Understanding Trust in Virtual Communities

Abstract

With people participating in various virtual communities in everyday life, trust building between participants is significant and indispensable in order to maintain communication in both traditional and virtual communities. In particular, virtual communities provide a platform or network through which members can communicate with faster and more simultaneous interactions in invisible ways. Since the importance of trust in virtual communities has been widely recognized, trust as a complex, multi-faceted, and context-dependent concept has been examined by many researchers in several disciplines. In this chapter, the authors aim to examine the definitions and characteristics of trust in the context of virtual communities and discuss terms relevant to the concept of trust. Different types of trust are investigated. Issues, challenges and future research directions revolving around trust are discussed. In examining the concept of trust, this chapter focuses on social rather than technical aspects of trust and trust building in virtual communities.