The Impact Mechanism of Multidimensional Perceived Risk on Ride-Pooling Intention from the Perspective of User Trust

Based on perceived risk theory and user trust theory, this paper divides user trust into two dimensions, cognitive trust and emotional trust, and disassembles perceived risk into five dimensions: financial-, privacy-, service-, safety-, and psychological risk. A theoretical model is constructed to reflect the relationships among multidimensional perceived risks, dual trust dimensions, and users’ continuous ride-pooling intention. Combining online and offline questionnaire surveys, this study collected 785 valid samples and adopted structural equation modeling for the empirical tests. The results revealed that all five dimensions of perceived risk significantly and negatively inhibited users’ ride-pooling intention, while cognitive trust and emotional trust effectively promoted users’ willingness to keep using ride-pooling services. In the influence paths from risks to trust, financial-, privacy-, service-, and safety risk significantly reduced cognitive trust, whereas only financial risk and psychological risk exerted significant negative impacts on emotional trust. The mediation test results indicated that cognitive trust mediated the relationships between financial-, privacy-, service-, safety risk and ride-pooling intention, and emotional trust acted as a mediator linking psychological risk and service risk to ride-pooling intention. Specifically, service risk indirectly suppressed ride-pooling intention through the dual mediating paths of cognitive trust and emotional trust, while the other four types of risk generated negative impacts merely via a single trust pathway.