basis of the review the key constructs of the
framework were defined, and existing evidence supporting the relationships contained
in the framework was described.

Figure 1.
Research model
OIR Trust in a website and intention to purchase products from the website
34,6 Trust in a website was defined in this study as the willingness of a consumer to trust a
website. Because of the inherent nature of online shopping, trust plays a central role in
transactions (Koehn, 1996). A survey by Gefen (2000) investigated the behaviour of
customers in an online bookstore and found that customers’ intention to buy was
influenced by trust in this online bookstore. Subsequent research drew similar
938 conclusions, indicating that consumers’ trust in a web vendor affected their intention to
purchase from the website or their loyalty to the website (Chang and Chen, 2008; Chih
et al., 2009; Cyr et al., 2008; Kim et al., 2008; Salo and Karjaluoto, 2007; Wu and Chang,
2006). Based on the above literature we proposed:
H1. Increased degrees of trust in a website will increase the consumer’s intention
to purchase products from the website.

Trust in product recommendations and intention to purchase products

As a new channel for shopping, websites could provide online consumers with benefits
such as offering various kinds of products/services, overcoming time and geographic
limitations, and lowering transaction costs (Udo and Marquis, 2001; Vijayasarathy,
2004). Teo and Yu (2005) also indicated that consumers might purchase products from
a website due to economic considerations when their purchase intention toward the
products has already been formed. Nowadays many social shopping websites make
special efforts to provide more secure and interactive systems. Consumers can easily
purchase the products they are interested in from a website by simply clicking buttons.
Hence the following hypothesis was put forth:
H2. Increased degrees of intention to purchase the products that shoppers have
recommended will increase the consumer’s intention to purchase the products
from the website.
According to a report by eMarketer (2008b), before making a purchase, most internet
consumers will take shopping cues from influential product reviewers or bloggers.
Recommendations could be viewed as a type of word-of-mouth (Brown et al., 2005).
Word-of-mouth is informal and person-to-person communication passed between a
perceived non-commercial communicator and a receiver regarding a brand, a product, an
organisation, or a service (Harrison-Walker, 2001). Marketing via word-of-mouth – also
called “viral marketing” (Kelly, 2000) or “buzz marketing” (Rosen, 2000) – are effective
for sales. In the empirical research of Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006) the results suggested
that other internet consumers’ product recommendations had an impact on consumer
purchasing behaviour at online retailer sites. Based on the prior literature discussed
above, trust in recommendations is here defined as the willingness of a consumer to trust
the product recommendations of shoppers, and H3 was stated as follows:
H3. Increased degrees of trust in product recommendations of shoppers will
increase the consumer’s intention to purchase the products that shoppers
recommend.

Social network-based antecedents of trust in product recommendation

Despite the abundance of internet related research, the antecedents of trust in shoppers’
recommendations on the internet has seldom been discussed. In order to further
investigate the possible antecedents of trust in recommendations, a questionnaire Antecedents and
including an open-ended question asking the survey participants to describe the consequences
reasons why they trust the other shoppers’ recommendations in social network
services was developed. The students in an e-commerce class of a university in
northern Taiwan were invited to participate in this survey. Most of them were between
21 and 25 years old. They had all been using the internet for more than four years. A
total of 58 participants responded to the questionnaire. The results of the survey 939
revealed that perceived ability, perceived benevolence/integrity, and perceived critical
mass of the reviewers were the three most frequently mentioned reasons for trusting
the recommendations of shoppers.
Ability is the trustor’s perception of a trustee’s competencies and knowledge salient
to the expected behaviour (Mayer et al., 1995). For instance people trust doctors with
medical competencies and trust psychologists with psychological knowledge. In the
context of social networks, ability is also the influential antecedent to establish trust
among members who are usually centred on a specific mutual interest, hobby, event,
etc. In addition benevolence is the belief in a trustee’s intention to treat the trustor well
regardless of the trustee’s own profit (Mayer et al., 1995). Benevolence is the basis of
social network services because a service will not become popular without the
benevolence which leads to positive interactions between individuals. Furthermore
integrity is when the trustor realises the trustee will act in accordance with a set of
principles (Mayer et al., 1995). A trustee who adheres to moral standards such as
honesty could enhance a trustor’s confidence in the trustee’s behaviour. Hence this
study proposed perceived ability (PA) and perceived benevolence/integrity (PBI) as
two main factors of trust in product recommendations.
Moreover, the results of the open-ended question showed that perceived critical
mass was another essential antecedent of trust in product recommendations. It showed
that consumers tend to trust more in the recommendations from large numbers of
shoppers. Thus we added perceived critical mass (PCM) as the third antecedent of trust
in recommendations. Consequently, we hypothesised that:
H4. Increased degrees of the consumer’s perceived ability of the recommenders in
the social network service will increase the consumer’s trust in product
recommendations.
H5. Increased degrees of the consumer’s perceived benevolence/integrity of the
recommenders in the social network service will increase the consumer’s trust
in product recommendations.
H6. Increased degrees of the consumer’s perceived critical mass of the
recommenders in the social network service will increase the consumer’s
trust in product recommendations.

