A Longitudinal Perspective on Trust in IT Artefacts

The importance of trust for IT adoption and diffusion has been shown in numerous studies throughout the IS discipline. Even though researchers agree that trust is not only relevant for one-time interactions, but develops gradually during an interaction and needs to be maintained, most studies rely on research designs that only capture a particular snapshot of this development. We aim to close this gap in IS trust literature, by conducting a five-wave longitudinal field study at a German university to investigate how trust in a new IT artefact – a new student information system – is established. Our results indicate that trust in a new IT artefact develops in three phases. First, the users seem to confirm whether their level of initial trust was correct and adapt their level of trust accordingly. Next – in our case after about 3 weeks – the users start to build trust, resembled by a linear growth in trust. Last – in our case after about another 6 weeks –trust stops to increase, and remains stable. Furthermore, this development does not vary comparing new and experienced users. Based on our results, we extend the trust lifecycle we derived from literature by a sixth phase called confirmation of initial trust.