Research on the Driving Mechanism of E-Commerce Politeness on User Trust in Social Commerce Based on the Critical Incident Technique
TL;DR
The results reveal that value feedback, customer service, and consumption experience are key factors positively enhancing user trust on social commerce platforms, whereas platform functions are the main factors causing negative impacts.
Abstract
Social commerce, as an emerging model in the field of e-commerce, has rapidly developed worldwide. Users’ perception of platform politeness directly influences their level of trust. The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of trust mechanisms in social commerce and to fill existing research gaps. Guided by e-commerce politeness, this study employs the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) to explore trust drivers in human–computer interactions between social commerce platforms and users. Through a questionnaire survey, the most satisfactory and most unsatisfactory critical incidents were collected. After researchers summarized and labeled the incidents, three coders classified them. Reliability and validity analyses were conducted to ensure the robustness of the findings. The results reveal that value feedback, customer service, and consumption experience are key factors positively enhancing user trust on social commerce platforms, whereas platform functions are the main factors causing negative impacts. Finally, this study proposes recommendations from three dimensions—platforms, operators, and users—to provide theoretical support and practical guidance for the high-quality development of social commerce platforms.