Website-based antecedents of trust in a website

Many consumers do not purchase products from a web vendor due to the lack of trust
in a website (Wu and Chang, 2006). In order to understand why a consumer trusts a
website and attempts to purchase the socially-recommended products from that
website, this paper investigated the antecedents of website trust based on prior studies.
McKnight et al. (2002) classified factors affecting customers’ trust in a website into
three categories: perceived vendor reputation, perceived site quality, and structural
OIR assurance of the web. Accordingly our study also categorised antecedents of trust in a
34,6 website into three similar concepts: perceived web reputation (PWR), perceived web
quality (PWQ), and perceived institution assurance (PIA) (Chang and Chen, 2008; Fung
and Lee, 1999; Kim and Tadisina, 2005; McKnight and Chervany, 2001; Salo and
Karjaluoto, 2007).
Though these three antecedents might not contain all the factors which may
940 influence trust in a website, past research has shown that they can explain most of the
variance in a consumers’ trust construct (Jarvenpaa and Tractinsky, 1999; McKnight
et al., 2002). In SERVQUAL-related studies (Lin, 2007; Zhou et al., 2009), researchers
demonstrated that service quality or web quality, which usually includes the
reliability, responsiveness or empathy of a service, has a significant influence on trust.
Furthermore sociologists regard institution assurance as an important factor in
reducing web users’ security concerns and increasing the trust in web-based vendors
(McKnight et al., 2002). In addition reputation has been the most frequently named
factor influencing buyer trust towards internet shops (Fung and Lee, 1999; Jarvenpaa
and Tractinsky, 1999; Kim and Tadisina, 2005).
A detailed discussion of these antecedents follows. First, PWR was defined as the
degree of website’s popularity to which a consumer perceives. Reputation has been
regarded as a trust builder for a long time (Barber, 1983), particularly for trust in a
website ( Jarvenpaa and Tractinsky, 1999; McKnight et al., 2002). Jarvenpaa and
Tractinsky (1999) proposed that PWR would positively affect consumers’ trust in an
internet shop. Tams (2009) found that web vendors’ reputations had a significant
influence on consumers’ trust in them as well.
In addition we defined PWQ as the degree to which a consumer perceives that the
website’s features meet his needs. Fung and Lee (1999) pointed out that the information
and interface quality of a website could increase consumers’ trust. Many scholars have
also proposed that PWQ positively affects the formation of trust in a website (Kim and
Tadisina, 2005; McKnight et al., 2002).
Finally, we defined PIA as the degree to which a consumer perceives the quality of
the web’s protective legal or technological structures that ensure transaction security.
Structural assurance is related to trust because people are more likely to trust
operations in a secure environment (McKnight and Chervany, 2001). On the internet
Borenstein (1996) indicated that structural assurance refers to legal protection and
technological structures (i.e. encryption) which ensure the web-based business is safe
to use. Subsequent research has also suggested that perceived institutional assurance
would enhance consumers’ trust in a website (Kim and Tadisina, 2005; McKnight et al.,
1998). Based on the arguments above, we proposed the following hypotheses:
H7. Increased degrees of the consumer’s perceived web reputation will increase
the consumer’s trust in a website.
H8. Increased degrees of the consumer’s perceived web quality will increase the
consumer’s trust in a website.
H9. Increased degrees of the consumer’s perceived institution assurance will
increase the consumer’s trust in a website.
Trust development in online shopping Antecedents and
Past research argues that trust is dynamic and distinct in character at different stages of a consequences
relationship (Panteli and Sockalingam, 2005; Siau and Shen, 2002). Trust’s changes over
time involve the initial trust formation and repeated trials until deeper trust is established.
In virtual communities trust is built upon obtainable economic benefit, mature
community infrastructure, and sound managerial mechanisms in the beginning (Hsu et al.,
2007). After the individuals gain more and more information through participation, the 941
relationship between trustee and trustor will develop and the economy-based trust will
move to information-based trust, eventually transference-based trust (Shapiro et al., 1992).
When trust moves to transference-based trust, the trustor can develop trust toward a third
party.
Although the trustor might have no previous direct experience with the third party
at all, they may form the extended trust by transferring their trust to the third party
(Ba et al., 2003). For example when a website is allied with a bank which people trust,
people may be more willing to trust the website. Doney and Cannon (1997) also
indicated that when a buying firm trusts the selling firm, it will trust the salesperson of
the selling firm more. Tams (2009) demonstrated that website trust had a positive
effect on vendor trust. Similarly people may be more willing to trust that the
recommendations of most members of a website are useful when they also trust the
quality and management of the website. Accordingly our research not only explored
the impact of trust on product recommendations and trust in a website respectively on
online shopping but considered the relationship developed from trust in a website to
trust in product recommendation. Hence we proposed that:
H10. Increased degrees of the consumer’s trust in a website will increase the
consumer’s trust in product recommendations of the shoppers on the website.

