Digital Communication and Swift Trust

Zakaria Babutsidze (1, 2, 3) , Nobuyuki Hanaki (2) , Adam Zylbersztejn (4)

1 SKEMA Business School
2 GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion
3 OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po)
4 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne

We experimentally study the effect of the mode of digital communication on the emergence of swift trust in a principal-agent relationship. We consider three modes of communication: plain text, audio, and video. Communication is pre-play, one-way, and unrestricted, but its content is homogenized across treatments. Overall, both audio and video messages have a positive (and similar) effect on trust compared to plain text; however, the magnitude of these effects depends on the content of agent's message (promise to act trustworthily vs. no such promise). In all conditions, we observe a positive effect of the agent's promise on the principal's trust. We also find that providing visual cues about the sender promotes trust and helps overcome gender favoritism in females.

Mots clés: Digital communication; Promise; Trust; Principal-agent relationship; Hidden action

Domaines: Economies et finances

Zakaria Babutsidze, Nobuyuki Hanaki, Adam Zylbersztejn. Digital Communication and Swift Trust. 2019. ⟨halshs-02050514⟩