Understanding Trust: Layers of Trust

•    Understanding Trust: Layers of Trust
As discussed above, there are different levels of trust; trust needs to be examined closely, as different people with different trust levels are involved in a relationship. The trust level that is built between humans is called interpersonal trust (Boon and Holmes 1991). Normally, this type of trust is developed with time and interaction between two or more people. Gradually, they understand each other and can make decisions about each other’s intentions, character, and motives.

Trust is important for an effective market economy; it helps to build support in people who are not familiar to each other. Various reasons have been discussed with respect to why people work together even without knowing each other. Few people are of the opinion that the human role as a social entity helps them to earn presumptive trust.

Here, the actual individual is not trusted, but their expertise and their role in society are trusted (Kramer, 1999). To state an example, (Kramer, 1999, p.9) says that “we trust engineers because we trust that engineers are experts in engineering and use valid principles of engineering; also through our day-to-day experience and observation when we see aircrafts flying, we believe that these principles are valid”.
Relations between institutions such as political parties and individuals involve institutional trust (Mishler, 2001). Interpersonal trust is also included in institutional trust (Smith, 2007). The real image of an institution depends upon the personnel who work in an institution. To state an example, Zimmer (1972) says that the image of an institution lies with the institutional heads.

To explain it in detail, Zimmer (1972) shows the impact of the Watergate scandal on the view of public trust for government. He proves that the public distrust for Nixon led to total distrust for the American government. In this sense while trust in the delivery of mobile banking services is connected to trust in the companies supplying the technology, the challenge for suppliers is also to provide the customer service to back up the technology. In other words to provide personal advice to consumers as well as the platforms for this new banking practice.
Importance of trust in mobile banking
One of the most common definition of trust is “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action which is important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer et al, 1995, p712). This definition centres around the fact that the trustor makes himself or herself vulnerable which shows that the trustor believes that something important will be lost because of engaging in the trusting relationship (Mayer et al, 1995). This is true in case of mobile banking.

The customer potentially makes himself or herself vulnerable to security breaches or technological failures while carrying out mobile transactions. The customer would be happy to rely on the mobile technology for financial transaction if it was certain that the technology was completely reliable.
Trust is an extremely important element in social relations and in shaping the trajectory of mobile banking. Research into the field has revealed that many customers trust the bank if they are affiliated with secure mobile system applications. This shows that institutional trust relations between the customer and the mobile service provider are strong (Morawczynski & Miscione, 2008).

Further research findings have suggested that interpersonal trust relations between the customer and bank in the context of mobile banking services can be weak if they do not trust the systems adopted by the bank or the people who overlook the mobile banking operations because customers often believe that the agents could steal the customers’ money if there are issues with the application (Morawczynski & Miscione, 2008).

This shows that the trust component in terms of mobile banking is highly reliant on the usage of systems, the mobile systems, the third parties involved in the provision of mobile banking services, and the banking agents who oversee the mobile banking services. Fraud and theft are one of the perceived risks and, hence, a hindrance when it comes to trust in mobile banking services.