Research methodology
Subjects
The members of the Bahamut website (www.gamer.com.tw) are the subjects of this
study. The Bahamut website is the most popular game-based community website in
Taiwan. It has more than 2.5 million members, and about 500 million pages of the
website were viewed per month according to the statistics of Google Analytics in
February 2009. It has been developing social shopping-related services in its community
recently. Bahamut provides a platform for gamers to share their information with each
other and builds a grading system for computer/video games. It also supplies virtual
space, such as blogs and virtual communities, in which its members can exchange their
comments on computer games and their favourite games with others.
A typical webpage of a product in Bahamut, in addition to official information,
includes various social networking functionalities, such as a product discussion board,
the ranking score graded by members, the number of owners among members,
information on the members who own the product, product recommendation buttons,
members’ reviews of the product, and articles about the product provided by members.
Each product webpage has a recommendation list, which shows other recommended
products suggested by members who recommended the product. Accordingly
members of Bahamut can browse the comments and recommendations of games
provided by other members or grade games and leave their comments via the grading
system.
OIR Moreover, Bahamut has integrated its online recommendation system with its
34,6 online shopping facility. If members want to purchase a recommended product from
the grading board, they can simply click the “I want to buy” button on the grading
page and complete a purchase on the Bahamut shopping mall.

Instrument development
942 Most of the items measuring the chosen constructs were adapted from prior related
research in the field of e-commerce. The scale items for trust in a website and trust
in recommendations were taken from Gefen (2000) with modified wording to fit the
context of this study. The measures for intention to purchase products and to
purchase products from the website were adapted from Teo and Yu (2005). The
antecedents of trust in a website in the model included PWR, PWQ, and PIA.
Items for measuring PWR were adapted from the study by Kim and Tadisina
(2005). The measures for PWQ were adapted from the scales developed by
McKnight et al. (2002). PIA was assessed based on three items taken from
McKnight et al. (2002). The antecedents of trust in recommendations in the model
included PA, PBI, and PCM. The measures for PA and PBI were adapted from
Ridings et al. (2002). In addition the items measuring PCM were developed
according to the definitions of research conducted in the field of technology
acceptance (Lou et al., 2000) and modified to fit the context of recommendation
acceptance. The items were measured on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from
“disagree strongly” (1) to “agree strongly” (5).
In order to validate the instrument, a pre-test and pilot test were undertaken. The
pre-test of the questionnaire was conducted by inviting three e-commerce experts to
assess the logical consistencies, ease of understanding, question item sequence
adequacy, and context fitness of the items. A total of 153 experienced internet users,
who had been using the internet for more than five years, were invited to evaluate the
wording of the items. Comments from them led to a few minor modifications of the
wording and the item sequence. Table I presents the revised questionnaire.

Data collection
The data for this study were collected via an internet survey. The hyperlink of the
survey questionnaire was posted on the Bahamut website for 14 days to invite the
members to participate in this survey. The Bahamut website allows researchers to
post academic questionnaires on its homepage if the questionnaires pass a review.
In order to increase the number of responses, the hyperlink and invitation messages
were posted on several popular discussion forums of Bahamut. Moreover
