Introduction

As many national economies have become increasingly interdependent through global trade, Business to Business Electronic Commerce (B2B EC) has become an important issue for both developed and developing countries. B2B EC manifests itself as Internet-based technologies that mediate and facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers (trading partners) locally and around the world (Alsaad, Mohamad, & Ismail, 2015; Sila, 2015). While B2B EC technologies promise to link trading partners in an effective manner, many firms have been reluctant to adopt and use these technologies, mainly because of the various risks associated with conducting transactions through them. Existing literature suggests that a lack of trust between trading partners has frequently prevented trading partners from transacting using B2B EC technologies (Hart & Saunders, 1997; Son, Tu, & Benbasat, 2006; Teo, Lin, & Lai, 2009). Much of the research investigating the role of trust is based on the premise that trust beliefs about a trading partner mitigate the uncertainties related to vulnerabilities such as information sharing, opportunistic behaviors, imbalance of power, and conflicts. Thus, a higher level of trust about a specific trading partner is posited to increase the likelihood of potential adopters to take risks inherent in adopting B2B EC, and thus greater trust facilitates the adoption of B2B EC (Chong & Bai, 2014; Hart & Saunders, 1997; Pan, 2013; Son et al., 2006). Although this trust proposition is widespread in the adoption literature, the cumulative empirical evidence suggests that the motivational role of trust on the adoption of B2B EC is less pronounced, see for example (AlHakim, Abdullah, & Ng, 2012; Chong & Bai, 2014; Hart & Saunders, 1998; Huang, Janz, & Frolick, 2008; Saunders & Clark, 1992; Sila, 2010, 2013). Alternatively, rather than being a motivating variable, trust might be understood as a condition or situation in which jointaction behaviors (i.e., B2B EC adoption), perceptions, and attitudes are likely to occur (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001; Shaw & Staples, 2004). Specifically, trust, as a psychological factor, represents the accumulated knowledge about, and experiences with, another party (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001). To further explicate this thought, Dirks and Ferrin (2001) suggest that trust can either foster or inhibit joint-action behaviors by means of two distinct processes. First, trust affects the assessment of the future joint behavior with another party. Second, trust affects how someone interprets the * Corresponding author. motives of the underlying behavior. Accordingly, trust, as a situational opportunity and/or constraint, affects the occurrence and the meaning of adoption behavior as well as the functional relationships between variables (Hong, Chan, Thong, Chasalow, & Dhillon, 2014; Johns, 2006). Thus, Hong et al. (2014) suggest that incorporating situational variables into theoretical frameworks as moderators is an appropriate choice when their role as behavioral motivations are not well established. While the motivational role of trust on the adoption of B2B EC has been less pronounced in several empirical studies, a few empirical investigations have treated trust as a condition or situation that moderates the motives of adoption behavior.