Individual Trust Development in Business Virtual Teams: An Experimental Study

Abstract

This paper presents a longitudinal study of individual trust development in virtual collaboration in China. We review the concept of trust, trust factors, and examine the development of individual trust and explore why individual trust changes over time. Risk, benefit, and interest are main trust factors that influence the development of individual trust. Survey data were collected at three points to observe the development of individual trust. In addition, we took semi-structured interviews to verify the development of individual trust and explore why individual trust changes in business virtual teams. We found that individual trust was improved over time and three main individual trust factors changed in different patterns. Moreover, conflict of option, interpersonal communication, information sharing and team working were found to be related with individual trust by the relationship with risk, benefit or interest. The use of specific thinkLets is also found to have a moderate positive relationship to individual trust.