respondents also had a chance to win a gift certificate worth US$ 6. After a two
week survey period, 1,439 responses were received. All of the responses were
anonymous and only used for academic purposes. After eliminating the incomplete
and duplicate responses, 1,219 questionnaires were used in the data analysis. Of
those, 78 percent of respondents were male, and most respondents were under 25
years of age. Moreover more than 70 percent of respondents had made at least one
purchase through online retailing previously, showing that the data we collected
represented the views of buyers rather than browsers. Table II summarises the
detailed demographic profile of respondents.
 Antecedents and
Item Measure Loading
consequences
Perceived Ability I think . . .
(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:82)
PA1 the members of this virtual community have 0.81
knowledge about the subject we discuss
PA2 the members of this virtual community are capable of 0.83 943
participating in the subject we discuss
PA3 the members of this virtual community are well 0.74
qualified in the subject we discuss

Perceived Benevolence/Integrity I think . . .

(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:86)
PBI1 the members of this virtual community are concerned 0.74
about what is important to others
PBI2 the members of this virtual community will do their 0.74
best to help others
PBI3 the members of this virtual community are fair to 0.83
others
PBI4 the members of this virtual community are honest 0.81
with others

Perceived Critical Mass I think . . .

(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:82)
PCM1 there are many members in this virtual community 0.76
PCM2 the members of this virtual community interact 0.83
frequently
PCM3 the members of this virtual community participate in 0.76
product evaluation enthusiastically

Perceived Web Reputation I think . . .

(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:83)
PWR1 this website has been known for a long time 0.54
PWR2 this website is widely known for having a good 0.92
reputation
PWR3 this website is very popular 0.90

Perceived Web Quality I think . . .

(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:84)
PWQ1 this website’s features meet my needs 0.81
PWQ2 it is easy to find the information I want on this website 0.83
PWQ3 Overall, this website is well-designed 0.76

Perceived Institution Assurance I think . . .

(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:90)
PIA1 there are enough safeguards for internet shopping on 0.89
the website to make me feel comfortable
PIA2 legal and technological protection of internet shopping 0.92
on the website makes me feel secure
PIA3 in general, the website is a robust and safe 0.81 Table I.
environment in which to buy Questionnaire items and
(continued) factor loadings
OIR Item Measure Loading
34,6
Trust in Recommendation
(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:93)
TrR1 I think that the product recommendations of this 0.87
virtual community are credible
944 TrR 2 I trust the product recommendations of this virtual 0.93
community
TrR 3 I believe the product recommendations of this virtual 0.92
community are trustworthy
Trust in a website
(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:93)
TrW1 I think this website is credible 0.86
TrW2 I trust this website 0.94
TrW3 I believe that this website is trustworthy 0.93
Intention to Purchase Products With regard to the products that this virtual
(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:87) community recommends
IP1 I would consider buying them 0.79
IP2 I am likely to buy them 0.86
IP3 I am willing to buy them 0.83
Intention to Purchase Products When I want to buy the products that this virtual
from the Website community recommends
(Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:95)
IPW1 I would consider buying the products on this website 0.91
IPW2 I am likely to buy the products on this website 0.95
Table I. IPW3 I am willing to buy the products on this website 0.91

