Trust and commitment in social networking - Lessons learned from two empirical studies

Katri Nykänen, Mika Westerlund, Risto Rajala and Timo Järvensivu

The paper was published at the 25th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2009.

This paper focuses on how to increase trust and commitment in networks. We present two empirical studies that highlight various mechanisms by which trust and commitment develop. The first study is a qualitative action research inquiry examining commitment building in selected health and social care development networks. The second study is a survey that focuses on the antecedents of trust-commitment relationship in collaborative online communities. We use these two studies to seek new perspectives on trust and commitment in networks. The mixed methods approach is reasoned, as the qualitative study provides insight into the underlying constructs related to trust and commitment in networks and the quantitative study further enables to establish and test hypotheses in a larger context.