When vendor reputation does not matter: Trust decoupling and pragmatic trust in Generative AI adoption among university students.

= 0.32). Two paths were not supported. AI anxiety was not associated with trust in AI (β = -0.02, p = 0.564), a result that applies to students who have already adopted GenAI. Vendor trust did not predict trust in the tool once the other antecedents were accounted for (β = 0.03, p = 0.450). We interpret this pattern as trust decoupling, in which product-level trust rests on direct performance evidence, termed pragmatic trust, rather than on vendor reputation. The findings suggest a boundary condition for trust transfer in GenAI contexts and inform how higher education institutions evaluate and integrate GenAI tools.