Guest Editors' Introduction Trust and Trust Management

Abstract

Trust is a fundamental consideration for the growth and stability of markets and communities because trust guides decisions about interactions between humans and organizations. New forms of markets and communities are created online, but the very nature of this online environment makes trust management challenging. It is for example common to request services from a website we have never heard of before, and from which we might never request a service again in the future. Combined with perceptions of minimal or non-existent law enforcement, participants in online markets and communities are often vulnerable to many forms of fraud and deception.Reliable perceptions of trust lead to successful interactions and quality online markets, whereas misplaced trust and misplaced distrust are damaging to online interactions and e-commerce. To improve the reliability of trust perceptions and decision making, there is a need to better understand the dynamics of trust in relation to the technological, behavioral, legal and cultural aspects of e-commerce.The call for contributions to this special issue focused on theoretical and practical aspects of trust management; on antecedents to trust; on technologies that impact trust; and on the use of policy, process and technology to manage trust. On this background we received 32 quality submissions from researchers in 24 different countries. After thorough reviewing by independent reviewers, a collection of very high quality articles were selected for publication in the special issue.The research articles in this special Issue give a significant contribution to the body of knowledge and practice in the specific areas of privacy and trust, trust design, collaborative management and trust decisions, trust management systems and the integration of approaches to trust management, multidimensional framework for trust, trust and reputation management, a framework for trust and reputation systems, and the ability to share reputations across communities.The first paper entitled "Sharing Reputation Across Virtual Communities" co-authored by Nurit Gal-Oz, Tal Grinshpoun and Ehud Gudes evaluates a Cross-Community Reputation (CCR) model with the ability to transfer reputation data as part of a user's identity.The second paper entitled "Privacy Issues for Online Personal Photograph Collections" co-authored by Sally Jo Cunningham, Masood Masoodian and Anne Adams uses the Adams' privacy model to investigate information sensitivity, information receiver, and information usage as part of sharing photograph collections.The third paper entitled "Developing Trust In Virtual Software Development Teams" authored by Valentine Casey focuses on trust and fear as factors relevant to global software development and the operation of virtual software teams.The fourth paper entitled "Enabling Usage Control Through Reputation Objects: A Discussion on e-Commerce and the Internet of Services Environments" co-authored by Rehab Alnemr, Stefan Koenig, Torsten Eymann, Christoph Meinel introduces the reader to reputati...