Data analysis and results

A structural equation modelling (SEM) approach was chosen to analyse the collected
data. According to Bollen (1989) this approach allows researchers to perform the
necessary path analysis with latent variables. Furthermore Hwang and Kim (2007)
indicated that SEM was a powerful extension of the general linear model. In this study
data analysis was carried out by a two-stage method: the measurement model and the
structure model. The software AMOS (Analysis of MOment Structures) 7.0 was used to
analyse the collected data. Because of its user-friendly graphical interface, AMOS has
become popular as an easier way of specifying structural models.

Measurement model
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the measurement model. As
shown in Table I, all of the Cronbach’s alpha values are above 0.8. Since these values
are above the acceptable level of 0.7 (Nunnally, 1978), these constructs are deemed to
display adequate reliability.
Convergent validity measures the agreement among multiple items measuring the
same construct. Fornell and Larcker (1981) suggested the convergent validity of
measures can be verified by three criteria:
(1) all item loadings should be significant and exceed 0.7;
(2) composite reliabilities should exceed 0.8; and
(3) average variance extracted (AVE) for each construct should exceed 0.50.
 Antecedents and
Measure Items Frequency %
consequences
Gender Male 952 78.10
Female 267 21.90
Age , 18 287 23.54
19-25 583 47.83
26-35 323 26.49 945
36-45 18 1.48
. 46 8 0.66
Occupation Student 735 60.29
Worker 379 31.09
Unemployed/retired/housekeeper 105 8.62
Education Below secondary 94 7.71
High school 377 30.93
Bachelor’s degree 680 55.78
Graduate degree 68 5.58
Average disposable income per month (US$) * , 150 620 50.86
150-300 243 19.93
300-900 245 20.10
900-1,500 84 6.89
. 1,500 27 2.22
Online shopping experience None 328 26.91
1-5 588 48.24
6-10 160 13.12
11 þ 143 11.73
Table II.
Notes: *GNP (Gross National Product) per capita of Taiwan was about US$16,000 in 2009 Demographic profile

Table I shows that all the item loadings except PWR1 (0.54) exceed the threshold of 0.7.
While PWR1 is lower than Fornell and Larcker’s threshold, Hair et al. (1992) suggested
that an item loading higher than 0.50 is still acceptable. As shown in Table III, the results
demonstrate that the measures are reasonably convergent on their respective constructs.
Discriminant validity checks the degree to which measures of one construct are
empirically distinct from the other constructs (Bagozzi et al., 1991). To check for

Construct Composite reliability AVE

Perceived Ability 0.90 0.75

Perceived Benevolence/Integrity 0.91 0.71
Perceived Critical Mass 0.90 0.74
Perceived Web Reputation 0.89 0.74
Perceived Web Quality 0.90 0.76
Perceived Institution Assurance 0.94 0.84
Trust in Recommendations 0.96 0.88
Trust in a Website 0.96 0.88 Table III.
Intention to Purchase Products 0.92 0.79 Composite reliability and
Intention to Purchase Products From the Website 0.97 0.90 AVE
OIR discriminant validity we employed the criterion recommended by Fornell and Larcker
34,6 (1981): the square roots of average variance extracted (AVE) should exceed the
correlation between any pair of constructs. Table IV lists the results, with correlations
among constructs and the square roots of AVE on the diagonal. The square roots of
AVE on the diagonal are higher than the inter-construct correlations, representing the
examination of discriminant validity is acceptable. To sum up, the measurement model
946 demonstrates adequate reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity.

