The impact of firm innovativeness on consumer trust in the sharing economy: a moderated mediation model

Purpose: This paper examined the relationship between firm innovativeness and consumer trust in the sharing economy. In addition, the authors examine the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy and the moderating effect of social worth. Design/methodology/approach: To examine the hypotheses, the authors collected data from 276 users of a sharing platform (Didi) in China to conduct empirical research. The “lavaan” packages in R and SPSS were used to analyze the data and test the proposed hypotheses. Findings: The results reveal that sharing platforms' innovativeness is positively related to consumer trust, and this relationship is mediated by organizational legitimacy. Furthermore, sharing platforms' social worth moderates the relationship between firm innovativeness and organizational legitimacy as well as the indirect effect of firm innovativeness on consumer trust via organizational legitimacy. Practical implications: This article proposes strategies that enable sharing platforms to increase consumer trust, which can also better promote the development of the sharing economy. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the literature by focusing on the social attributes of the sharing economy. By building a more detailed model of consumer trust, this paper adds to the knowledge on the influencing mechanism of consumer trust in the sharing economy.