Sharing with perfect strangers: The effects of self-disclosure on consumers’ trust, risk perception, and behavioral intention in the sharing economy

The transactional and disposable nature of liquid consumption has placed trust as the lifeblood of sharing economy service innovation, enabling billions of strangers across the globe to connect and share in the face of transaction risks. However, managers and service providers may not realize that self-disclosure acts as a basis to build trust and mitigate risk in the sharing economy. In four studies across different nations, we demonstrate that service providers’ self-disclosure not only generates consumer trust but also reduces their risk perception, which subsequently encourages legitimate transactions on sharing platforms. The findings reveal that when consumers and service providers are objectively similar, consumers do not pay much attention to service providers’ disclosed information. Conversely, in the case of objective dissimilarity, consumers are more attentive to personal and intimate information shared by service providers. Consumer self-esteem plays differential moderating roles in the link between service providers’ self-disclosure and consumer responses.