Adaptive Build-up and Breakdown of Trust: An Agent Based Computational Approach

This article employs Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) to investigate whether, and under what conditions, trust is viable in markets. The emergence and breakdown of trust is modeled in a context of multiple buyers and suppliers. Agents develop trust in a partner as a function of observed loyalty. They select partners on the basis of their trust in the partner and potential profit, with adaptive weights. On the basis of realized profits, they adapt the weight they attach to trust relative to profitability, and their own trustworthiness, modeled as a threshold of defection. Trust and loyalty turn out to be viable under fairly general conditions.     

Consumer trust in B2C e-Commerce and the importance of social presence: experiments in e-Products and e-Services

Reducing social uncertainty—understanding, predicting, and controlling the behavior of other people—is a central motivating force of human behavior. When rules and customs are not sufficient, people rely on trust and familiarity as primary mechanisms to reduce social uncertainty. The relative paucity of regulations and customs on the Internet makes consumer familiarity and trust especially important in the case of e-Commerce. Yet the lack of an interpersonal exchange and the one-time nature of the typical business transaction on the Internet make this kind of consumer trust unique, because trust relates to other people and is nourished through interactions with them.This study validates a four-dimensional scale of trust in the context of e-Products and revalidates it in the context of e-Services. The study then shows the influence of social presence on these dimensions of this trust, especially benevolence, and its ultimate contribution to online purchase intentions.     

The arrival of critical citizens: decline of political trust and shifting public priorities in China

Political trust has been in decline in China. In this article, we capture this decline as reflecting the modernization of Chinese political culture. While the government managed to deliver a sustained period of rapid economic growth, the public's trust in it is diminishing through two mechanisms. On the one hand, Chinese citizens are acquiring stronger liberal democratic values, which make citizens more critical toward government institutions. On the other hand, changing political culture is also shown in the citizens’ shifting of their priorities toward the expansion of freedom and empowerment of citizens. Decades of socioeconomic modernization, therefore, meant that the era of critical citizens has arrived in China.     

Trust and health in Eastern Europe: Conceptions of a new society

Little attention has been paid to why trends and levels of mortality and morbidity differ in Eastern Europe and few studies have addressed people's own perceptions of their new political system – perceptions which per se may be important for social development. The aim of the present study was to analyse the extent to which trust and economic circumstances affect self‐rated health in Poland, Estonia and Russia and how much health differences between the countries can be explained by these factors. A better economy and higher trust were related to better individual health, while economic factors seemed most important for inter‐country differences. It is probable that both institutional factors and individual perceptions contribute to people's well‐being, but in terms of social policy, an improved welfare system may be the most effective way forward.     

社会信任模式与合作型信任的重构

在增进政府与公民社会的合作过程中，应开发利用信任资源。信任的秩序功能随着人类社会的发展而增强，到后工业社会发展为人类合作的主导模式，合作型信任为合理社会秩序的构建提供了充分的社会支持。以后工业化与全球化时代的政府治理模式作为研究立足点，良性善治的社会治理模式需要合作信任作为其文化建设体系与社会整合机制。     

杜夫海纳的审美形而上学

作为现象学美学发展的顶峰,杜夫海纳的美学经历了从现象学到存在论的转向。这一转向体现在艺术的审美经验分析,即重建艺术与真理的关联;体现在自然的审美经验分析,即认为自然与人的统一并非源于审美的虚幻性,而是有其存在论的深层依据。杜夫海纳上述思想不仅有重要的美学意义,而且对于哲学甚至伦理学都有一定的启示。     

Populist political right opinions and political trust among Norwegian youth

Recent decades have seen the growth of various strands of right-wing populist political orientations, where populism and critique of immigration policies have been central. These ideological developments have caused concern for the legitimacy of social and political institutions. The question explored in this paper, based on Norwegian survey data, is ‘Which types of right political orientations exist among young people, and how do these political attitudes affect trust in social and political institutions?’ The results reveal the existence of both a populist ‘new right’ political orientation similar to the ideology of the Progress Party and a nativist ideology. The new right orientation contains two sets of variables: (i) economic liberalism/state scepticism and (ii) nationalist values. For trust in political institutions, the emerging picture is complex because the nationalist dimension of both the populist orientation and the nativist ideological orientation implies a high level of trust in political institutions. To the extent the new right political orientations causes mistrust, it seems to come from the liberal economic, anti-statist values included in this ideology. Based on these findings, future researchers should distinguish more clearly between the ideological dimensions going into populist political right orientations and the relationship between attitudes and more practical implications of such ideologies.     

