An Indexed Approach for Expectation-Confirmation Theory: A Trust-based model

The present study utilised the Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) as a theoretical framework to examine the temporal development of customer trust, satisfaction, and repurchase intent. In subsequent phases of the ECT, the significance of expectations in influencing customers’ attitudes towards confirmed trust and satisfaction was emphasised. The Trust-based Expectation-Confirmation model was therefore proposed to study trust at the appropriate level of abstraction to capture and analyse the relationships between Expected Trust, Perceived Trust, and the Confirmation of Expected Trust. The evaluation of the proposed ECT Trust-based model was conducted through a web-based survey with 559 participants, aiming to examine the direct and indirect approaches of measuring the Confirmation phase. Both approaches were found to be problematic in terms of the gap between the Perceived and Expected construct measured, which cannot be adjusted by the middle point on the Likert scale when using the direct approach either. This research article proposes the Indexed Approach as a new relevant assessment approach to transform data gathered from participants, which were measured throughout the Expectation and Perceived Performance stages, into a common format that could be used to determine each participant’s Confirmation. In order to validate the Indexed Approach, PLS path modelling evaluation and comparison for each approach were conducted; the results indicated that the Indexed Approach was the superior alternative to the direct and indirect approaches for transformation confirmation data to be used in the ECT model.