Credibility & Trust

Credibility

Credibility & Trust

Website credibility for social marketing campaigns

From 2006-2008, I conducted a large study of website credibility on a global anti-poverty campaign, in order to assess the impact of website credibility and trust on target audience's participation levels. The study found a relationship between website credibility, users' trust, and their participation levels. The findings suggest that online campaigners need to engineer credible and trustworthy e-campaigns if they wish to maximize their potential impact. The following excerpt describes the practical applications of this study.

The Dimensions of Web Site Credibility and Their Relation to Active Trust and Behavioural Impact

This paper discusses two trends that threaten to undermine the effectiveness of online social marketing interventions: growing mistrust and competition. As a solution, this paper examines the relationships between website credibility, target audiences’ active trust and behaviour.

Using structural equation modelling to evaluate two credibility models, this study concludes that website credibility is best considered a three-dimensional construct composed of expertise, trustworthiness and visual appeal, and that trust plays a partial mediating role between website credibility and behavioural impacts.

Reflections on source credibility and online campaigns

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Source credibility is a key factor that can impact whether audiences believe a proposition, while trust is a key factor that can influence a person’s willingness to act on advice. In this blog post, I’ll discuss the historical use of source credibility in persuasion, present a humorous example of how the tobacco industry abused credibility appeals from 1920-1950, and finally, discuss why online credibility is important in the design of online outreach campaigns.

Selling e-campaign behaviours like e-commerce products

Presentation to the World Social Marketing Conference, Brighton, UK, 30 September 2008.
As the Internet continues expanding across the planet, social marketers are progressively moving online, not just because of potential time and cost savings, but because increasingly, this is where their target audiences are easily reached. Although the Internet is becoming a key part of social marketing campaigns within industrialized nations, researches suggest that many behavioral change websites are ill equipped to impact on behavior, while only a few published works discuss social marketing on the Internet. Much e-commerce literature has examined the relationship between website trustworthiness and users’ purchasing behavior. Examining these relationships in a non-profit marketing context, this presentation examines the relationship between website source credibility, users’ trusting attitudes and their behavioral intentions.

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Public health campaigners are fighting an uphill battle in cyberspace, where for example, pro-smoking and pro-anorexia websites can frequently outrank online health campaigns. This pre-1950 television commercial is part of a campaign by Camel Cigarettes which implied that the medical profession endorsed smoking. This ad series provides a humorous and easy to follow illustration of the way credibility appeals operate, and a good starting point for discussing how credibility and trust may be leveraged to strengthen the impact of online social marketing campaigns.

Brian Cugelman, Online strategy and research consultant

Hi. I help organizations evaluate their impact, design online campaigns, and use social media.

See my paper on the science of online influence: Online Interventions for Social Marketing Health Behavior Change Campaigns.

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Online Psychology & Social Marketing