Digital Identity: The effect of trust and reputation information on user judgement in the Sharing Economy.

Mircea Zloteanu,Nigel Harvey,David Tuckett,Giacomo Livan,Jason Anthony Aimone

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0209071

Abstract

The Sharing Economy (SE) is a growing ecosystem focusing on peer-to-peer enterprise. In the SE the information available to assist individuals (users) in making decisions focuses predominantly on community-generated trust and reputation information. However, how such information impacts user judgement is still being understood. To explore such effects, we constructed an artificial SE accommodation platform where we varied the elements related to hosts’ digital identity, measuring users’ perceptions and decisions to interact. Across three studies, we find that trust and reputation information increases not only the users’ perceived trustworthiness, credibility, and sociability of hosts, but also the propensity to rent a private room in their home. This effect is seen when providing users both with complete profiles and profiles with partial user-selected information. Closer investigations reveal that three elements relating to the host’s digital identity are sufficient to produce such positive perceptions and increased rental decisions, regardless of which three elements are presented. Our findings have relevant implications for human judgment and privacy in the SE, and question its current culture of ever increasing information-sharing.

Highlights

BackgroundThe Sharing Economy (SE) describes a growing ecosystem of online platforms devoted to the exchange of goods and services [1,2,3,4]
Confidence in rent decisions was not found to be affected by Profile condition, F < 1, p = .893, suggesting that the type and amount of information participants saw on the profiles did not influence their confidence
The findings suggest that providing users with at least three trust and reputation information (TRI) elements to aid their decision-making is sufficient to produce a strong positivity in their judgements of hosts on SE accommodation-style platforms

Summary

Introduction

BackgroundThe Sharing Economy (SE) describes a growing ecosystem of online platforms devoted to the exchange of goods and services [1,2,3,4]. While a precise and encompassing definition of “sharing economy” is still debated within academia and business [2,5,6], the concept is grounded in peer-to-peer (P2P) enterprise, providing individuals with temporary access to the resources of other individuals [7], while using the platforms as an exchange mediator [3,8]. In this respect, despite sharing its peer-to-peer nature with other online environments (such as ecommerce websites), the SE represents a distinctly unique concept. The types of platforms that have emerged around the SE paradigm range across all domains and markets, from accommodation (e.g., Airbnb) and taxi services (e.g., Uber) to household appliances (e.g., Zilok) and clothes (e.g., GirlMeetsDress)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion