Trust in Search Engines: Developing a Trust Measure and Applying It in an Experiment

Abstract

Nowadays, users trusting search engines appears fundamental, although this claim is built on little research. In face of new developments of search, the question comes up again: to what extent users trust a search engine, how it is justified, and which consequences does it imply. Based on interdisciplinary research on trust, the individual concepts of trust, trustworthiness, and trust‐related behavior ares outlined and applied to the web search context. To date, there is not an adequate instrument for collecting the ambiguous concept of trust for technical artifacts like search engines. Therefore, a trust measure will be developed with the help of a qualitative laboratory study and validated with an online survey. Afterwards, the measure will be applied in an experiment to the search engines Google and Ecosia and scenarios from the health and finance domain. The expected results indicate the causes and effects of trust in a search engine. In consequence, misplaced and well‐founded cases of trust in search engines can be identified and discussed among civil society, researchers, and policymakers.