Reputation and Trust

Synonyms

Feedback systems; Word of mouth

Definition

Trust means reliance on something or someone’s action. As such, it necessarily involves risks on the side of the subject of trust, i.e., trustor. The main goal of a trust management system is to reduce the involved risks. Reputation systems present a possible solution to do that. They use relevant information about the participants’ past behavior (feedback) to encourage trustworthy behavior in the community in question. The key presumptions of a reputation system are that the participants of the considered online community engage in repeated interactions and that the information about their past doings is informative of their future performance and as such will influence it. Thus, collecting, processing, and disseminating the feedback about the participants’ past behavior is expected to boost their trustworthiness.

Key Points

The goal of a reputation system is to encourage trustworthy behavior. It is up to the system designer to...