Evolution Of Trust Research Articles

Evolution of cooperation and trust in an N-player social dilemma game with tags for migration decisions.

We present an evolutionary game model that integrates the concept of tags, trust and migration to study how trust in social and physical groups influence cooperation and migration decisions. All agents have a tag, and they gain or lose trust in other tags as they interact with other agents. This trust in different tags determines their trust in other players and groups. In contrast to other models in the literature, our model does not use tags to determine the cooperation/defection decisions of the agents, but rather their migration decisions. Agents decide whether to cooperate or defect based purely on social learning (i.e. imitation from others). Agents use information about tags and their trust in tags to determine how much they trust a particular group of agents and whether they want to migrate to that group. Comprehensive experiments show that the model can promote high levels of cooperation and trust under different game scenarios, and that curbing the migration decisions of agents can negatively impact both cooperation and trust in the system. We also observed that trust becomes scarce in the system as the diversity of tags increases. This work is one of the first to study the impact of tags on trust in the system and migration behaviour of the agents using evolutionary game theory.

The Pitch: Some Face-to-Face Minutes to Build Trust

The pitch is an important part of the entrepreneur–investor relationship. To come to an agreement, entrepreneurs and investors need to trust each other. However, how does trust arise between them, and how does trust evolve during the few minutes of a pitch? With the aim to develop propositions, we build on previous studies in entrepreneurship and venture funding. Therefore, we rely on the main concepts of trust useful to analyze the interpersonal relationship during a pitch: behavioral trust and transformative trust. We discuss the place of formal documents diffused prior to the pitch and the importance of the oral presentation. We conclude by suggesting testable proposition on the evolution of trust during the pitch.

How the initial level of trust in automated driving impacts drivers’ behaviour and early trust construction

Trust in Automation is known to influence human-automation interaction and user behaviour. In the Automated Driving (AD) context, studies showed the impact of drivers’ Trust in Automated Driving (TiAD), and linked it with, e.g., difference in environment monitoring or driver’s behaviour. This study investigated the influence of driver’s initial level of TiAD on driver’s behaviour and early trust construction during Highly Automated Driving (HAD). Forty drivers participated in a driving simulator study. Based on a trust questionnaire, participants were divided in two groups according to their initial level of TiAD: high (Trustful) vs. low (Distrustful). Declared level of trust, gaze behaviour and Non-Driving-Related Activities (NDRA) engagement were compared between the two groups over time. Results showed that Trustful drivers engaged more in NDRA and spent less time monitoring the road compared to Distrustful drivers. However, an increase in trust was observed in both groups. These results suggest that initial level of TiAD impact drivers’ behaviour and further trust evolution.

Institutions matter: The impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the political trust of young Europeans.

In this paper, we study the short‐run evolution of political trust during the recent covid‐19 pandemic using survey data for a sample of young individuals living in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. In particular, we analyze whether pre‐pandemic perceptions and experiences of citizens about various dimensions of local governments and institutional quality had any mediating effect on the evolution of political trust after the outbreak of the covid‐19 pandemic. The results show a relative increase in political trust of about 9% in regions with high institutional quality (75th percentile) compared with regions with low institutional quality (25th percentile) over the period 2019−2020. This divergence can be associated with either a better performance of policymakers in high‐quality institutions regions, or to more positive attitudes toward politicians by citizens that, before the pandemic, believed to live in regions with efficient institutions. Overall results are not affected by the inclusion of regional fixed effects or by possible differential evolution of political trust according to a large set of observable regional characteristics.

The construction of consumer dynamic trust in cross-border online shopping – qualitative research based on Tmall Global, JD Worldwide and NetEase Koala

