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Impersonal Trust in B2B Electronic Commerce: A Process View 245
contingencies to avoid relying on another firm’s benevolent motives. Hence, B2B
exchanges provide a set of trust-building functions such as accreditation, feedback,
monitoring and legal bonds that make opportunism irrational, thus promoting a
trustworthy environment. The fact that many real-life anonymous B2B exchanges
function without familiarity trust (e.g., Altra.com, Chemconnect.com) suggests that
impersonal trust is at least sufficient for basic market transactions. Credibility can
be regarded as the dimension of trust that governs economic activity along with the
price mechanism in B2B eCommerce. Following Ganesan (1994) and the recommendations
of Geyskens et al. (1998), I propose that trust has two theoretically and
empirically distinct dimensions, credibility and benevolence. Impersonal trust based
on credibility mostly applies to B2B eCommerce, which focuses on institutionalized
structures and arrangements that B2B exchanges provide to create a stable context
within which interfirm cooperation could develop.
A Process View of Impersonal Trust
Doney and Cannon (1997) drew on several theories developed in social
psychology, sociology, economics and marketing to isolate five cognitive processes
through which trust engenders. These distinct processes by which trust can develop
are the capability, the transference, the calculative, the intentionality, and the
prediction process. These processes suggest a trust-building attempt, followed by
a favorable outcome towards actually engendering trust. Therefore, these processes
assume both an attempt towards developing trust, followed by a positive
outcome. For example, the calculative process does not solely generate trust; the
outcome of the calculation may generate trust given a favorable assessment of the
calculation. In general, these five processes engender the global construct of trust.
However, only the capability, transference and calculative processes are able to
generate trust in an impersonal context. The processes of intentionality and
prediction necessitate interaction and familiarity-learning from contact. Therefore,
only capability, transference and calculative are proposed to act as mediating
variables connecting the antecedents of impersonal trust in B2B eCommerce with
credibility. For a more exhaustive view of all five impersonal and familiarity trustbuilding
cognitive processes, see Pavlou (2001).
Capability Process
Can I trust a firm to have the competence to perform as expected? According
to Sako and Helper (1998), competence is the source of capability trust, which
assesses whether a firm is able to carry out its promises. Doney and Cannon (1997)
argued that trust can be developed from evaluating a firm’s competence. The
capability process is unavoidable in all aspects of B2B exchange relations, and as
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