ABSTRACT
Recommendation agents (RAs) help customers to cope with information complexity and information overload in electronic commerce (ecommerce). This paper addresses the changes of trust/distrust structures (cognitive vs. emotional components) and trust/distrust formation processes from the initial interaction between customers and an RA to the subsequent repeated interactions. This paper contributes theoretically by proposing two conceptual models to analyze trust/distrust formation processes. It contributes empirically by revealing that the numbers of processes generating cognitive and emotional trust/distrust drop significantly from the initial interaction to the second interaction, the numbers then stabilize. In contrast, the percentage distribution of these processes remains the same during repeated interactions. The same rule holds for trust/distrust formation processes. These results explain why the initial interaction is the critical time for trust/distrust formation. This study calls for future research on RA design aiming at trust building and distrust prevention for customers experiencing RAs for the first time.
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