PurposeAs Chinese imported cross-border e-commerce has entered a stage of rapid development, the problem of consumer shopping risk is increasingly prominent and the crisis of consumer trust is intensified. The theory of establishing consumer trust in traditional online shopping can no longer meet the need of cross-border context.Design/methodology/approachThe researchers used the methods of network logs and grounded theory. The data collection and analysis are conducted on consumer comments from Tmall Global, NetEase Koala and JD Worldwide in the product comment area. This article explored and extracted the moderating variables of consumer perceived risk and cross-border characteristics in cross-border e-commerce. Based on the theory of “perceived risk – consumer trust – consumer purchase decision – making,” this article deduced mechanism of consumer dynamic trust based on the whole process of cross-border e-commerce transaction.FindingsIn the prepurchase, purchase and postpurchase stages of cross-border e-commerce transactions, consumers' perceived cognitive risk, transaction risk and utility risk are moderated by the cultural distance, geographical distance and institutional distance caused by the cross-border transaction subjects. On this basis, the preinfluence factors of trust in each transaction stage are synthesized to respectively influence the establishment of cognitive trust, emotional trust and behavioral trust, so as to affect consumers to make the order payment, confirm receipt and praise repurchase decisions. At the same time, with the advance of prepurchase, purchase and postpurchase transactions in cross-border online shopping, consumer trust presents a dynamic evolutionary path of “cognitive trust – emotional trust – behavioral trust.”Originality/valueThis article expands the application context of the theory of consumer rational behavior from traditional online shopping to the context of cross-border online shopping and expands the scope of interpretation of the theory of consumer rational behavior. This article also supplements the theoretical gaps in the dynamic evolution of consumer trust in cross-border online shopping, enriches the decision-making process model of consumers in the context of cross-border online shopping and provides new ideas for follow-up research.

Modeling and Numerical Methods of Supply Chain Trust Network with the Complex Network

Finding reliable partners is the key to supply chain management. However, the symmetrical evaluation of enterprise trust is complex, so the decision-makers must understand its quantitative and qualitative characteristics in order to realize a reasonable evaluation. Based on the analysis of the causes and influencing factors of supply chain trust, this paper constructed four primary indexes and 16 secondary indexes to define enterprise trust, and used analytic network process (ANP) to evaluate and rank the indicators. Then, the paper constructed a supply chain directed weighted trust evolution network model based on complex network theory, integrated trust into the network with edge weights, and put forward the merit index of comprehensive node degree, weight, and efficiency to study the supply chain network evolution. The simulation results show that the node degree distribution in the trust evolution network conforms to the power-law distribution rule, and the trust evolution model of the complex network has obvious scale-free characteristics, which effectively avoid the situation that the node influence is too high due to the excessive strength of a single index. At the same time, it can quickly evaluate the node influence of the directed weighted complex network, and provide certain practical value for the node trust prediction of the supply chain network.

“It's Not Paul, It's a Robot”: The Impact of Linguistic Framing and the Evolution of Trust and Distrust in a Collaborative Robot During a Human-Robot Interaction

“It's Not Paul, It's a Robot”: The Impact of Linguistic Framing and the Evolution of Trust and Distrust in a Collaborative Robot During a Human-Robot Interaction

Consensus reaching with trust evolution in social network group decision making

The trust degrees among individuals play an important role in social network group decision making (SNGDM). They are assumed to be unchanged with the time in most of extant SNGDM studies. However, in some SNGDM scenarios, the trust degrees of individuals will evolve with the time due to the changes of the opinion similarities among individuals. In this paper, we discuss the consensus reaching issue in SNGDM with trust evolution. Specifically, we first formulate a consensus reaching problem with trust evolution, and then propose its resolution framework. In this framework, we establish the trust evolution model, in which the trust degrees among individuals at the next time are determined by the individuals’ historical trust degrees and the opinion similarities at this time. Based on this, we design a novel consensus reaching process, called CRP-OD-TE, which first includes the opinion dynamics-based endogenous feedback mechanism, and the trust evolution-based exogenous feedback mechanism. Furthermore, two applications are provided to illustrate the proposed CRP-OD-TE. Finally, we complete some simulations and comparative analysis. The results show that (1) the introduction of opinion dynamics into CRP as the endogenous feedback mechanism can accelerate the process of consensus reaching; and (2) the evolution of trust degrees has a significant impact on the group consensus reaching, which may be beneficial or destructive.

Evolution of trust in the sharing economy with fixed provider and consumer roles under different host network structures

We present an evolutionary trust game to investigate the formation of trust in sharing economy situations, where participants have a fixed provider or consumer role, and can only choose between trustworthy or untrustworthy behaviour. There are a variety of sharing economy platforms catering for differing goods and services, the properties of which may affect the degree to which these roles are variable for users. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the evolution of trust in sharing economy situations with fixed provider and consumer roles is being studied in the literature. Our trust model comprises four player types: trustworthy consumer, trustworthy provider, untrustworthy consumer, and untrustworthy provider. Five scenarios with varying initial population ratios of these player types under different host network structures are systematically investigated. Our results show that, in contrast to previous work that allowed switching roles between providers and consumers, trust declines monotonically as the reward for trustworthy behaviour is reduced, with a critical transition point for inversion of trustworthy/untrustworthy populations. In addition, the initial population of trustworthy providers is shown to significantly affect the point at which trustworthy behaviour most declines, with a high proportion resulting in the persistence of trustworthiness even when the reward for such behaviour is significantly low. Our results also show that, when different host network structures are considered, the average degree of the underlying network is an important factor in determining the level of trustworthiness in the population. Our findings may be of importance for understanding the emergence and maintenance of trust in sharing economy platforms where user roles are completely or predominantly rigid.

