دانلود رایگان مقاله بیشتر از عملکرد مالی: اعتماد به سرمایه گذاران در تجارت اجتماعی

abstract

Social trading is a new form of online community in which investors can automatically, simultaneously, and unconditionally copy the investments of other traders whom they trust. Using data from the social trading network eToro, this study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore configurations of cognition-based and affect-based signals of trustworthiness that generate trust and prompt one investor to copy another. This study identifies two configurations that prompt trust and the decision to copy. Those configurations rely on both cognition-based and affect-based signals of trustworthiness. Furthermore, the study identifies six configurations in which weak cognition-based and affect-based signals of trustworthiness lead to parties failing to establish trust. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the establishment and non-establishment of trust in online communities and have implications for social trading platforms and their members.

5. Discussion and conclusion

The findings of this study contribute to the nascent field of research on trust in online communities in general (e.g. Gamboa & Gonçalves, 2014, Shankar et al., 2002, Yang & Wang, 2015) and social trading platforms in particular (Doering et al., 2015; Pan et al., 2012). The first contribution pertains to the complementarity of cognition-based and affect-based signals of trustworthiness. Both configurations that build trust and thereby prompt copying decisions rely on cognitionbased and affect-based signals. This finding echoes previous studies on trust in offline contexts that establish the complementary nature of cognition-based and affect-based signals of trustworthiness in the process of building trust (Lewis & Weigert, 1985; Möllering, 2006). The same finding also suggests that the shift from offline to online contexts does not diminish the importance of this complementarity (O'Sullivan, 2015; Shankar et al., 2002). Clearly, for financial traders wishing to appear trustworthy, financial performance matters, but the study indicates that those traders must complement such cognitionbased signals of trustworthiness with affect-based signals.