The Impact of the Digital Transformation on our Understanding of Key Drivers of Technology Usage - A Longitudinal Perspective on Trust

Information Technology (IT) is increasingly pervading the daily life of people all around the world and its reach is still extending rapidly. This development is termed digital transformation and is supposed to change the way how we perceive IT, how we work, how we consume and in general how we live. One key reason for this development is that IT usually makes the life of its users easier, and the users reward this increasing convenience. Facebook, e.g., is very convenient for staying in touch with people all around the world. Nevertheless, the digital transformation has also its disadvantages, and may make the users vulnerable, e.g., to hacking or surveillance. This creates fear as well as uncertainty, and thus diminishes the users' trust in IT. This is especially crucial, since trust has been shown to be a key driver in the context of the adoption and use of IT. Consequently, a decrease in trust hinders the use of new IT artifacts, and thus the advantages of the digital transformation cannot be leveraged. Although researchers agree that trust is not only relevant for one-time interactions, but that trust develops gradually during an interaction and needs to be maintained over time, most studies rely on research designs that only capture a cross-sectional snapshot of trust development.

In the extension of my GFF project, I aim to address this gap in the trust literature by conducting a five-wave longitudinal field study to investigate how trust in a new IT artifact - a new student information system - and trust in the provider of the system emerges.

In essence I aim at answering four research questions:

RQ1: How does trust in a new IT artifact develop over time?
RQ2: How does trust in the provider of an IT artifact develop over time?
RQ3: How does the development of trust differ comparing trust in IT artifacts (technology) and trust in the provider (human being)?
RQ4: How does prior experience (with the provider or other IT artifacts) impact the development of trust over time?