Situational Trust

A context-sensitive form of trust in an automated system that varies moment-to-moment based on perceived system performance, environment, and the user's own capacity to intervene. Unlike dispositional or generalised trust, situational trust is recalibrated as conditions change — for example, a passenger's trust in an autonomous ferry drops when it pauses without explanation during a tricky docking. In accessibility contexts, passengers who cannot directly observe the environment (e.g., blind or low-vision users) are more dependent on explicit system communication to maintain situational trust.