Antecedents of trustworthiness of social commerce platforms: A case of rural communities using multi group SEM & MCDM methods

•We performed the SEM analysis for determining customers' perceptions.•Our investigation claimed privacy concern has a fully mediating role.•We investigated customers' trustworthiness of social commerce platforms in different groups.•We used MCDM methods to conduct benchmarking amongst customers.•Our benchmarking revealed the best and worst customers' perceptions. Business’ ethics have changed the landscape of commerce around the world lately. Legitimacy, robustness, and morality are among the most important factors that build trustworthiness of any platform. Consequently, the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Trust Commitment Theory have become the most relevant frameworks for explaining customers’ behaviour towards the ethics of social commerce platforms. The current study aims to investigate the influence of the variables belonging to the above-mentioned theories, such as information quality, website quality, information credibility, consumer-peer interaction, interface design, trust, relationship commitment, and the trustworthiness of social commerce platforms. With an investigation into the role of privacy concern mediation. Furthermore, this study focused on studying two groups; the male group, which consisted of 386 respondents, and the female sample, which included 415 respondents in rural communities of Malaysia (e.g., Kedah, Perak, Kelantan, Terengganu, and Perlis). Multi-criteria decision analysis methods were used to rank customers in rural areas based on their perceptions of the trustworthiness of social commerce platforms. The study expanded the scope of the theories by revealing interesting results that establish significant relationships between Elaboration Likelihood Model and Trust Commitment Theory variables and the trustworthiness of social commerce platforms. Finally, ranking customers from best to worst based on perceptions gained from the trustworthiness of social commerce platforms provides an immediate solution to policymakers and practitioners to focus on opinion leaders to win the loyalty of existing customers and attract potential customers in future.