A scale measuring trust of the MyPosters.

com Web site was developed

from prior research on trust in organizational, marketing, and ecommerce
contexts (Doney & Cannon, 1997; Jarvenpaa & Tractinsky, 1999; Jarvenpaa et al.,
2000; Mayer, Davis & Shoorman, 1995; McKnight & Chervany, 2001; Morgan &
Hunt, 1994; Sultan et al., 2002; Swaminathan et al., 1999). Four overlapping
dimensions of trust emerge consistently across these literatures: trust is the
degree to which an organization is perceived to be reliable, competent,
benevolent, and to have integrity. Furthermore, assessments of these dimensions
may happen over time or during initial encounters (McKnight et al., 1998).

Using this definition of trust as a basis, an 8-item index of Web site trust
that taps into the four dimensions was created, drawing from questions
developed by other researchers (e.g., Jarvenpaa & Tractinsky, 1999; Sultan,
Urban, Shankar, & Bart, 2002). To assess reliability, respondents rated the
degree to which they felt the My Posters.com Web site was dependable and
responsible; competence was measured by how professional respondents felt
the site was; benevolence included the degree to which the site was rated as
fair, secure, and non-exploitative; and integrity was assessed by how
trustworthy and honest respondents believed the MyPosters.com site to be. All
items were measured on 5-point scales ranging from "strongly agree" to
"strongly disagree." Responses were subjected to factor and reliability
analyses, which found the trust scale to be internally consistent (Cronbach's
alpha = .90).