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The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets

Trust is a valuable resource that varies between countries. This paper suggests that consumers’ trust in retailers and service providers, facilitating interactions and transactions between sellers and buyers in impersonal markets, is best understood as generalized trust. The paper is based on 28 037...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Berg, L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9252548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35812162
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10603-022-09523-6
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author Berg, L.
author_facet Berg, L.
author_sort Berg, L.
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description Trust is a valuable resource that varies between countries. This paper suggests that consumers’ trust in retailers and service providers, facilitating interactions and transactions between sellers and buyers in impersonal markets, is best understood as generalized trust. The paper is based on 28 037 respondents’ evaluations of consumer conditions in 30 European countries. The material reveals large country-to-country variations in the percentages of residents who trust public authorities to protect their consumer rights. Moreover, there are large differences in the percentages who trust retailers and service providers to respect their rights as consumers. A multilevel path analysis supports the paper’s main hypothesis that fair and effective consumer authorities enhance generalized trust in the markets. The analyses also demonstrate that fair and effective consumer institutions contribute to more equality in the markets. It is argued that consumer markets are important arenas for the maintenance and production of trust and social capital. And that generalized trust produced in markets will probably extend to, and be valuable for, the wider society.
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spelling pubmed-92525482022-07-05 The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets Berg, L. J Consum Policy (Dordr) Original Paper Trust is a valuable resource that varies between countries. This paper suggests that consumers’ trust in retailers and service providers, facilitating interactions and transactions between sellers and buyers in impersonal markets, is best understood as generalized trust. The paper is based on 28 037 respondents’ evaluations of consumer conditions in 30 European countries. The material reveals large country-to-country variations in the percentages of residents who trust public authorities to protect their consumer rights. Moreover, there are large differences in the percentages who trust retailers and service providers to respect their rights as consumers. A multilevel path analysis supports the paper’s main hypothesis that fair and effective consumer authorities enhance generalized trust in the markets. The analyses also demonstrate that fair and effective consumer institutions contribute to more equality in the markets. It is argued that consumer markets are important arenas for the maintenance and production of trust and social capital. And that generalized trust produced in markets will probably extend to, and be valuable for, the wider society. Springer US 2022-07-04 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9252548/ /pubmed/35812162 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10603-022-09523-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2022, corrected publication 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Berg, L.
The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets
title The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets
title_full The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets
title_fullStr The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets
title_full_unstemmed The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets
title_short The Importance of Consumer Authorities for the Production and Maintenance of Trust and Social Capital in Consumer Markets
title_sort importance of consumer authorities for the production and maintenance of trust and social capital in consumer markets
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9252548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35812162
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10603-022-09523-6
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