Exploring trust in the Agri-Food sector and implications for electronic relationships

Concerns about trust put barriers in the development of electronic relationships particularly, in the agri-food industry, where trust is not mediated appropriately often due to difficulties to examine food quality. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore the role of trust in the area of electronic business-to-business (B2B) relationships, particularly in the agri-food context. The research is based on the project "e-trust" which was established with the purpose of exploring the role of trust and its role in the uptake of e-commerce technologies by SMEs. The first step in the research process was the development of the trust typology, which is divided in three major levels: objects, dimensions and sources of trust. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of products' characteristics, with respect to the typology, and concludes with implications of the paper and future research initiatives.