Social distance and consumer trust

Last registered on April 25, 2023

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Social distance and consumer trust

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0008692

Initial registration date

January 18, 2022

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

January 19, 2022, 4:53 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

April 25, 2023, 4:24 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

China

Region

Zhejiang

Primary Investigator

Name

Ye Jin

Affiliation

NYU Shanghai

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Lidingrong Huang

PI Affiliation

NYU Shanghai

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2022-01-26

End date

2022-03-28

Keywords

Behavior, Other

Additional Keywords

Social distance, e-commerce, trust, consumer choice, purchase intention

JEL code(s)

C93, D91, L81

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

The present research aims to explore the role social distance plays in facilitating trust among customers of a major online retailer. In the context of online shopping, potential customers can not physically inspect the products they want to buy and they largely rely on the product reviews left by previous buyers for the first-hand insights on the product quality, suitability and decide whether the products are worth buying etc. However, product reviews, regardless how positive they are, will need to be trustworthy in the eyes of the potential buyers to have any effect given that 'fictitious product reviews' are now a wide-spread phenomenon in the competitive e-commerce business. In this setting, we explore whether a key social distance-reducing measure, that is showing the product reviewers' face photo, would enhance the trust between the potential buyer and the past buyer such that the positive reviews left by the past buyer would be more trustworthy and subsequently lead to more sales. The key research question is that, given the first 20 product reviews in the review section of a particular product are positive, would showing the review writers' face image enhance the trustworthiness of the positive reviews and encourage more potential customers to click the 'buy' button after being exposed to the reviews?

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Huang, Lidingrong and Ye Jin. 2023. "Social distance and consumer trust." AEA RCT Registry. April 25. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8692-4.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Our industry partner is a listed e-commerce firm in China and they have two categories of reviews. Category (1) when the product review submitter's face photo is present (as an icon on the left); and Category (2) when the review submitter's face is absent and only a default profile photo (i.e. the firm's animal mascot) is shown.

For a given experimental product, we will create two digital versions of its product detail page on the platform:

1. The control version in which the first 20 reviews the potential buyers see are a) positive but b) the original posters' faces are not shown.
2. The treated version in which the same set of positive reviews is used and the posters' faces are also revealed.

Note that potentially customers who enter the product page will only see one of the two versions listed above. For example, one potential customer may see the first version once on the product page, and the other only sees the second version. Randomisation is done on the individual level using the unique customer IDs. This procedure will randomly create two group of customers with only one of the groups being treated with the social-distance reducing measure.

Intervention Start Date

2022-01-26

Intervention End Date

2022-03-28

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

The subjects' decision to purchase the experimental product(s).

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Given a particular subject with an unique customer ID, the binary outcome variable will take the value 1 if she ends up buying the experimental product, and 0 otherwise (regardless of product quantity, here we place our emphasis only on the extensive margin).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

1. The exact amount of the experimental product each subject orders.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

A potential buyer could order multiple items of the same experimental product.

Experimental Design

For a given experimental product, we will create two digital versions of its product page on the online retail platform:

1. The control version in which the first 20 reviews the potential buyers see are a) positive but b) the original posters' faces are not shown.
2. The treated version in which the same set of positive reviews is used and the posters' faces are also revealed.

Note that potentially customers who enter the product page will only see one of the two versions listed above. For example, one potential customer may see the first version once on the product page, and the other only sees the second version. Randomisation is done on the individual level using the unique customer IDs. This procedure will randomly create two group of customers with only one of the groups being treated with the social-distance reducing measure.

We will ensure that our sample does not contain the same subject multiple times (the same subject might place an order on the experimental product on multiple occasions during the same experimental period).

a) The experimental product should be available for sale during the entirety of the experimental period.
b) For sufficient generalisability, the experiment product should be appealing to a wide range of customers.

The baseline variables are: i) the subjects' total spending on the platform, ii) the subjects' previous seven-day spending prior to entering the randomisation process, iii) the subjects' total number of negative reviews posted on the products sold by the firm, iv) the number of different products bought by the subjects during the 14-day period prior to entering the randomisation process. Note that the randomisation process occurs when the potential buyer enters the experimental product's product page.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

A randomisation mechanism/algorithm will be developed to randomly channels potential buyers (upon clicking the experimental product) into two different versions of the product detail page. (Ex-post) Balance checks will be performed to ensure that our randomisation process is adequately done.

Randomization Unit

Individual customer level

Was the treatment clustered?