Investigating the Effect of Social Media on Trust Building

in Customer-supplier Relationships

Fabio Calefato, Filippo Lanubile and Nicole Novielli

Dept. of Computer Science, University of Bari, Via Orabona, 4, Bari, Italy

Keywords: Social Media, Cognitive Trust, Affective Trust, Empirical Study.

Abstract: Trust is a concept that has been widely studied in e-commerce since it represents a key issue in building

successful customer-supplier relationships. In this sense, social software represents a powerful channel for

establishing a direct communication with customers. As a consequence, companies are now investing in

social media for building their social digital brand and strengthening relationships with their customers. In

this paper we investigate the role of social media in the process of trust building, with particular attention to

the case of small companies. Our findings show that social media contribute to build affective trust more

than traditional websites, by fostering the affective commitment of customers.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, interpersonal communication is

increasingly affected by the wide diffusion of social

software. Most people and companies daily manage

their digital identity on multiple online social

networks. As an evidence of this, for example, the

current number of monthly active users of Facebook

has recently reached 1 billion, of which 655 million

are active on a daily basis.

Social software also holds great potential for

business as it represents a powerful marketing

channel for establishing a direct communication

with the customers (Blanchard, 2011). Several

companies are now investing in social media for

building their social digital brand and strengthening

trust-based relationships with their customers. The

reason for success of social media originates from

the possibility to manage relationships with

customers in a ‘people to people’ fashion. In fact,

trust building is a crucial issue in commerce (Büttner

and Göritz, 2008) and it is established with the

salesperson, rather than with respect to a brand

(Doney and Cannon, 1995). The sale forces play a

key role in interfacing with customers if they are

able to appeal to the peripheral route to persuasion

based on emotional appraisal (Petty and Cacioppo,

1986) Compared to traditional websites, social

media allow suppliers to realize this behavior in a

virtual environment and provide customers with the

possibility of perceiving a company as closer, more

reachable and concerned about their needs

(Blanchard, 2011). Aiming at enhancing trust

building, a company should consider exploiting

affective appraisal as a strategy. In this sense, social

media offer the possibility to surrogate the affective

channel of face-to-face traditional interaction with

customers and enhance their perception of a

company’s trustworthiness and benevolence

(Blanchard, 2011). This holds not only for large

enterprises but also for small companies, which can

benefit from the popularity of social networks as a

modern version of traditional word of mouth

(Tvesovat and Kouznetsov, 2011).

In this paper, we investigate the role of social

media on trust building in the very early stage of a

customer-supplier relationship, i.e., based on the

first impression provided by a company’s online

image. The study described in this paper extends a

previous pilot experiment performed with 19

students with background on computer science

(Calefato et al., 2013). The pilot study provided

insights on how to improve the design of the

experiment, with particular focus on the clear

distinction between the information elements

involved in the two web conditions (i.e. social media

vs. traditional websites). The remainder of the paper

is structured as follows. We first review the existing

theories on trust and provide explanation on how the

different information elements available in the two

web modalities (i.e., social media vs. traditional

635

Calefato F., Lanubile F. and Novielli N..

Investigating the Effect of Social Media on Trust Building in Customer-supplier Relationships.

DOI: 10.5220/0004905606350642

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2014), pages 635-642

ISBN: 978-989-758-028-4

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

websites) relate to trust antecedents. Then, we

present our research hypothesis, the design and the

findings of our experiment. Hence, we discuss the

threats to validity. Finally, we conclude by providing

the discussion and directions for future work.

2 BACKGROUND AND

MOTIVATION

2.1 Definition of Trust and Trust Build

Trust is a concept that has been widely studied in

several research domains (Rusman et al., 2010),

from cognitive science (Castelfranchi and Falcone,

2000) to economy (Doney and Cannon, 1995), and

more recently also in software engineering (Al-Ani

and Redmiles, 2009; Schumann et al., 2013).

According to Hung et al. (2004), trust may be

defined as the belief that the trustee will behave

according to our expectation. As far as marketing is

concerned, several other definitions of trust have

been provided. We consider a good starting point the

one provided by Doney and Cannon (1995) who

define trust as “the perceived credibility and

benevolence of a target of trust”. Both definitions

involve the propensity of the trustor to take the risk

of trusting the trustee. The trustor’s decision is based

on both a cognitive and affective appraisal of

existing information about the trustee, either

statically available or dynamically derived from the

observation of the trustee’s behavior in a medium-

or long-term interaction.

