City Research Online

Abstract

This thesis addresses the neglect of consumer distrust in marketing scholarship. Although distrust is widespread and consequential, it has long been subsumed under the trust paradigm, leaving its unique antecedents, psychological architecture, and behavioural outcomes poorly understood. Three sequential studies combine conceptual, quantitative, and field-based methods to close this gap.

The first study (Chapter 2) systematically reviews 99 articles spanning 1998 to 2024 and constructs a multilevel theoretical framework that differentiates distrust from low trust, mistrust, and suspicion. It reveals that prevailing measurement instruments are overwhelmingly unidimensional and therefore unable to distinguish the cognitive appraisals, affective reactions, and self-protective motives that jointly constitute distrust. A five-facet scale architecture is proposed, alongside twelve testable propositions and six cultural boundary conditions, to guide future operationalisation.

The second study (Chapter 3) subjects the framework’s central claims to a quantitative test, aggregating effect sizes from 475 investigations covering over 300,000 consumers. Results confirm that trust and distrust are related but separable constructs (r = −.491 when measured simultaneously). Rejection-signalling cues - negative prior encounters, perceptions of incompetence, and weak institutional safeguards - emerge as the strongest activators of distrust, which in turn drives punitive and withdrawal behaviours more forcefully than trust drives approach behaviours. These asymmetric patterns hold across cultures, channels, and transaction types, pointing to a robust threat-detection mechanism that resists contextual moderation.

The third study (Chapter 4) applies these insights to the UK food-delivery sector, where microbusiness owners’ distrust of platform intermediaries motivates attempts to transact with customers directly. Fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork yield a taxonomy of monetary, exclusivity-based, and community-oriented disintermediation strategies, which are then tested in a randomised field experiment with 1,147 orders. Exclusivity-based tactics prove most effective; even a bare invitation to order directly produces a measurable behavioural shift. Causal-forest analyses further reveal that strategy impact varies with order-level characteristics such as customer remarks, spending level, and time of day.

Together, the three studies recast distrust as a theoretically and practically important construct in its own right - not merely the low pole of a trust continuum - and equip both scholars and practitioners with sharper concepts, validated measurement guidance, and evidence-based strategies for managing consumer relationships under conditions of eroded confidence.

Keywords: consumer distrust, trust, suspicion, risk-regulation theory, meta-analysis, systematic review, disintermediation, platform economy, microbusiness, field experiment.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management Doctoral Theses

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