Structural model
The following indices and standards were used to assess model fit: chi-square/degrees
of freedom, goodness-of-fit index (GFI), adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), normed
fit index (NFI), comparative fit index (CFI), and root mean square of approximation
(RMSEA). As shown in Table V all the fit indices are within recommended thresholds.
Therefore the structural model demonstrated a good fit.
Each proposed hypothesis in the research model was examined. Figure 2 shows the
standardised path coefficients between constructs as well as the variance explained
(R 2) for each dependent variable. In this study, H1 and H2 were proposed to explain
which factors affect consumers’ intentions to purchase products from one website. As
shown in Figure 2, H1 and H2 were both supported (b ¼ 0:083, p , 0.01; b ¼ 0:560,

Construct PA PBI PCM PWR PWQ PIA TrR TrW IP IPW

PA 0.87
PBI 0.54 0.84
PCM 0.51 0.52 0.86
PWR 0.49 0.37 0.46 0.86
PWQ 0.55 0.46 0.51 0.63 0.87
PIA 0.24 0.43 0.28 0.20 0.26 0.92
TrR 0.61 0.57 0.48 0.40 0.48 0.35 0.94
TrW 0.53 0.50 0.46 0.56 0.69 0.30 0.50 0.94
IP 0.37 0.45 0.35 0.25 0.33 0.39 0.55 0.35 0.89
IPW 0.27 0.36 0.26 0.22 0.24 0.42 0.40 0.28 0.53 0.95
Notes: Diagonal elements are the square roots of average variance extracted. Off-diagonal elements
are the correlation between two distinct constructs; PA: perceived ability; PBI: perceived benevolence/
integrity; PCM: perceived critical mass; PWR: perceived web reputation; PWQ: perceived web quality;
Table IV. PIA: perceived institute assurance; TrR: trust in recommendation; TrW: trust in a website; IP:
Correlations and AVE intention to purchase products; IPW: intention to purchase products from the website

Index Score Recommended value

Chi-square/degrees of freedom 3.38 ,5.00 (Bentler, 1988)

GFI 0.93 .0.90 (Bentler, 1988; Browne and Cudeck, 1993;
Scott, 1995)
AGFI 0.91 .0.80 (Scott, 1995)
CFI 0.97 .0.90 (Bentler, 1988; Scott, 1995)
Table V. NFI 0.95 .0.90 (Scott, 1995)
Model fit index summary RMSEA 0.044 ,0.05 (Browne and Cudeck, 1993)
 Antecedents and
consequences

947

Figure 2.
Results of SEM analysis

p , 0:001). We found that purchase intention had a more significant effect on online
transaction intention than trust in a website did. The two constructs together explained
34.8 percent of the variance in the intention to purchase products from the website.
Moreover, this study provides empirical evidence that trust in recommendations is a
critical stimulation of purchase intention so H3 was supported (b ¼ 0:617, p , 0.001).
The percentage of explained variance for purchase intention was 38 percent. The
results revealed that H4, H5 and H6 were all supported, showing that PA, PBI and
PCM were important factors affecting trust in product recommendations. The effects of
PA (b ¼ 0:346, p , 0.001) and PBI (b ¼ 0:310, p , 0.001) were stronger than that of
PCM (b ¼ 0:098, p , 0.01). Additionally the result indicated that trust in a website has
a positive effect on trust in recommendations (b ¼ 0:115, p , 0.001). Hence H10 was
supported. Altogether I, I, I, and I explained 53 percent of the variance in trust in
product recommendations.
H7 (b ¼ 0:140, p , ;0.001), H8 (b ¼ 0:646, p , 0.001) and H9 (b ¼ 0:108,
p , 0.001) were developed to understand why consumers trust a website and all
were supported. The results were in line with previous research demonstrating the
influence of PWR (Jarvenpaa and Tractinsky, 1999; McKnight et al., 2002), PWQ
(Chang and Chen, 2008; Fung and Lee, 1999; McKnight and Chervany, 2001) and
PIA (Kim and Tadisina, 2005; McKnight et al., 1998) on trust in a website. Therefore
H7, H8 and H9 were supported. H7, H8 and H9 altogether explained 62.7 percent
of the variance in trust in a website.