2.2 Trust Modeling

The literature proposes several approaches for

fostering trust (Blanchard, 2011; Hacker et al., 2013)

and examines the nature of trust between persons

and in organizations (Doney and Cannon, 1995;

Mayer et al., 1995; Schoorman et al., 2007). The

underlying idea of these studies is that the process of

trust building mainly develops along several

dimensions that can be identified as trust antecedents

(Rusman, 2010), i.e., the properties of the trustee

that trigger the trustor’s cognitive appraisal when

assessing the trustworthiness of the others. With

respect to the commercial domain, the envisaged

model to adopt in this study is an extension of the

‘tripod’ model defined by Mayer et al. (1995), which

is highly consistent with the point of view of

researchers in this domain (Büttner and Göritz,

2008; Doney and Cannon, 1995). According to the

tripod model, the trustworthiness of a person or

organization is assessed in terms of ability,

benevolence, and integrity.

Ability is the capability of the trustee to complete

a task, meet an obligation, and provide the answer to

a request. It relates to the trustee’s professional

skills, knowledge and the competence. It may be

assessed by a trustor through the evaluation of

available professional information (e.g., the

description of the business as provided on a website

or the curriculum vitae of a person applying for a

job). Benevolence relates to the trustee level of

courtesy, positive attitude, availability, intention to

share information or resources, willingness to help,

kindness and receptivity. A trustee that meets this

requirement is usually perceived as caring about the

trustor’s needs and goals. Integrity relates to a set of

moral norms and trustee’s characteristics usually

considered as good as, for example, integrity,

honesty, fairness, loyalty, and discretion.

Regarding the commercial domain, McKnight et

al. (1998) extended this model with a fourth

dimension, that is, the predictability of the trustee’s

behavior. Predictability is related to the concept of

accountability by Rusman et al. (2010), i.e., the

degree to which a person (i.e., the supplier) meets

the expectations of the trustor (i.e., the purchaser) in

terms of reliability and consistence of behavior.

All the mentioned antecedents are critical in the

customer-supplier relationship. The customer

(trustor) will base evaluation of the perceived

trustworthiness and, hence, the decision to purchase

from a given supplier (the trustee) on the appraisal

of the available information in terms of his ability,

benevolence, integrity, and predictability.

2.3 Cognitive and Affective Trust

The process of trust building has been also analyzed

and defined by highlighting the difference between

cognitive and affective trust (McAllister, 1995).

Cognition-based trust involves deliberate appraisal

of the trustee characteristics combined with the

process of weighting the benefits of trusting over

risks (Hung et al., 2004; Wilson et al., 2006). On the

contrary, affective-based trust involves “one’s

emotional bonds and sincere concern for the well-

being of the others” (Hung et al., 2004). Consistently

with our previous research (Calefato et al., 2013), in

this study we maintain the mapping of the four

antecedents into the cognitive and affective appraisal

mechanism, as suggested in (Schumann et al., 2012).

Specifically, the ability and predictability

dimensions are assessed by means of cognitive

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elaboration of personal and professional

information. At the same time, affective-based

appraisal leads to trust building along the

dimensions of benevolence and integrity. Compared

to traditional websites, social media provide

customers with the possibility of assessing the

dynamic behavior of the company owners, that is,

their commitment in updating and sharing of

information and news and in responding to the

customers’ feedback.

3 RESEARCH GOAL

3.1 Study Domain

The focus of this work is to provide an insight on the

way social media affect trust building based on first

impression. The scenario is the one in which

customers, who don’t know the companies, need to

purchase a product by just relying on the

information on the Web. We selected two small

companies operating both in the food domain

because: (i) quality is assessed according to

common-sense based criteria; (ii) the evaluation

process does not require any particular skill or

knowledge. Company A is an organic restaurant

whereas company B is a manufacturer of cake and

bakery products. Both companies started their

activity about one year ago and developed marketing

strategies that involve strong web presence.

3.2 Research Hypothesis

In our model, we assume that cognition-based trust

building is triggered by appraisal of professional

information that can be usually acquired through a

traditional website. On the other hand, social web

can help to provide a more informal, closer

interaction style between a company or a salesperson

and their customers (e.g., answering to positive and

negative comments on social media platforms).

