An empirical investigation on key determinants of social media trust

Abstract

Online communities form naturally as members share interest and knowledge; provide social and emotion support to each other. Trust is needed to online community success where if members do not trust each other, they would not spend time to build relationships. Two key determinants are hypothesised to predict online social media community trust, social ties and perceived privacy. A survey instrument was administered to 278 undergraduate students. The results identified significant relationships between social ties and trust (β = 0.18), perceived privacy and trust (β = 0.31). There was also significant relationship between perceived privacy and social ties (β = 0.28).