Influence of Emojis on Online Trust Among College Students

Abstract

Emojis are increasingly used in online communication and expression, however, most previous studies have focused on describing this phenomenon, but less on how it affects interpersonal trust relationships. Therefore, this study examines the effect of emojis on online interpersonal trust among college students through three experiments. A total of 62 college students were recruited for Experiment 1. The results demonstrated that positive emoji () improved the level of trust of trustors in the trust game [t(60) = –2.79, p = 0.007], whereas that of the control group exerted no effect on the initial level of online trust among college students. Then, 74 college students were selected for Experiment 2. The results indicated no significant differences between the experiment and control groups in terms of the influence of negative emojis () on initial online trust using. A joint analysis (via ANOVA) of Experiments 1 and 2 illustrated that the type of emoji exerted a significant effect [F(2,96) = 3.96, p = 0.02, η2 = 0.08] on college students’ online trust. Finally, we recruited 111 participants for Experiment 3 to explore the role of emojis on online trust among acquaintances. The results suggested that the individual propensity to trust plays a moderate role in the relationship between emojis and online trust among acquaintances. That is, emojis influenced interpersonal trust among acquaintances only if the level of propensity to trust, is low.

Customer engagement and intention to purchase attitudes of generation Z consumers toward emojis in digital marketing communications

“…Research has established parallel interactions between trust and involvement among the Gen Z cohort (Zhang et al, 2021). Customers who trust a brand are more likely to be involved with the brand's emoji-based digital marketing communications.…”

“…When a consumer makes a purchase in electronic commerce, trust is important because the decision must be made in the face of ambiguity (Hong, 2015), and involvement is revealed to play an important role in clarifying both trust formation and retaining customers (Teichert and Rost, 2003). Zhang et al (2021) state that emojis are likely to influence trust levels in social interactions and reduce the psychological distance between users. Furthermore, when combined with apology strategies, emojis play an important role in restoring trust (Yang, 2023).…”

“…Venkatesh and Davis (2000) extended the model to incorporate variables such as intention to use. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been used to describe the acceptance and persistent intention of using new technologies, products, or services in their initial stages (Scherer et al , 2019; Zhang et al , 2021). The TAM has been adapted to fit a wide variety of technology acceptance studies; additional variables were introduced to help enhance its predictive power (Purwanto et al , 2020; Ngubelanga and Duffett, 2021; Al-Gasawneh et al , 2022; Leso and Cortimiglia, 2022).…”

Emojifying youth mental health research – Leveraging digital expressions in South Asia

“…Online, they foster interpersonal trust among college students, particularly positive emojis like smiley faces. [ 22 ] Offline, emojis act as substitutes for non-verbal cues, conveying emotions, tone, and emphasis often absent in text-based communication.…”

Emojis and stock returns

“…The reason for it is that we hypothesize that emojis convey information on sentiment in addition to plain text because emojis (1) improve communication (e.g. Boutet et al ., 2021) [3] to potentially more efficiently and timely understand comments and (2) enhance trust among online messaging users (Zhang et al ., 2021) potentially driving willingness to follow commentators. Consistently, we find that the change of one-standard deviation in emoji sentiment, measured as the quantity of positive emoji sentiment posts over the previous hour, is associated with an 0.06% (annualized: 109.2%) one-hour abnormal stock return compared to a mean of 0.03% (annualized: 54.6%).…”