Sustaining Consumer Trust and Continuance Intention by Institutional Mechanisms: An Empirical Survey of DiDi in China

Abstract

Sharing economy (SE) platforms have become increasingly popular. However, some platform enterprises have engaged in problematic behavior, such as collecting and using personal information in serious violation of the relevant laws and regulations, making improving existing institutional mechanisms an urgent matter. This study develops a conceptual model based on institution-based trust to examine the effect of SE institutional mechanisms on consumer trust in sharing platforms and continuance intention toward the SE in China. In addition, this study investigates the moderating role of gender in the path relationship between the second-order construct “perceived effectiveness of sharing economy institutional mechanisms” (PESEIM) and consumer trust. SPSS23.0 and SmartPLS3.0 were used to empirically test the data collected from DiDi users in China. The results of the analysis indicate that PESEIM has significant positive impacts on consumer trust, which in turn enhances consumers’ continuance intention to use the DiDi platform, and that consumer trust can also mitigate perceived risk while promoting continuance intention. Importance-Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) results show that government regulation and privacy assurance are critical factors for sustaining continuance intention toward ride-sharing platforms. Furthermore, the results of multigroup analysis show that PESEIM has a stronger impact on male users than female consumers in building consumer trust.

Keywords

• Sharing economy
• institutional mechanisms
• consumer trust
• continuance intention
• gender
• IPMA