Beneath the prosperity of social commerce: a perspective from a trust-centred online review ecology

The fast development of social commerce (s-commerce) has matured the online review ecology. However, it lacks an in-depth theoretical analysis of this ecology and its functions in consumers' purchases in s-commerce. By dissecting this ecology into its three pillars: the review community, content, and system; this study proposes the relationships among those pillars by extending the TAM with trust and identifies four information cues that are helpful for building this trust. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the proposed research model based on 391 valid samples. The results verify the distinctiveness of trust in the review community in s-commerce and show that this trust can facilitate consumers' use of the s-commerce platform for shopping via increasing the perceived usefulness of the review system and reducing the perceived risk of online shopping. Moreover, four information cues contribute to the development of trust in the review community.