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Proceedings ArticleDOI

Supporting trust in virtual communities

04 Jan 2000-Vol. 7, pp 6007-6007
TL;DR: In this article, a trust model that is grounded in real-world social trust characteristics, and based on a reputation mechanism, or word-of-mouth, is proposed for the virtual medium.
Abstract: At any given time, the stability of a community depends on the right balance of trust and distrust. Furthermore, we face information overload, increased uncertainty and risk taking as a prominent feature of modern living. As members of society, we cope with these complexities and uncertainties by relying trust, which is the basis of all social interactions. Although a small number of trust models have been proposed for the virtual medium, we find that they are largely impractical and artificial. In this paper we provide and discuss a trust model that is grounded in real-world social trust characteristics, and based on a reputation mechanism, or word-of-mouth. Our proposed model allows agents to decide which other agents' opinions they trust more and allows agents to progressively tune their understanding of another agent's subjective recommendations.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Mar 2007
TL;DR: Trust and reputation systems represent a significant trend in decision support for Internet mediated service provision as mentioned in this paper, where the basic idea is to let parties rate each other, for example after the completion of a transaction, and use the aggregated ratings about a given party to derive a trust or reputation score.
Abstract: Trust and reputation systems represent a significant trend in decision support for Internet mediated service provision. The basic idea is to let parties rate each other, for example after the completion of a transaction, and use the aggregated ratings about a given party to derive a trust or reputation score, which can assist other parties in deciding whether or not to transact with that party in the future. A natural side effect is that it also provides an incentive for good behaviour, and therefore tends to have a positive effect on market quality. Reputation systems can be called collaborative sanctioning systems to reflect their collaborative nature, and are related to collaborative filtering systems. Reputation systems are already being used in successful commercial online applications. There is also a rapidly growing literature around trust and reputation systems, but unfortunately this activity is not very coherent. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of existing and proposed systems that can be used to derive measures of trust and reputation for Internet transactions, to analyse the current trends and developments in this area, and to propose a research agenda for trust and reputation systems.

3,493 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: PeerTrust is presented - a reputation-based trust supporting framework, which includes a coherent adaptive trust model for quantifying and comparing the trustworthiness of peers based on a transaction-based feedback system, and a decentralized implementation of such a model over a structured P2P network.
Abstract: Peer-to-peer (P2P) online communities are commonly perceived as an environment offering both opportunities and threats. One way to minimize threats in such communities is to use community-based reputations to help estimate the trustworthiness of peers. We present PeerTrust - a reputation-based trust supporting framework, which includes a coherent adaptive trust model for quantifying and comparing the trustworthiness of peers based on a transaction-based feedback system, and a decentralized implementation of such a model over a structured P2P network. PeerTrust model has two main features. First, we introduce three basic trust parameters and two adaptive factors in computing trustworthiness of peers, namely, feedback a peer receives from other peers, the total number of transactions a peer performs, the credibility of the feedback sources, transaction context factor, and the community context factor. Second, we define a general trust metric to combine these parameters. Other contributions of the paper include strategies used for implementing the trust model in a decentralized P2P environment, evaluation mechanisms to validate the effectiveness and cost of PeerTrust model, and a set of experiments that show the feasibility and benefit of our approach.

1,847 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This survey examines the various definitions of trust in the literature and provides a working definition of trust for Internet applications and some influential examples of trust management systems.
Abstract: Trust is an important aspect of decision making for Internet applications and particularly influences the specification of security policy, i.e., who is authorized to perform actions as well as the techniques needed to manage and implement security to and for the applications. This survey examines the various definitions of trust in the literature and provides a working definition of trust for Internet applications. The properties of trust relationships are explained and classes of different types of trust identified in the literature are discussed with examples. Some influential examples of trust management systems are described.

1,181 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 Oct 2001
TL;DR: It is expected that scalable methods for trust management are an important factor, if fully decentralized peer-to-peer systems should become the platform for more serious applications than simple file exchange.
Abstract: Managing trust is a problem of particular importance in peer-to-peer environments where one frequently encounters unknown agents. Existing methods for trust management, that are based on reputation, focus on the semantic properties of the trust model. They do not scale as they either rely on a central database or require to maintain global knowledge at each agent to provide data on earlier interactions. In this paper we present an approach that addresses the problem of reputation-based trust management at both the data management and the semantic level. We employ at both levels scalable data structures and algorithms that require no central control and allow to assess trust by computing an agents reputation from its former interactions with other agents. Thus the meethod can be implemented in a peer-to-peer environment and scales well for very large numbers of participants. We expect that scalable methods for trust management are an important factor, if fully decentralized peer-to-peer systems should become the platform for more serious applications than simple file exchange.

