Mapping the Intellectual Landscape of Trust Repair Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Trust repair which is the process of mending broken trust appears in various disciplines in different ways. Meta-analyses in the field of psychology demonstrate that apologies with penance can restore approximately three-quarters of the interpersonal trust lost following competence violations but approximately half of trust lost following integrity violations (effect size d = 0.82 vs. 0.41; Lewicki et al., 2016). Sociology focuses on relational signaling, social equilibrium: costly punishment (e.g., self-punishment) enhances cooperation rates by 30-50% in repeated trust games by restoring norms of reciprocity (Schniter et al., 2013). The existing body of organizational behavior studies proves that verbal (apology + explanation) and structural remedies (monitoring, guarantees) produce the highest repair rate of workplaces, which increase post-violation trust scores by around 35 to 80 of the initial reading in field experimentation (Dirks et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2022). The analysis of marketing shows that consumer trust following product-harm crises can be restored up to 60-85 percent, when quick apologies are made, as well as compensations, and decreases to less than 20 percent, when denying or staying silent about the incident (Coombs and Holladay, 2014). According to international relations and political science, less than a quarter of interstate credibility is recovered after being deceived unless it is checked by a third party or costly compromises (Kydd, 2005). This review is an interdisciplinary synthesis of evidence ( >200 studies) which identifies that the effectiveness of repair depends on violation type, disciplinary context and interaction between verbal, behavioral, and institutional processes.

Keywords: Trust Repair, Bibliometric Analysis, VOSviewer