Therefore, social media may be exploited to enhance

trust building by enforcing the affective route to

persuasion. Previous research mainly focuses on

trust towards traditional websites but does not

include online companies. An investigation of the

potential contribution of social media on affective

trust building would extend the body of knowledge

about trust building in e-commerce.

We hypothesize that being able to monitor a

company’s behavior on social networks could affect

trust building along the benevolence and integrity

dimensions more than traditional websites. In other

words, we argue that traditional websites (content-

oriented) and social media (interaction-oriented)

may have a different effect on trust building in

customer-supplier relationships.

Accordingly, our main hypotheses, the context of

in customer-supplier relationships, are the

followings:

aff

– Social media foster affective trust more

than traditional websites.

cog

- Traditional websites foster cognitive trust

more than social media.

4 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The study followed a 2 x 2 design (see Table 1). The

Web mode (Traditional Website vs. Social Media) is

the independent variable, while the company

(Company A and Company B) is a blocking factor.

In fact, according to the research question, in this

study we want to investigate the effect of websites

and social media on trust.

Table 1: Study design.

Company A Company B

Traditional Website Group 1 Group 2

Social Media Group 2 Group 1

We recruited 44 participants from the Computer

Science master courses and the undergraduate

degree in Physics (66% male, 24 as average age).

Each subject evaluated the perceived trustworthiness

of both companies, following one of the two

possible combinations reported in Table 1. In

addition, for each group the order of web mode

visualization was also randomized and equally

distributed among subjects, to avoid any bias due to

the sequence of information presentation.

Trust is evaluated by measuring the perceived

trustworthiness of the company, according to three

antecedents: ability, predictability, and benevolence.

Consistently with literature on trust building based

on first impression (Schumann et al. 2012), we do

not assess the company’s integrity because integrity

is peculiar of long-term relationships. In our study,

instead, the subjects did not know the companies

before and it could be impossible for them to guess a

company’s integrity based on the analysis of the

website or the fan page.

The evaluation along the three dimensions is

mapped into the broader concept of affective and

cognitive trust using both questionnaires and

interviews. For each trust antecedent, a set of

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questions was defined, by integrating guidelines and

items included in questionnaires from studies about

trust elicitation and perception based on first

impression (Büttner and Göritz, 2008; Rusman,

2011; Rusman et al. 2010). In our questionnaire

(Calefato et al., 2013), we included 21 questions

overall: 7 for ability and 3 for predictability

(cognitive trust); 11 for benevolence (affective

trust). The subjects were requested to evaluate the

perceived trustworthiness of a given company by

filling out the questionnaire based on Likert scale

from 1 to 5.

According to previous research (Mayer, 1995), it

is reasonable to assume that trust building might be

influenced by personal propensity to trust. In our

scenario, two factors may play a role in the

individual propensity to trust, that is, their

familiarity with Facebook and e-commerce,

respectively. To avoid any bias, we treat these two

variables as covariates. Therefore, subjects were

requested to indicate, on a 4-point Likert scale, how

often they use Facebook and make online purchases.

4.1 Procedure

The experiment took place in two rounds, in a

controlled environment, involving half of the

subjects in the lab at the same time. An experimenter

performed an introduction to the subjects, by

illustrating the scenario and providing detailed

instructions on the procedure for task execution. The

experimenter remained in the room to ensure that the

participants could not interact nor exchange opinions

about the two companies and to answer subjects’

questions during the experiment. Each subject

worked independently and accessed the

experimental procedure through the web.

At the beginning of the experiment, the subjects

answered a short questionnaire aimed at assessing

how familiar they are with web technologies, social

networking and e-commerce in order to assess their

actual propensity to evaluate trustworthiness of

companies based on their web presence. Then, the

subjects learned about the experimental task, related

to the choice of one company for a catering service.

The scenario of the catering was selected to mitigate

the high propensity to risk taking behavior that could

derive from the perception of a low inherent risk

associated to the food and restaurant retail class.

Hence, rather than asking where they would have

lunch, we requested subjects to express their

preference with respect to a purchase involving a

considerable amount of money and having also

social implications (i.e., offering a buffet is

associated also to self-image in social context).

