Building trust and commitment to blogs

摘要

Building trust and commitment among a local politician's blog visitors may lead them to revisit the blog, to recommend it, or to give preference to the blog above all others. This study analyzes the role of different variables in building trust and commitment in online environments. In order to do so, it extends the behavior of the relationship quality model to the realm of political blogs, including two additional variables that can have an effect on building trust and commitment: attachment and distrust. After applying the model to a sample of political representatives operating at a local level in Spain, we were able to confirm the behavior of relationship quality, observing that satisfaction and commitment are both related directly to and mediated by trust. We were also able to confirm the significant impact of attachment on satisfaction and commitment, whereas we found no significant relationship between attachment and trust or between distrust and commitment. To further expand our knowledge of the variables included in the model, we also analyzed the relationships between trusting beliefs and the components of self-determination theory as antecedents of trust, distrust, and attachment.