1,033 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Jan 2002
TL;DR: This paper first surveys existing literatures on trust, reputation and a related concept: reciprocity and proposes a computational model that can be implemented in a real system to consistently calculate agents' trust and reputation scores.
Abstract: Despite their many advantages, e-businesses lag behind brick and mortar businesses in several fundamental respects. This paper concerns one of these: relationships based on trust and reputation. Recent studies on simple reputation systems for e-Businesses such as eBay have pointed to the importance of such rating systems for deterring moral hazard and encouraging trusting interactions. However, despite numerous studies on trust and reputation systems, few have taken studies across disciplines to provide an integrated account of these concepts and their relationships. This paper first surveys existing literatures on trust, reputation and a related concept: reciprocity. Based on sociological and biological understandings of these concepts, a computational model is proposed. This model can be implemented in a real system to consistently calculate agents' trust and reputation scores.

1,020 citations

References
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Book
01 Jan 1979
TL;DR: In this article, Niklas Luhmann's Sociological Enlightenment and its realisation in trust and power is discussed, where trust is defined as a reduction of complexity, and trust is viewed as an opportunity and a constraint.
Abstract: Contents Introduction: Niklas Luhmann's Sociological Enlightenment and its Realisation in Trust and Power - by Christian Morgner and Michael King Editors' note on the revised translation Part 1: Trust Preface - by the author 1. Defining the Problem: Social Complexity 2. Constancies and Events 3. Familiarity and Trust 4. Trust as a Reduction of Complexity 5. Exceeding Information and Possibilities For Sanctions 6. Personal Trust 7. Communications Media and System Trust 8. The Tactical Conception: Trust as Opportunity and as Constraint 9. Trust in Trust 10. Trust and Distrust 11. Readiness to Trust 12. The Rationality of Trust and Distrust References Part 2: Power Introduction 1. Power as a Communication Medium 2. The Action Framework 3. Code Functions 4. Power and Physical Force 5. Lifeworld and Technique 6. The Generalization of Influence 7. Risks of Power 8. Power's Relevance to Society 9. Organized Power References Relevant Articles by Luhmann in English

3,070 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper describes the beliefs of trustworthy parties involved in authentication protocols and the evolution of these beliefs as a consequence of communication, and gives the results of the analysis of four published protocols.
Abstract: Authentication protocols are the basis of security in many distributed systems, and it is therefore essential to ensure that these protocols function correctly. Unfortunately, their design has been extremely error prone. Most of the protocols found in the literature contain redundancies or security flaws. A simple logic has allowed us to describe the beliefs of trustworthy parties involved in authentication protocols and the evolution of these beliefs as a consequence of communication. We have been able to explain a variety of authentication protocols formally, to discover subtleties and errors in them, and to suggest improvements. In this paper we present the logic and then give the results of our analysis of four published protocols, chosen either because of their practical importance or because they serve to illustrate our method.

2,638 citations

01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this article, the authors try to reconstruct what seem to me the central questions about trust that the individual contributions presented in this volume raise and partly answer, and discuss the extent to which cooperation can come about independently of trust, and also whether trust can be seen as a result rather than a precondition of cooperation.
Abstract: In this concluding essay I shall try to reconstruct what seem to me the central questions about trust that the individual contributions presented in this volume raise and partly answer. In the first section, I briefly qualify the claim that there is a degree of rational cooperation that should but does not exist, and I shall give a preliminary indication of the importance of the beliefs we hold about others, over and above the importance of the motives we may have for cooperation. In the second section, I define trust and the general conditions under which it becomes relevant for cooperation. In the third, I discuss the extent to which cooperation can come about independently of trust, and also whether trust can be seen as a result rather than a precondition of cooperation. In the final section, I address the question of whether there are rational reasons for people to trust and especially whether there are reasons to trust trust and, correspondingly, distrust distrust.

2,230 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 1986-Ethics
TL;DR: Bok's claim that not all the things that thrive when there is trust between people, and which matter, are things that should be encouraged to thrive as mentioned in this paper is also true.
Abstract: Whether or not everything which matters to us is the sort of thing that can thrive or languish (I may care most about my stamp collection) or even whether all the possibly thriving things we care about need trust in order to thrive (does my rubber tree?), there surely is something basically right about Bok's claim. Given that I cannot myself guard my stamp collection at all times, nor take my rubber tree with me on my travels, the custody of these things that matter to me must often be transferred to others, presumably to others I trust. Without trust, what matters to me would be unsafe, unless like the Stoic I attach myself only to what can thrive, or be safe from harm, however others act. The starry heavens above and the moral law within had better be about the only things that matter to me, if there is no one I can trust in any way. Even my own Stoic virtue will surely thrive better if it evokes some trust from others, inspires some trustworthiness in them, or is approved and imitated by them. To Bok's statement, however, we should add another, that not all the things that thrive when there is trust between people, and which matter, are things that should be encouraged to thrive. Exploitation and

1,846 citations

Book
01 Mar 1983

1,761 citations