Once the scenario was presented, participants

were requested to visualize and rate two company

profiles (either the company’s website or its

Facebook profile), according to the random

presentation order described before. Subjects were

explicitly requested to explore the company profile

no longer than 5 minutes. As a consequence, each of

the two phases lasted at most 15 minutes, including

both the visualization of the webpage of the

company and answering the questionnaire for the

trustworthiness evaluation. A pre-condition for the

participation was that the subject did not know any

of the two companies and had never browsed any of

the two company websites.

At the end of the experiment, a second

questionnaire based on self-report was provided to

verify the subjects’ preference between the two

companies with respect to the catering scenario as

well as the motivation for their choice. Moreover, at

the end of the web-based part of the experiment, an

experimenter interviewed the participants to clarify

the reasons for the preference towards one of the two

companies as expressed in the questionnaires. The

subjects provided their opinions and perceptions

about the role of both traditional websites and social

media in web marketing. These informal,

unstructured interviews gave us a better insight on

which characteristics of both web modes affect the

trust building along the affective and cognitive

dimensions.

5 RESULTS

5.1 Analysis of the Questionnaires

Figure 1 summarizes the answers provided by the

subjects to the question related to cognitive and

affective trust, grouped according to the web

condition. We observe that, on average, the level of

the perceived cognitive trust (mean = 3.8) stays

unvaried in the two experimental settings. As for the

traditional website condition, we observe that on

average the level of perceived cognitive trusts is

slightly higher than the level of affective trust (3.53).

With respect to social media condition, subjects

perceived almost the same level of cognitive and

affective trust (3.8 vs. 3.79, respectively) due to the

increased perception of trustworthiness along the

affective dimension.

On a 4-point Likert scale, all the participants

except for three were Facebook users on a daily

basis (mean = 3.41, std = 1.01). Besides, they

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declared to have quite different habits regarding the

use of the Internet for their purchases (mean = 1.82,

std = .75). In particular, subjects with a background

in computer science declared they often make

purchases on the Web (mean = 2.58) in contrast with

students with background in Physics who declared to

be not as familiar with e-commerce (1.07). As a

consequence, while subjects’ present a quite

homogeneous familiarity with the Web and

Facebook, they appear to be not equally familiar

with the appraisal mechanism to assess a company

trustworthiness based on its online image, which is

necessary when buying on the Internet. Therefore, to

test our hypotheses, we performed an analysis of

covariance (ANCOVA) on the two dependent

variables, i.e., the levels of cognitive and affective

trustworthiness of companies, as perceived by

subjects. The SME is treated as a blocking factor

while the use of Facebook and frequency of online

purchases are the covariates. The ANCOVA, in fact,

increases the statistical validity of the analysis of

variance by adjusting differences due to existing

factors. In our case, the propensity to trust,

expressed in terms of familiarity with social media

and e-commerce, may determine initial differences

that are not due to the independent variable of our

study design (i.e., the web condition).

Results are reported in Table 2, with statistically

significant values in bold italic (α = .05). The test

shows that propensity to trust does not have any

significant correlation with the established level of

initial trust (neither affective nor cognitive). On the

contrary, we observe a significant effect of the Web

mode on affective trust (F = 7.263, p = .009), but not

on cognitive trust (F = .003, p = .954). The test also

revealed that the role of the Company as a blocking

factor is negligible.

Figure 1: Levels of Perceived Trust, Grouped by

Experimental Condition (Traditional Website Vs. Social

Media).

5.2 Analysis of Self-report

Questionnaires and Interviews

5.2.1 The Impact of Social Media on

Affective Trust

When explicitly requested to state which company

they perceived as more interested in the customers’

needs and preferences (“Which company seems to be

more concerned about the wellbeing and needs of its

customers? Why?”), 61% of subjects expressed in

favor of the company for which they examined the

Facebook page. The analysis of variance, performed

on the data collected through the final questionnaire

based on self-report, confirms a statistically

significant correlation between the social media

condition and the company indicated as more

benevolent and concerned about its customers’

wellbeing and satisfaction (F = 15.53 p = .000). The

subjects interpreted as signs of benevolence the

company intention to share professional knowledge

(i.e., through cooking courses open to customers),

the daily updates of the fanpage with pictures and

news, and the public exposure to customers’

feedback and personalization requests.

