Trust building in agri-food markets with computer-mediated business relationships

Trust is recognised as an important component for Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce success and consolidation among the agribusiness operators, but few studies link trust and e-commerce in agri-food markets. The implementation of trust into technical and organisational solutions is a prerequisite for using the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) potential in the agribusiness network. This paper is aimed at identifying trust-building factors, or trust drivers, in agri-food business relationships, in order to transfer them into computer-mediated business relationships (CMBR). First, the literature on trust both in the general agri-food environment and in e-commerce situation is considered. Then, linkages between these two items were explored through focus group (FG) interviewing. The FG, was held in Italy in April 2004, and involved a group of experts of several industries and levels within the agri-food chains and ICT experts. A content analysis of the meeting verbatim and further elaboration with multidimensional scaling techniques allows for drawing a perceptual map of the dimensions of the logical construct of trust in agri-food e-commerce. Finally, these results are the basis for the elaboration of a first hierarchy of factors, used within an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework. The aim of this procedure was to assess the importance of the factors and to evaluate several alternative tools for CMBR, entailing different trust-building characteristics. Preliminary outcomes are consistent with the literature on trust, even if the trust logical framework is affected by the specific context. The main trust dimensions for CMBR in agribusiness are reputation, nonopportunistic behaviour, and integrity according to shared values. The context may influence both the type of factors associated to the relevant dimensions, as well as their relative importance in relationship with the primary goal of building trust, so that in different scenarios both factors importance and hierarchies may be different.