The Design of Reliable Trust Management Systems for Electronic Trading Communities
Chrysanthos N. Dellarocas · 2000
The objective of this paper is to contribute to the development of a rigorous discipline for designing trust management mechanisms in online communities. The importance of such a discipline for management science is without question: trust is a precondition for the continued existence of any market and organization in general. Furthermore, several properties of online interaction are challenging the accumulated wisdom of our communities on how to produce trust and require the development of new mechanisms and systems. The paper introduces a mathematical framework for defining trustworthiness and trust. Based on that framework, it defines the related concept of reputation and argues that reputation reporting systems is one of the most promising approaches for producing trust in online communities. It also provides a critical overview of the current state of the art in that area. Following that, it identifies a number of important ways in which unfair buyer and seller behavior can com...