图片信息丰裕度对消费者在线风险决策的影响

以图片标记信息丰裕度对消费者在线风险决策的影响为研究重点,引入详尽可能性模型(ELM),从购买行为发生之前的顾客关注度和购买之后的顾客满意度两个纬度,探索了消费者在线风险决策的影响因素。结果表明:信誉标记图片信息丰裕度中的评价方式种类和商家信用度、服务标记图片信息丰裕度中的保障服务以及商品促销标记,无论对消费者关注度还是消费者满意度均有显著的正向影响;支付服务图片信息丰裕度对消费者关注度影响不显著,但与消费者满意度有显著的正相关关系。另外,店铺动态评分、物流服务标记以及商品描述标记的图片信息丰裕度与消费者关注度及满意度相关性均不显著。研究结果为C2C交易平台以及网上卖家图片标记和信息展示提供了一定的理论指导。     

The ‘affective security curriculum’: breeding JBs through the marriage of the academic and the jingoistic

How does the US recruit its citizen spies used to maintain and proliferate coercive power? I use an interdisciplinary approach and a framework of affect theory to argue that there is an ‘affective security curriculum’ (ASC) that assists in explaining the tendencies towards jingoism used in the recruitment and indoctrination of students – as future security workers – in certain academic disciplines. The ASC is precisely the phenomenon that works to construct this expert class and is produced by order words, the most crucial of which is ‘terrorism’, as well as larger cultural norms linked to neoliberalism that have achieved near total dominance since the 1980s. The ASC works by intensifying the (in)ability to act for those in its domain. The necessity of linguistically proficient security workers to the US’ hegemonic project makes this a question of considerable political importance. The ASC is a different approach to answering questions of how US hegemony is maintained. Whereas positivist research agendas, such as content analysis, and postpositivist approaches, such as critical discourse analysis, certainly have their uses (and to which my notion of ASC is indebted), paradigms such as these fail to focus on the engendering processes at work vis-à-vis the expert class, without which the discursive frames such methodologies analyse would simply dissipate. My overarching purpose in this paper is to develop the concept of the ASC, its quiddity, and to present at least an incipient methodology for analysing its critical duties. As my primary intent is to introduce and conceptualize the theoretical framework of the affective security curriculum, the applied segment of this endeavour will be relatively brief – and is designed as a primer for further research.     

Consumer trust repair: A critical literature review

Consumers are fundamental to organisational functioning and survival. Their loyalty, commitment, product acceptance and good long-term relationships with firms and brands are underpinned by their trust. Unfortunately, over the last decade or so, we have witnessed some of the more spectacular violations of consumer trust in the history of business. This has led to negative consequences, such as loss of competitive advantage, rage, lack of commitment and decrease in turnover. Consequently, study of trust repair has become an important theoretical concern for a growing number of trust scholars. This article reviews and synthesises existing theory and research on the topic. It first sketches general characteristics of the consumer trust repair literature, including its meta-theoretical underpinning. It then identifies specific strategies associated with consumer trust repair and synthesises them into five categories of trust repair strategies. In addition, this paper highlights theoretical processes that explain why/how trust repair strategies work. Third, the paper proposes six fruitful avenues for future research. This study contributes to the field of consumer trust repair research by critically reviewing and synthesising emerging theory and research on strategies associated with consumer trust repair, by showing why and how these strategies work and by identifying most fruitful research areas.