New Digital Trust Index reveals half of UK distrusts the internet

Jin – the digital influence agency – launches the inaugural biannual Digital Trust Index to assess how countries across the world trust the web. This study focuses on the UK and France, and is produced in association with the PRCA (Public Relations Consultants Association). The Digital Trust Index reports the UK achieves a score of 54 out of 100, compared to 48 out of 100 for France.

Published every six months, the Digital Trust Index will report on the level of internet confidence for everyday situations, like consumption (purchasing products, search engine queries for products and services), current events, meeting new people (personal or professional) and researching health issues.

 

Key learnings from the Digital Trust Index:

• The overall trust levels of web users are concerning, despite high digital media consumption & engagement, British web users have expressed a lukewarm trust level for the web, with a score of 54 out of 100. In France, that trust index is even lower, at 48 out of 100.

• The web’s main players – ‘GAFA’ (Google, Apple, Facebook & Amazon) – are also struggling to earn the trust of their users, despite their digital expertise.

• The index is very low in some sectors, such as health and insurance. Public services are better off, earning 42% of British users’ trust and even 59% of people in France.

• Many popular websites – especially social networks and dating sites – are dogged by perceived security risks concerning personal data.

 

Eliott Maidenberg, MD of Jin Digital Influence UK, commented:

“UK economic growth is closely tied to our digital activity. According to a study by Boston Consulting Group, the UK digital economy accounts for £180 billion in the country’s GDP. But how is this to be sustained if this medium fails to earn the trust of its users? It therefore becomes essential to be able to understand and evaluate the confidence of users in digital uses. To help build trust, organisations should work on a number of areas such as seeking to gain their online industry certifications, gather & publish user recommendations, collaborate with influencers and strong web design.”

Francis Ingham, Director General of PRCA, commented:

“The Digital Trust Index reveals some interesting findings about how websites are viewed by the public. We can see that the expectation of increased cyber-attacks and data breaches in 2016, and the continuing debate over personal privacy, means that firms operating on the web face a huge on-going reputational challenge.”

Digital Trust Index methodology:

The index assigns a score out of 100. It assesses the level of Internet users’ trust in a given country within a given timeframe. It takes an average calculated from the trust ratings of a representative sample, for each type of web use investigated. The ratings are also determined by the survey poll conducted by our partner Opinion Way.

Opinion Way sampled 1,000 people across the UK, and 1022 across France. Each sample was constituted under the quota method, under the basis of gender, age, region of residence, social category ESOMAR (UK) and socio-professional category (in France). The interviews were carried out via self-administered online questionnaires CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interview) on the 16^th to 21t October for the UK, and 21^st and 22^nd October 2015. Opinion Way conducted this survey using the procedures and rules of the ISO 20252 standard.