The Impact of Trust on Commercial Negotiation Success: A Comprehensive Analysis

This paper investigates the moderating effect of trust on negotiations by analyzing the relationship between institutional trust and the attainment of integrative solutions. The study used a quantitative design whereby 314 participants were administered sets of questionnaires to complete. Data was then analyzed using descriptive statistics like Pearson correlation and ANOVA. These findings highlight that trust positively affects the quality of the negotiation communication and the prospective favorable bargaining outcomes. Trust was confirmed as being stronger than demographic factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, and education, clearly indicating the universality of the factor in negotiations. Indeed, demographic factors revealed a weak correlation to negotiation success, while trust emerged as the most influential factor. This indicates that trust is crucial in improving negotiation processes and efficiency, which is valuable knowledge for future negotiations and negotiation studies.