Bente Gary, Dratsch Thomas, Kaspar Kai, Häβler Tabea, Bungard Oliver, Al-Issa Ahmad
Communication and Media Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Social and Media Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 5;9(6):e98297. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098297. eCollection 2014.
Reputation systems as well as seller depictions (photos; avatars) have been shown to reduce buyer uncertainty and to foster trust in online trading. With the emergence of globalized e-markets, it remains an urgent question whether these mechanisms, found to be effective for Western cultures, also apply to other cultures. Hypothesizing that members of collectivistic cultures in contrast to those of individualistic cultures would rely more on visual social cues (seller faces) than on factual information (reputation scores), we compared buying decisions of Arab and German participants in an experimental trust game. Photo-realistic avatars were used instead of photos to control facial features and expressions. The results revealed significant main effects for both reputation scores and avatar faces. Moreover, both variables significantly affected the purchase behavior of Arab as well as German buyers, suggesting cross-cultural universals in the processing of trust cues. The results have implications for future cross-cultural studies in e-commerce as well as the design of online markets and shared virtual environments.
声誉系统以及卖家描述（照片；头像）已被证明可以减少买家的不确定性，并促进对在线交易的信任。随着全球化电子市场的出现，一个紧迫的问题仍然存在：这些被发现对西方文化有效的机制是否也适用于其他文化。我们假设，与个人主义文化的成员相比，集体主义文化的成员会更多地依赖视觉社会线索（卖家面孔）而不是事实信息（声誉评分），于是我们在一个实验性信任博弈中比较了阿拉伯和德国参与者的购买决策。使用逼真的头像而不是照片来控制面部特征和表情。结果显示声誉评分和头像面孔都有显著的主效应。此外，这两个变量都显著影响了阿拉伯和德国买家的购买行为，这表明在信任线索的处理上存在跨文化的普遍性。这些结果对未来电子商务中的跨文化研究以及在线市场和共享虚拟环境的设计具有启示意义。
