Investigating the Impact of System Trust on Communication Behaviors

Abstract: The study asks whether state regulation functions as a source of system trust on some service markets, and explores whether this indirectly affects communication behaviors by lessening the dependence on interpersonal trust to maintain business-to-business relationships. This is investigated by using a method triangulation combining a qualitative and quantitative approach. The findings confirm the prevalence of system trust in highly regulated industries. It also supports differences in communication behaviors, with companies in less regulated industries making use of richer media and informal activities while putting less priority into internal cost efficiency and time efficiency. The study indicates that these differences in communication behaviors may be driven by a stronger motivation for less regulated industries to establish interpersonal trust in the face of low levels of system trust, but it does not find conclusive evidence for this being the case.