Investigating factors affecting purchase intention in collaborative consumption: the antecedents of social trust and self-efficacy

Abstract

Collaborative consumption (CC) has transformed the way people consume goods and/or services nowadays. With the information communication technology (ICT), CC platforms connect the users to trade services and products. On the one side of the platform consists with consumers, on the other side of the platform consists with services and/or product providers. The increased popularity of the CC platforms has challenged many traditional incumbents. Several attempts have been made to address the issues, such as the social and economic impacts, drivers of CC, the attributes of the users and characteristics of the CC model. Nevertheless, limited research attention has explored how social trust and self-efficacy could affect people’s intention to participate in collaborative consumption, hence failing to explain how collaborative consumption could be promoted in society to support community building and the resource-saving consumption culture. To address this research gap, this study proposes a comprehensive framework that explains how social trust and self-efficacy drive users’ purchase purchase intentionin CC. The framework also investigates the antecedents of social trust through system quality, shared goals, social referral and network stability, whereas the antecedents of self-efficacy include social referral and shared goals. Employing partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and importance-performance matrix (IPMA), with data collected from 373 respondents using TaskRabbit, a skill-based exchange collaborative consumption platform. The findings from this study reveal that both social trust and self-efficacy play vital roles in determining user’s purchase intention in CC. Social referral, system quality, and shared goals were found to positively affect social trust and self-efficacy. In particular, shared goals is proven as the strongest antecedent in determining social trust and self-efficacy, highlighting its relevance in promoting collaborative consumption. This study is the first to introduce and empirically test the effects of social referral on individuals’ self-efficacy. The framework developed in the study provides new insights into the understanding of social trust and self-efficacy in CC, leading to practical managerial implications for collaborative consumption platforms and firms.