Self-Generating Trust in AI-Enabled Sharing Economy Platforms: A Digital Trust Architecture for Sustainable Platform Performance in Emerging Digital Markets

Artificial intelligence is becoming a core operating system of sharing economy platforms. Machine learning algorithms allocate resources, forecast demand, optimize prices, and personalize recommendations; natural language processing systems mediate communication, classification, search, and customer support; and explainable artificial intelligence promises to make algorithmic decisions more transparent. Yet the same systems that improve operational efficiency may also weaken user trust when users cannot understand, contest, or verify how platform decisions are made. This article develops a theory-building framework of Self-Generating Trust in AI-enabled sharing economy platforms. It argues that AI becomes a sustainable source of platform performance only when it is embedded in a digital trust architecture capable of repeatedly producing transparency, accountability, auditability, feedback responsiveness, fairness, privacy protection, and structural correctability. Integrating the resource-based view, transaction cost economics, institution-based trust, algorithmic accountability, and explainable AI, the article conceptualizes self-generating trust capacity as the central mediating mechanism between AI capability and platform performance. The proposed model explains how AI capabilities influence operational intelligence, user experience, satisfaction, loyalty, participation, and long-term platform performance through trust-generating institutional routines. The article provides formal propositions, construct definitions, measurement indicators, a PLS-SEM-ready empirical design, and an implementation roadmap for platform managers, investors, and policymakers. It contributes by shifting the debate from AI adoption as a technical capability to AI governance as a trust-reproductive architecture. The framework is especially relevant for emerging digital markets where platform growth is rapid, but data quality, algorithmic transparency, local-language AI resources, regulatory maturity, and institutional trust remain uneven

کلیدواژه ها:

Self-generating trust ، Artificial intelligence ، Sharing economy ، Digital platforms ، Explainable AI ، Algorithmic transparency ، Platform governance ، User trust ، Emerging digital markets ، Platform performance