A model of customer trust in sharing economy-driven ride-sharing platforms involving psychological contract violation and recovery

This paper develops and tests a model of consumer trust in a sharing economy-enabled ride-sharing platform from the perspective of psychological contract violation (PCV) and subsequent service recovery efforts of the platform. Based on a mixed-design experiment, customers evaluate various hypothetical PCV and recovery scenarios and complete a survey on their perspectives of trusting beliefs and trusting intentions to the platform. We aim to prove that the type and magnitude of PCV can moderate the relationship between service recovery attributes and customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform. In addition, consumer habit also has a moderating effect on the relationship between consumers’ trusting beliefs and trusting intention. The findings contribute to the understanding of customers trust and evaluations of PCV encounters and service recovery. Practically, the results of this research can provide ride-sharing platform managers with practical guidelines for providing appropriate recovery efforts to a PCV encounter.