A Digitally-Driven Value Co-Creation Framework for Consumer Trust

Thesis Abstract

The study addresses the growing erosion of consumer trust in digital marketplaces where value is increasingly co-created through interactions among firms, platforms, and users, by examining how digitally mediated mechanisms influence perceived value, quality signals, and trust calibration in consumer decisions. The central aim is to develop a theoretically grounded framework for digitally-driven value co-creation that fosters consumer trust, and to test its antecedents and consequences across multiple e-commerce contexts. Specific objectives include (1) identify key digitally enabled value co-creation activities (e.g., shared design, user-generated content, platform-mediated negotiation, and algorithmic personalization) that influence trust perceptions; (2) integrate signaling theory, social exchange theory, and the technology acceptance model to develop a multi-actor trust framework; (3) quantify the direct and indirect effects of co-creation activities on trust, perceived risk, and purchase intention; (4) examine moderating effects of demographic and cultural factors as well as platform governance features; and (5) provide actionable recommendations for managers and platform designers to enhance trust through value co-creation practices. A mixed-methods design is employed, beginning with a qualitative phase to refine constructs and ensure conceptual validity, followed by a quantitative phase to test the proposed framework. The qualitative stage uses in-depth interviews with 40 participants comprising consumers, platform moderators, and seller partners across three digital marketplaces, complemented by 20 expert interviews with industry practitioners. The quantitative stage adopts a cross-sectional survey of 1,200 active users from five diversified digital platforms, ensuring representation across age, income, education, and digital literacy. Data collection instruments include a structured questionnaire with validated scales for trust propensity, perceived value co-creation, perceived quality signals, trust transfer, perceived risk, and purchase intention, along with platform governance and transparency indicators. Instrument validity is enhanced through pre-testing, confirmatory factor analysis, and content validity assessments with a panel of five experts. Reliability is assessed via Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability. Analytical techniques comprise structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesized causal pathways among co-creation activities, trust, perceived risk, and behavioral intentions, supplemented by multi-group SEM to explore moderating effects of demographic and cultural variables. The analysis also employs PROCESS-based mediation analysis to examine indirect effects of value co-creation on purchase intention through trust and perceived risk. For the qualitative data, thematic analysis is conducted on interview transcripts to identify recurring patterns and to triangulate the quantitative findings, with inter-coder reliability established at a Cohen’s kappa of 0.78 or higher. The study also conducts robustness checks using bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples and measurement invariance tests across platforms. Expected findings suggest that digitally-enabled value co-creation activities positively influence consumer trust through enhanced perceived platform quality signals, transparency, and perceived benevolence of the platform and sellers. Shared design input, accurate personalization, and timely feedback loops are anticipated to have the strongest direct effects on trust, while perceived risk is expected to mediate the relationship between co-creation and purchase intention. The framework is likely to reveal boundary conditions wherein high levels of algorithmic personalization may have diminishing returns for certain user segments, underscoring the importance of governance features and ethical considerations in sustaining trust. The study contributes to knowledge by integrating signaling theory, social exchange theory, and technology acceptance theory into a unified digitally-driven value co-creation framework, extending understanding of trust formation in online ecosystems and offering a parsimonious model with practical implications for platform governance, design of value co-creation features, and consumer protection. Recommendations include designing transparent signaling mechanisms for co-created value, establishing governance policies that ensure fair data use and explainable personalization, and enabling participatory feedback channels to sustain trust over time. Limitations include cross-sectional design and context-specific platform variations; future research is suggested to employ longitudinal designs and experimental interventions across additional market segments and cultural settings.