A Preliminary Analysis on the Effects of Propensity to Trust in Distributed Software Development

TL;DR

This study investigates how individual differences in trust disposition influence collaboration success in distributed software projects, focusing on the likelihood of pull requests being successfully merged.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative analysis of the impact of the propensity to trust on distributed team collaboration success, a previously overlooked factor.

Findings

Higher propensity to trust correlates with increased merge success rates.

Personality traits influence collaboration outcomes in distributed development.

Trust disposition affects team dynamics and project success.

Abstract

Establishing trust between developers working at distant sites facilitates team collaboration in distributed software development. While previous research has focused on how to build and spread trust in absence of direct, face-to-face communication, it has overlooked the effects of the propensity to trust, i.e., the trait of personality representing the individual disposition to perceive the others as trustworthy. In this study, we present a preliminary, quantitative analysis on how the propensity to trust affects the success of collaborations in a distributed project, where the success is represented by pull requests whose code changes and contributions are successfully merged into the project's repository.