The effects of trust-assuring arguments on consumer trust in internet stores: Application of Toulmin's model of argumentation

A trust-assuring argument refers to ‘a claim and its supporting statements used in an Internet store to address trust-related issues’. Although trust-assuring arguments often appear in Internet stores, little research has been conducted to understand their effects on consumer trust in an Internet store. The goals of this study are (1) to investigate whether or not the provision of trust-assuring arguments on the website of an Internet store increases consumer trust in that Internet store and (2) to identify the most effective form of trust-assuring arguments to provide guidelines for their implementation. Toulmin's model of argumentation is proposed as a basis to identify the elements of an argument and to strengthen the effects of trust-assuring arguments on consumer trust in an Internet store. Based on Toulmin's model of argumentation, three elements of arguments that commonly appear in daily communication; namely, claim, data, and backing, are identified. Data refers to the grounds for a claim, while backing is used for providing reasons for why the data should be accepted. By combining these three elements, three forms of trust-assuring arguments (claim only, claim plus data, and claim plus data and backing) are developed. The effects of these three forms of trust-assuring arguments on consumer trust in an Internet store are tested by comparing them to a no trust-assuring argument condition in a laboratory experiment with 112 participants. The results indicate (1) providing trust-assuring arguments that consist of claim plus data or claim plus data and backing increases consumers' trusting belief but displaying arguments that contain claim only does not and (2) trust-assuring arguments that include claim plus data and backing lead to the highest level of trusting belief among the three forms of arguments examined in this study. Based on the results, we argue that Toulmin's model of argumentation is an effective basis for website designers to develop convincing trust-assuring arguments and to improve existing trust-assuring arguments in Internet stores.