Abstract

Trust in an organization has been perceived as one of the key factors behind knowledge sharing mainly in an unstructured work environment. The study developed a framework for building trust in knowledge sharing in a virtual environment. The artifact called KAPE (Knowledge Acquisition, Processing, and Exchange) was developed to facilitate knowledge sharing using a web-based platform for Cassava farmers. A survey was conducted, data were collected from 382 farmers from 21 farming communities. Multiple regression techniques, Cronbach’s Alpha reliability test; Tukey’s Honestly significant difference (HSD) analysis; one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and trust acceptable measures (TAM) were used to test the hypotheses. The results show a significant difference when there is trust in knowledge sharing between farmers, those who have high trust levels of trust were differed in the model (M = 3.66 SD = .93) from with low trust acceptable values (M = 2.08 SD = .28), (t (48) = 5.69, p = .00). Furthermore, using the Cognitive Expectancy Theory showed that farmers with cognitive-consonance exhibited a higher level of trust and satisfaction with knowledge and information from KAPE, as compared with a low level of Cognitive-dissonance. These results imply that the adopted trust model (KAPE) shows a positive improvement in knowledge sharing activities in an informal environment amongst rural farmers.

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