A Cognitive Process Model of Trust Change

摘要

This paper describes a new process theory model of how trust in a technology changes over time. It proposes that trust change occurs after people pay attention to an event, make sense of it, and pass a threshold for changing their trust level. We call these the cognitive gears of trust. We extend the model with two variance theory factors-perceived technology risk and loyalty to the technology vendor- which should also affect how trust changes over time. Using hierarchical linear modeling we analyze data from 1799 respondents who report their trust after seeing eight successive news briefs about the technology. We find the effects on trust change of three cognitive processes-attention, sensemaking, and threshold as well as two factors-tech risk and loyalty.