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1. Introduction
Prior research has attested to the pivotal role of trust in affecting consumers’ evaluation of service providers across diverse online contexts, including e-commerce (Gefen and Straub, 2004; Gefen et al., 2003a; Li et al., 2015; McKnight et al., 2002; Shi and Chow, 2015), e-government (Bélanger and Carter, 2008; Tan et al., 2008; Warkentin et al., 2002), e-health (Andreassen et al., 2007; Hesse et al., 2005), and e-banking (Benamati et al., 2006). Consumers who trust a service provider tend to regard the latter as being competent and reliable (Gefen et al., 2003b; Pavlou and Fygenson, 2006; Pavlou, 2003), culminating in desired consumption behaviors such as adoption (Gefen et al., 2003b; Komiak and Benbasat, 2006) and retention (Sirdeshmukh et al., 2002; Valvi and Fragkos, 2012). Consequently, online service providers[1] have undertaken a broad range of measures to foster and maintain consumers’ trust, which include offering warranties (Aiken and Boush, 2006; Yen, 2006), building reputation (Biswas and Biswas, 2004; Kim et al., 2004), securing third-party endorsements (Aiken and Boush, 2006; Biswas and Biswas, 2004; Wang et al., 2004; Yen, 2006), and financing promotional advertisements (Aiken and Boush, 2006; Biswas and Biswas, 2004).
In contrast to the extensive body of research on the effects of trust on online service provision, there has been comparatively less progress in discerning the role of distrust in driving consumers’ evaluation of such services, much less in devising appropriate means for alleviating the adverse impact of distrust. Prior research has testified to trust and distrust as distinct concepts that can co-exist: they neither exist as two extremes of a continuum nor are they mutually exclusive (Lewicki et al., 1998). Indeed, past studies have uncovered separate psychological mechanisms through which trust and distrust shape consumers’ behavioral intentions in the context of e-commerce (Cho, 2006). Likewise, Dimoka (2010) employed functional neuroimaging (fMRI) techniques to examine trust and distrust as distinguishable at a neurological level. As compared to trust which captures one’s “positive expectation of a partner’s beneficial conduct” (Cho, 2006, p. 26), distrust reflects one’s “positive expectation of injurious action” (Luhmann, 1979). Consequently, research should go beyond the simple treatment of distrust as the opposite of trust when investigating its...