Discussion and conclusion

Past research has rarely explored the reasons why online consumers trust the product
recommendations from other shoppers in social networks and how the trust affects
consumers’ online purchase intentions. In order to generate insights on this, this paper
conducted an empirical study on an online shopping mall of a game-based community
website. The results show several interesting findings as follows.
OIR Research findings
34,6 First the empirical results suggested that consumers’ trust in a website and their
purchase intentions were two important factors enhancing the willingness to purchase
the socially-recommended products from the website. Past research has recognised
that trust in a website is one important determinant of online transaction intention
(Gefen, 2000; Kim et al., 2008; McKnight et al., 2002). Compared with the intention to
948 purchase the product, we found that trust in a website had less impact on the
willingness to purchase the product from that website. The results imply that the
members with an intention to purchase products are more likely to shop online
although trust in a website is an important factor of purchase intention. Additionally
this study provided evidence that consumers’ trust in product recommendations had
not only a direct and significant positive effect (b ¼ 0:617) on their purchase intentions
towards a product but also a strong indirect positive effect (0.617 £ 0:560 ¼ 0:346) on
the intention to purchase the product from that website. In sum consumers’ transaction
intentions towards a website could be directly affected by the trust in that website
(b ¼ 0:083; p , 0.01) and more significantly influenced by their purchase intention
towards the product, which would be strongly affected by the trust in product
recommendations. This interesting finding not only emphasised the importance of
trust in a website but also showed that trust in product recommendations of the
website’s members seemed to be a more critical factor influencing consumers’
intentions to purchase the product from that website.
Second, understanding possible antecedents affecting the formation of trust in
product recommendations and trust in a website could bring benefits for online
shopping websites since they are important indirect determinants of online transaction
intentions. Our results confirmed that trust in a website and trust in product
recommendations were influenced by website-related factors (i.e. perceived web
reputation, perceived web quality and perceived institution assurance) and social
network-related factors (i.e. perceived ability, perceived benevolence/integrity and
perceived critical mass) respectively. The results were in line with those of past studies
(Chang and Chen, 2008; Kim and Tadisina, 2005; McKnight et al., 2002; Salo and
Karjaluoto, 2007).
Another interesting finding of this paper was that perceived critical mass had
less effect than that of perceived ability and perceived benevolence/integrity. This
may be because trust in the product recommendations in social networks involves a
risk-taking decision, and it depends on more rational and thoughtful judgments.
Consumers do not ascertain whether all product recommendations are fair or not.
Therefore in contrast with perceived ability and perceived benevolence/integrity of
the other members in a social network, perceived critical mass of the product
evaluations in a social network may be a secondary determinant for trust in product
recommendations.
Finally, this study also demonstrated that consumers’ trust in a website could
enhance their trust in product recommendations. People may be more willing to trust in
the product recommendations on a website which they trust. This was consistent with
prior studies on trust development (Doney and Cannon, 1997; Panteli and Sockalingam,
2005), which indicated that trust establishment was a dynamic process changing over
time.
Theoretical contributions Antecedents and
This study has contributions for researchers and practitioners. From the theoretical consequences
standpoint, our research model demonstrated the importance of trust in product
recommendations to online consumers’ transaction intentions. The results showed that
trust in product recommendations played a significant role in governing consumers’
intentions to purchase the socially-recommended product. Additionally trust in
product recommendations had a stronger total effect on individuals’ decisions to buy 949
from that website than trust in the website. The present study provides a
comprehensive understanding of the effects of consumers’ trust in recommendations
and a website as consumers engage in social shopping. Furthermore although trust in a
website has been recognised as a significant factor affecting online consumers’
transaction intentions, few studies have provided empirical evidence on the
relationship between it and trust in product recommendations. Therefore this paper
differentiates these two types of trust and highlights the importance of them in the
context of social shopping.

