Trust and e-commerce in the agrifood industry: configuration of a trust environment for e-commerce activities

Opportunities coming from electronic commerce provide interesting support options for the agrifood sector. However, due to the product specific information asymmetry in the agrifood sector, the anonymity of the medium creates a lack of trust increasing transaction costs to engage in e-commerce. This paper develops a trust model for electronic commerce in the agrifood industry allowing for the analysis of trust determinants in traditional agrifood transaction relationships and their transfer to appropriate trust determinants in the e-commerce environment. First experimental results validating the suitability of the model to derive appropriate electronic trust generating elements for a given agrifood transaction environment are presented.