By conducting interviews with companies involved in tangible resource sharing it became clear that there are several variables that interplay in creating trust.
Personal contact between users
Most relationships create trust by providing personal contact between the different parties in the sharing relationship. Even though, the majority of interactions are based online, they work out because of the proximity and/or the familiarity of the parties involved.
Sense of community
Sense of community gives the feeling that members matter to one another and that they can rely on each other. It’s the sense to belong to one another in a community in which the interaction takes place. Like personal contact between users, the sense of community enables the creation of trust between the members.
Rating systems
Online rating systems are known to be an important enabler of trust in marketplaces where the two parties are strangers. It is clear that in P2P platforms, rating systems about the service or product are helping both parties involved to take a decision.
By allowing each other to give publicly observable feedback to one another, trustworthy parties are able to build a history of success, but at the same time, negative feedback makes it more difficult for bad sellers/sharers to masquerade as trustworthy. (Brown and Morgan, 2006) These rating systems thus enable trust to be built between the different parties involved in sharing.
Transparency of user information
When companies are considered, it is far from the peer-to-peer sharing economy. In P2P, individuals can alter their identity because the personal details are hidden on the internet. For companies it is much harder to change their identity as every company information is readily available on the internet. Additionally, when a company does something wrong, it will be known by others and induce big damage to its brand and image. Business-to-business sharing is a professional game that is played fairly in general. Of course, a certain amount of research on the sharing partner company is necessary.
Reputation mechanism
One form of creating trust is reputation mechanisms. A company’s reputation documents the history of transactions and describes the behaviours with ratings that are quantitative and/or qualitative. Company information, which is something that is readily available on the internet, combined with a good reputation, it makes a given company trustworthy. In the business world, a company’s reputation is something that is travelling very fast. Thus, if companies are not suicidal, they will try to contribute to the sharing relationship in the best possible way.
Offering insurance to reduce trust issues
Offering insurance is more of creating security than to create trust. In the tangible resource sharing, where the assets shared, rented or sold can reach high values, offering insurance will protect the companies against the risk of financial losses. An insurance in other words reduces the companies’ reluctance to enter a sharing agreement and can thus be transcribed as an initiator of trust.
Cooperation with large & well-known partner with trusted brands
Traditional companies often have built a reputation of quality and reliability over the years.
The company’s history has thus an effect on its trustworthiness, which is in line with the transparency of information on users (i.e. sharing companies).
Online payments services combined with tracking and trace service
Platforms, who often are used as intermediaries between sharing companies, track the shared resource until it arrives at the user location before freeing up the payment. Sharing platforms offer these payment services online to facilitate the exchange between the users. As a positive side effect it enables users to increase their trust level, due to an external regulation source.
Rental agreement
When renting out/renting or selling/buying equipment or services an agreement is required. There are sharing platforms that provide rental agreements to their users. Often combined with online payment services, the rental agreement will facilitate the interaction between users. The rental agreement says that it shall be governed by the laws applicable, which will reduce the companies’ reluctance to enter into a sharing agreement.
However, cooperation is achieved not only through economic mechanisms (tangible rewards and punishments), but also by means of sociological mechanisms (social norms) (Poppo and Zenger, 2002). When the latter is nurtured by communication among parties, social norms of mutual obligation may create a perception of benevolence and a belief in good faith and moral character of the other.
This result goes in line with the financial benefits the companies have when sharing. Because if they didn’t have financial incentives to enter a sharing relationship, they wouldn’t do it.