New venture team trust: Perceptions of new human, AI and AI-augmented teammates during funding activities
通过实验研究205名参与者对AI、人类或使用AI的人类新队友的信任形成与调整，发现AI队友初始情感信任低但观察后显著提升，而使用AI的人类队友信任度不低于甚至高于普通人类。
In early-stage entrepreneurial teams, trust perceptions about new teammates shape venture compatibility and performance. With AI adoption in entrepreneurial teams, early trust dynamics are underexplored. This study investigates trust formation and recalibration when a new teammate is AI, a human, or a human using AI. In a scenario-based experiment with 205 participants, we measured trustworthiness, affective trust, and cognitive trust before and after observing a new teammate’s work. AI teammates began with lower affective trust but gained significantly after observation, while human-using AI teammates were trusted similarly, or more than non-augmented humans. Cognitive trust declined across all teammates but remained comparatively stable for AI. Findings contribute to entrepreneurship and human-AI teaming research by showing that trust calibration depends on teammate type and competence, and by introducing augmented teammates as a distinct category. Practically, ventures adopting AI may benefit from augmentation, with clear human accountability and disclosure of AI capabilities, fostering higher early-stage trust.