An Experimental Study On The Swift Trust And Cognitive Trust In Virtual Teams

Trust in virtual teams has been the focus of the study，which affected by many factors.However, there has been no empirical research on how these factors affect trust in virtualteams in China. In previous studies, the scholars believe that swift trust is a stage in thecognitive trust. With the development of research on swift trust, the more researchersbelieve that swift trust is a special type of trust. And, in previous on virtual teams, differenttypes of trust are always studied separately. In this research, swift trust is treated as aspecial trust type in the virtual team, which is different from the cognitive trust. Andaccording to the trust lifecycle of virtual teams, we will have an empirical study whichincluding the swift trust and cognitive trust in virtual teams. This study focuses on whetherdifferent stages of trust have different influencing factors, and the relationship between thedifferent stages of trust.Virtual teams and face to face teams are compared in this research with vignettes. Wedetermine the experimental procedure, experimental materials and so on in the preparatoryresearch.135students from the five vocational colleges of Chan Zhou University Citywere tested in this study investigating how the factors affect the swift trust and cognitivetrust in virtual teams, which including disposition to trust, category-based trust, ability,integrity, benevolence, communicative environment and perceived risk.The experiments result showed:(1)Disposition to trust and category-based trust havesignificant impacts on swift trust but not cognitive trust;(2)The awareness of others’ ability,integrity and benevolence has significant impacts both on swift trust and cognitive trust;(3)The use of information and communication technology in the virtual team increases thelevel of perceived risk at two different stages of the trust;(4)The risk to bear in therelationship of trust has a significant impact on the result of the trust at two different stagesof the trust;(5)The result of swift trust also has a significant impact on the result ofcognitive trust.