Practical implications
From the practical perspective this paper offers the following suggestions for
practitioners. The results of our study showed that trust in product recommendations
is a significant factor in promoting purchase intention. This means that trust in the
information about product recommendations will significantly influence consumers’
purchase intentions. Therefore a social shopping website or the websites transforming
into social shopping websites should put more emphasis on ways to establish a virtual
community or social network which can provide the information about product
recommendations that consumers trust. Moreover this study offered some insights into
strengthening consumers’ trust in production recommendations. Our results identified
that the most important ways to increase trust in product recommendations are to
enhance the perceived ability and integrity of the members in social networking sites
and to increase the number of members who are willing to share information about
product recommendations with others. For example promoting information sharing
among experienced product users and encouraging members to show their goodwill in
social network services could increase the perceived ability and benevolence/integrity
of the members. Consumers would trust more in the information which experienced
shoppers/users provide and prefer the virtual communities or social networking sites
which possess useful information. As for website practitioners, in order to increase
transaction volume, internet business managers should still pay attention to the
development of consumers’ trust in a website. As the results presented in this study
show, strategies to strengthen consumers’ trust in a website include increasing the
website’s popularity, improving the overall quality of the website, and strengthening
the protective legal or technological structures of the web.

Limitations and future research

Several limitations of this study should be addressed. First, the focus of this study was
on assessing consumers’ intentions rather than their actual behaviour. We believe that
it would be worthwhile to investigate real purchasing behaviour in future research.
Second this study mainly focused on the effect of trust. There are other factors that
might also affect consumers’ willingness to purchase socially-recommended products
OIR from websites. These factors may include subjective norms (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975),
34,6 self-efficacy (Hsu and Chiu, 2004), transaction cost (Teo and Yu, 2005) and so on. Thus
future research may investigate the effects of these factors on consumers’ online
transaction intentions. Moreover the types of product might affect consumers’ online
purchase intentions. The target subject of this study was a game-based community
website and the main products sold on its shopping mall were computer/TV games.
950 Hence we suggest that future studies of online shopping take product type into
consideration. Third our research participants were the members of a game-based
community website, and they may not be representative of all consumers. Further
research is needed to generalise our findings. Finally self-report bias is a common
methodological concern. The questionnaire survey of this study was conducted online
using a self-report scale to measure the research variables. Therefore there might be
some bias due to this method.

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About the authors

Kuo-Lun Hsiao is an Assistant Professor of Information and Management at Shu-Te University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He received MBA and PhD degrees from the National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan in 2004 and 2008 respectively. His research interests are
electronic commerce, technology management and internet marketing. Kuo-Lun Hsiao is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: h24871356@gmail.com
Judy Chuan-Chuan Lin is a Professor of Computer Science and Information Management at
Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan. She received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Columbia
University, New York, an MS in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of New York,
and a PhD in MIS from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Her articles
have appeared in Information & Management, International Journal of Information
Management, Behaviour & Information Technology, International Journal of Management and
Decision Making and various other journals and in the proceedings of international conferences.
Her research interests include internet marketing, electronic commerce and innovation adoption.
Xiang-Ying Wang is a Software Developer in an international company. She received an
MBA degree from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan in
2007. Her research interests are electronic commerce and internet marketing.
Hueiju Yu is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Chinese Culture
University, Taiwan. She received an MBA from University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a PhD in
Business Administration from National Taipei University. Her research interests include
electronic commerce, internet marketing, and quality management.
Hsi-Peng Lu is a Professor of Information Management at the National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan. He received an MS and PhD in Industrial Engineering
from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research interests are e-commerce, managerial
decision making and management of information systems. His work has appeared in journals
such as Information & Management, Omega, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal
of Computer Information Systems, Computers in Human Behavior, Information Systems
Management, International Journal of Information Management and International Journal of
Technology Management. He also works as a TV host and is a consultant for many organisations
in Taiwan.

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