5.2.2 Impact of Social Media Impacts on

Cognitive Trust

When reporting about the perceived competence and

predictability of a company (“Which company do

you perceive as the more reliable? Why?”, “Which

company seems more competent to you? Why?”),

45% of the participants refer to information elements

that are peculiar of social media.

In particular, they declared to have been

positively impressed by direct exposure to

customers’ feedback and the high frequency of the

updates on the Facebook page with pictures about

food and staff. Yet, according to the analysis of

variance described in the previous section, no

statistical significance is observed for the

relationship between web mode and cognitive trust.

5.2.3 Personal Preference Vs. Perceived

Trustworthiness

We observed an unexpected behavior of subjects

when explicitly requested to state which company

they would select for their meal and which one for

the catering scenario. This discrepancy occurred in

70% of cases (31 over 44 subjects). In three cases,

the subjects motivated this discrepancy stating that

they felt to not have enough information to put their

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complete trust in one of the two companies for the

catering task, even if they expressed a preference for

their own meal. In three cases, subjects indicated the

company they perceived as more reliable as suitable

for the catering service; instead, they choose the

restaurant with the warmer and friendlier

atmosphere, as perceived from the pictures on the

social media, for their meal. In the remaining of

cases (43%), subjects chose for the catering the

company they perceived as more competent and

reliable, as reported in their answers, which not

necessarily corresponds to the one meeting their

personal preferences about food. In general, in all

these cases, the subjects explicitly declared they

evaluated the benevolence of the company based on

the pictures of the staff and the positive

‘atmosphere’ conveyed by the social media.

Table 2: Analysis of covariance and effect of the web

mode on affective trust.

Dependent

Variable

(TRUST)

F p

Use of

Facebook

Cognitive

0 0,991

Affective

0,345 0,558

Frequency of

Online Purchase

Cognitive

0,863 0,356

Affective

0 0,982

Web Mode

Cognitive

0,003 0,954

Affective

7,263 0,009

Company

Cognitive

1,52 0,221

Affective

0,287 0,594

Web Mode *

Company

Cognitive

0,982 0,325

Affective

2,797 0,098

5.2.4 The Importance of Accessing Multiple

Sources of Information

In the final interview with one of the experimenters

and in the last item of the self-report questionnaire,

subjects were left free to express their impression

and general comments about the experiment. Four

subjects declared that they either did not express any

preference with respect to the catering scenario or

struggled in finding an answer. They justified their

lack of trust by claiming that having both websites

and social media available for both companies

would have been the best option in such a critical

context. The discussion that originated from this

claim helped us to identify a recurring schema

adopted by the subjects for gathering information

about unknown companies. This approach involves

gathering professional information from the

traditional website and impression of the

benevolence and availability towards customers

through the community on social media. In

particular, this kind of participants tend to first

search for customers’ feedback on social media;

then, in case of satisfying and positive comments,

they visit the website to access more business related

information, such as prices, delivery times, location

of the store, and contact information.

6 DISCUSSION

We tested two hypotheses, namely H

aff

(social media

foster affective trust more than as traditional

websites) and H

cog

(traditional websites foster

cognitive trust more than social media). As for the

first hypothesis H

aff

, the findings from the

experiment show that social media have an impact

on affective trust in a first impression setting. Being

able to access the company information through a

Facebook fan page provides the possibility to

evaluate information that that trigger affective

appraisal. In particular, the subjects involved in this

experiment had the occasion for assessing the

perceived vendors’ benevolence, that is, their open

and positive disposition towards the customers’

needs and satisfaction, which is consistent with our

assumption of social media reflecting interpersonal

dynamics such as peer-to-peer relationships and

word-of-mouth (Blanchard, 2011). This result is

confirmed by the analysis of the answers to the self-

report questionnaire, where subjects indicated as

more benevolent the company in the social media

condition. Moreover, this is consistent with the

findings of previous research on trust building based

on first impression (Schumann et al., 2012).

