Moderating Effects of Familiarity and Experience in the Relationships of Trust with Its Antecedents and Consequences

Abstract

The fall in citizens’ trust in public institutions is one of the biggest challenges they face since it has effects on a wide range of variables (commitment, loyalty, etc.). Amid these variables there is one whose relevance in the literature has increased recently, namely the user’s intention to continue to use the services provided. Among the formulae put forward to set this right is the role played by transparency yet, although initially it was considered that simply rolling out transparency programmes would lead to the intended outcome, subsequently several works established the non-existence of this relationship or even a decrease in citizens’ trust. One possible explanation for such disparate consequences could be the way in which familiarity or experience affects trust-generating processes. Consequently this research seeks to analyse the impact that familiarity or user experience has on the relationship between transparency, satisfaction, and trust and between this and continuance intention for the case of the UNED, the largest public university institution in Spain.