Navigating the Oceans of Research Literature on Trust

Abstract

The notion of trust has been the subject of increasing interest in the social sciences since the 1990s. This literature rapidly reached an oceanic volume. It is structured in different research fields that are not easy to characterize through a traditional literature review. This article uses quantitative and computational tools in order to provide a clear and synthetic picture of the research fields on trust. The analysis carried out allows us to conclude that the fields of research on trust do not fall into a disciplinary partitioning. Therefore, there no such thing as the “economics of trust”. Articles in economics that focus on trust interact with other disciplines depending on the methods used or objects studied.