Conversely, our findings did not support the

second hypothesis H

cog

that websites foster cognitive

trust more than social media. Instead, from the

analysis of questionnaires and follow-up interviews,

we observed that social media might foster trust

growth also along the cognitive dimension. As

declared by the subjects involved in the experiment,

companies directly exposing themselves to

customers’ feedback and personalization requests on

social media are more credible and self-confident

about the higher quality of goods and services they

provide. Moreover, 45% of subjects reported that

they perceived as more competent and reliable the

company for which a wide range of pictures was

available about staff and products, which is peculiar

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of the social media condition. This is consistent with

literature on the relationship between online photos

and trust (Fogg, 2002; Olson et al., 2002;

Riegelsberger et al., 2003; Steinbrueck et al., 2002).

No statistical significance is observed about the

impact of social media on cognitive trust. Still, it is

interesting to observe how these subjects explicitly

associate the company presence on social media per

se to the perception of its ability and predictability.

In other words, being exposed to customers’

feedback on social networks is perceived as an

implicit statement of quality in the goods and

services provided by a company. In particular, the

direct involvement of the owner in the social media

management is perceived as a cue of his ability in

managing the company business. These findings are

consistent with the results of the study by Schumann

et al. (2012), highlighting how the access to

information elements associated to the affective

dimension may enhance also cognitive trust.

We also observed that some of the participants

explicitly declared to have troubles in choosing

among the two companies, with respect to the

catering scenario and complained that it would have

been necessary for them to have access to both the

website and the Facebook page in order to form a

valid opinion about the SME’s trustworthiness. For

these subjects, social media constitute a source of

information used for a preliminary assessment of the

trustworthiness of an unknown company. Further

details are investigated using traditional websites

only in case of perceived friendliness and attention

to the customers’ needs or in case of explicit positive

feedback of the community. This is consistent with

the findings of the study by de Ruyter et al. (2001)

about the role of affective commitment in the trust

building process.

Another interesting behavior was observed, that

is the discrepancy between the company chosen for

the catering task and the one selected for an informal

and occasional meal, occurring in the 70% of cases.

As far as the catering scenario is concerned, subjects

tended to prefer the company perceived as the more

competent and reliable, regardless of the web

condition. On the contrary, most subjects declared

they would have a meal at the company that either

matches their personal preferences about food or is

perceived as more friendly and open to welcome

customers in an informal atmosphere. They associate

this benevolent attitude to the frequent update of

food and staff pictures, mainly on the social

networks. This is consistent with previous research

on the perception of risk and deliberation in choice

of the retailer (Büttner et al., 2006), demonstrating

how the perceived trustworthiness depend also on

the perceived risk of a purchase. In fact, according to

research on persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986),

when the perceived risk is high (as for the catering

scenario), people process more content-related

features of a website, while they prefer more

peripheral cues, such as pictures, if the perceived

risk is lower (as for the situation of a lunch with a

friend).

As far as validity is concerned, the current study

presents some limitations. Most participants

involved were people declaring a high level of

familiarity with web technologies and social media,

also due to their age (average 24). Moreover, the

study described in this paper was performed with a

limited pool of 44 participants and most of them are

male (66%). To generalize and validate the findings

of this on-going research, it would be useful to

repeat the study with a larger number of subjects.

Moreover, it could be of great importance to

involve, in future replications, people with more

varied background and age, as well as to balance the

gender distribution, to test the role of these factors

on the propensity to trust in web-based scenarios.

7 CONCLUSIONS

We have studied the role of social media in the

process of trust building in the scenario of a small

company that wants to improve its online presence

and build a trustworthy online image of its brand.

With respect to first impression, we found that social

media foster affective trust more than traditional

websites, by enhancing the perception of a vendor’s

benevolence and openness towards the consumers.

These findings suggest that companies would benefit

from investing their time in establishing enjoyable

‘peer-to-peer’ relationships with their customers.

As a future work, we plan to repeat the study

involving people with different background, age and

level of familiarity with the Internet, in order to test

the role of these factors on the propensity to trust in

web-based scenarios. Furthermore, since this study

is based on a relatively low risk retail category, it

could be useful to compare these results with

analogous studies in other retail categories, such as

pharmacy or expensive technology, where the

customer’s tendency to trust is reduced by the higher

perceived inherent risk of the purchase.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work fulfils the research objectives of the PON

02_00563_3470993 project "VINCENTE - A

Virtual collective INtelligenCe ENvironment to

develop sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship

ecosystems" funded by the Italian Ministry of

University and Research (MIUR).

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