Digital Trust as Halal Tourism Infrastructure: A Documentary Framework for SME Competitiveness in the Hat Yai–Songkhla Border Economy

Abstract

Halal tourism scholarship documents how faith-aligned service quality shapes satisfaction and trust, while e-commerce research establishes the structural role of trust, perceived risk, and information quality in online transactions. These two literatures have developed largely in parallel. The research gap addressed here is the underexplored intersection: how digital-trust mechanisms operate when the object of trust includes religiously specific service evidence that a Muslim traveler cannot practically verify after arrival.

This article proposes a preliminary conceptual framework linking five constructs—digital trust signals, visible halal assurance, SME dynamic capabilities, visitor confidence, and sustainable competitiveness—synthesized from a documentary corpus of twenty-one items (fifteen peer-reviewed articles, one strategic-management book, four official statistical or policy sources, and one industry report). Directed qualitative content analysis with a prespecified coding matrix identified evidence for each construct in that same order, with digital trust signals evidenced through two clusters, platform reputation and cross-border service readiness, and sustainable competitiveness evidenced through sustainability credibility. Five conceptual propositions (P1–P5) organize the conjectured relationships. Findings are presented as synthesized documentary evidence rather than empirical verification, and the framework is described throughout as proposed rather than validated. The contribution is threefold: theoretical, by extending digital-trust conceptualization to halal tourism through religiously specific evidence requirements; methodological, by offering a transparent documentary coding architecture; and practical, by providing an actionable model for tourism SMEs and destination managers in the Hat Yai–Songkhla border corridor. Empirical validation is proposed as the next step.