Abstract
According to transaction cost economics, contracts are always incomplete and offer opportunities to defect. Some level of trust is a sine qua non for trade. If the seller is better informed about product quality than the buyer, the buyer has to rely on information the seller provides or has to check the information by testing the product or tracing the supply chain processes, thus incurring extra transaction cost. An opportunistic seller who assumes the buyer to trust, may deliver a lower quality product than agreed upon. In human decisions to deceive and to show trust or distrust, issues like mutual expectations, shame, self-esteem, personality, and reputation are involved. These factors depend in part on traders’ cultural background. This paper proposes an agent model of deceit and trust and describes a multi-agent simulation where trading agents are differentiated according to Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture. Simulations of USA and Dutch trading situations are compared.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Williamson, O.E.: Transaction cost economics: how it works; where it is headed. De Economist 146(1), 23–58 (1998)
Klein Woolthuis, R., Hillebrand, B., Nooteboom, B.: Trust, Contract and Relationship Development. Organization Studies 26(6), 813–840 (2005)
Tykhonov, D., Jonker, C., Meijer, S., Verwaart, T.: Agent-Based Simulation of the Trust and Tracing Game for Supply Chains and Networks. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11(3), 1 (2008), http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/3/1.html
Wilson, D.S.: Evolution for Everyone. Bantam Dell, NewYork (2007)
Boles, T.L., Croson, R.T.A., Murnighan, J.K.: Deception and Retribution in Repeated Ultimatum Bargaining. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 83(2), 235–259 (2000)
Triandis, H.C., et al.: Culture and Deception in Business Negotiations: A Multilevel Analysis. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 1, 73–90 (2001)
Zaheer, S., Zaheer, A.: Trust across borders. Journal of International Business Studies 37, 21–29 (2006) T.A. Judge
Hofstede, G.: Culture’s Consequences, 2nd edn. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (2001)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T.: Modeling Power Distance in Trade. In: David, N., Sichman, J.S. (eds.) MABS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5269, pp. 1–16. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T.: Modeling Culture in Trade: Uncertainty Avoidance. In: 2008 Agent-Directed Simulation Symposium (ADSS 2008), Spring Simulation Multiconference, pp. 143–150. SCS, San Diego (2008)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T.: Individualism and Collectivism in Trade Agents. In: Nguyen, N.T., Borzemski, L., Grzech, A., Ali, M. (eds.) IEA/AIE 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5027, pp. 492–501. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Meijer, S., Verwaart, T.: Modeling Trade and Trust across Cultures. In: Stølen, K., Winsborough, W.H., Martinelli, F., Massacci, F. (eds.) iTrust 2006. LNCS, vol. 3986, pp. 120–134. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T.: Long-term Orientation in Trade. In: Schredelseker, K., Hauser, F. (eds.) Complexity and Artificial Markets. LNEMS, vol. 614, pp. 107–118. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Meijer, S., Hofstede, G.J.: The Trust and Tracing game. In: Riis, J.O., Smeds, R., Nicholson, A. (eds.) Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Experiential Learning, IFIP WG 5.7, Aalborg, Denmark, pp. 101–116. University of Aalborg - Centre for Industrial Production, Aalborg (2003)
Wirtz, J., Kum, D.: Consumer Cheating on Service Guarantees. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 32(2), 159–175 (2004)
Hwang, P., Burgers, W.P.: Apprehension and Temptation: The Forces against Cooperation. Journal of Conflict Resolution 43(1), 117–130 (1999)
Steinel, W., De Dreu, K.W.: Social Motives and Strategic Misrepresentation in Social Decision Making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86, 419–434 (2004)
Olekalns, M., Smith, P.L.: Mutually Dependent: Trust, Affect and the Use of Deception in Negotiation. Journal of Business Ethics 85, 347–365 (2009)
Castelfranchi, C., Falcone, R., De Rosis, F.: Deceiving in GOLEM: how to strategically pilfer help. In: Castelfranchi, C., Tan, Y.H. (eds.) Trust and Deception in Virtual Societies, pp. 91–110. Kluwer, Dordrecht (2001)
Ward, D., Hexmoor, H.: Towards deception in agents. In: Proceedings of AAMAS 2003, pp. 1154–1155. ACM, New York (2003)
Burgoon, J.K., Stoner, G.M., Bonito, J.A., Dunbar, N.E.: Trust and Deception in Mediated Communication. In: Proceedings of HICSS 2003 - Track1, p. 44. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2003)
Jonker, C.M., Treur, J.: Formal analysis of models for the dynamics of trust based on experiences. In: Garijo, F.J., Boman, M. (eds.) MAAMAW 1999. LNCS, vol. 1647, pp. 120–134. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Castelfranchi, C., Falcone, R.: Principles of trust for MAS: cognitive anatomy, social importance, and quantification. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Multi Agent Systems, pp. 72–79. IEEE Computer Society, Washington (1998)
Weisbuch, G., Kirman, A., Herreiner, D.: Market Organisation and Trading Relationships. Economic Journal 110, 411–436 (2000)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T.: Simulation of Effects of Culture on Trade Partner Selection. In: Hernández, C., et al. (eds.) Artificial Economics: The Generative Method in Economics, pp. 257–268. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Jonker, C.M., Treur, J.: An agent architecture for multi–attribute negotiation. In: Nebel, B. (ed.) Proceedings of the seventeenth International Joint Conference on AI, IJCAI 2001, pp. 1195–1201. Morgan Kaufman, San Francisco (2001)
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T.: Cultural Differentiation of Negotiating Agents. Group Decis Negot, doi: 10.1007/s10726-010-9190-x (2010)
Meijer, S., Hofstede, G.J., Beers, G., Omta, S.W.F.: Trust and Tracing game: learning about transactions and embeddedness in a trade network. Production Planning and Control 17, 569–583 (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T. (2010). A Cross-Cultural Multi-agent Model of Opportunism in Trade. In: Nguyen, N.T., Kowalczyk, R. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence II. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6450. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17155-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17155-0_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17154-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17155-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)