Blockchain For Trustful Collaborations Between Immigrants, Citizens And Governments
Chun-Wei Chiang · 2018
Immigrants usually are pro-social towards their hometowns and try to improve them. However, the lack of trust in their government can drive immigrants to work individually. As a result, their pro-social activities are usually limited in impact and scope. Although blockchain technology have the potential to solve the trust issue, people are not familiar with the technology and they have no idea why it is trustworthy. Previous research showed that the adopting user interface properly can increase people's trust in technology. This paper studies the interface factors that ease collaborations between immigrants and their home governments. We specifically focus on Mexican immigrants in the US who want to improve their rural communities. We identify that for Mexican immigrants having clear workflows of how their money flows and a sense of control over this workflow is important for collaborating with their government. Based on these findings, we create a blockchain based system for building trust between governments and immigrants by: (1) decentralizing the power of the government and giving more agency to citizens; (2) fighting corruption; and (3) enhancing fiscal transparency in community development projects. We finish by discussing design implications of our work and future directions.