An agent-based model to assess citizens’ acceptance of COVID-19 restrictions

ABSTRACT Italy was the first European state affected by COVID-19. Despite many uncertainties, citizens chose to trust the authorities and their trust was pivotal. This research aims to investigate the contribution of Italian citizens’ trust in Public Institutions and how it influenced the acceptance of the necessary counter measures. Applying linear regression to a dataset of 4260 Italian respondents, we modelled trust from its main cognitive components, with particular reference to competence and willingness. Therefore, exploiting agent-based modelling, we investigated how these components affected trust and how trust evolution influences the acceptance of these restrictive measures. Our analysis confirms the key role of competence and willingness as cognitive components of trust. Results also suggest that a generic attempt to raise the average trust, besides being challenging, may not be the best strategy to increase compliance. Furthermore, reasoning at category level is a fundamental to identify the best components on which to invest.

Trust in the programme: An exploration of trust dynamics within rural group-based support programmes

Publicly-funded programmes of business support are important vehicles for rural development, and over the last two decades, group-based models of business support have become popular, in which dedicated advisors work with small firms in groups, rather than one-to-one mentoring. A fundamental goal of such programmes is to foster enhanced inter-firm knowledge exchange and learning, and improved firm resilience and innovation, through the development of collective trust amongst participants,. Although many studies have investigated the evolution of trust, including in a rural context, to date most research has focused either on the macro-institutional level, or the micro-personal level, with relatively little exploration of how meso-level collective trust may be encouraged amongst groups of participants in rural business support programmes. This paper addresses the gap by exploring the development of collective trust within two group-based rural business support programmes in Northern Ireland. The study reveals that programme design features and the interpersonal style of advisors combined to shape clients' trust in the programmes and their sponsoring institutions, as well as influencing the degrees of goodwill and camaraderie within the client groups themselves.

Public support for lockdown policies

Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, many countries have been forced to impose non-pharmaceutical policy interventions such as lockdowns to stop community transmission. We investigate public support for the lockdown policy in Spain, one of the countries most affected by the pandemic and with the strictest lockdown in Europe. Based on survey data collected during the first weeks of March and April 2020, we investigate how public support for the lockdown relates to the number of confirmed cases in the province of residence, personal institutional trust and concern about the severity of coronavirus. We find that public approval of the lockdown significantly relates to the evolution of COVID cases, institutional trust, political ideology and personal economic situation.

The economics of change and stability in social trust: Evidence from (and for) Catalan secession

AbstractConsequences of social trust are comparatively well studied, while its societal determinants are often subject to debate. This paper studies both in the context of Catalan attempts to secede from Spain: First, we test whether Catalonia enjoys higher levels of social capital that it is prevented from capitalizing on. Second, the paper examines whether secessionist movements create animosity and political divisions within society that undermine trust. Employing the nine available waves of the European Social Survey for Spain, we only find weak indications that social trust levels are higher in Catalonia than in the rest of the country. Interestingly, we further find testimony of a purely transient “exuberance effect” after secession became a real option, indicating that the long‐run evolution of social trust may best be thought of as a stable punctuated equilibrium.

Responsiveness, Performance and Corruption: Reasons for the Decline of Political Trust

We test the importance of responsiveness, performance and corruption to explain the evolution of political trust in Spain between 1997 and 2019. To this end, the study analyses two longitudinal datasets, namely, a repeated cross-sectional dataset from the Spanish samples of Eurobarometer and an individual-level panel survey conducted during a period of economic recovery in 2015. The study finds that perceptions about political corruption and responsiveness matter greatly in shaping political trust and to a lesser extent economic performance. Although the Great Recession is likely responsible for the sharp decline in trust towards political parties and the parliament between 2008 and 2012, the analysis suggests that trust in representative institutions remains low even after the Recession because of a series of devastating corruption incidents and a perceived lack of responsiveness of the political system. On the other hand, the study finds indications that trust in the judicial system might have been mainly affected by perceptions of corruption.

The Evolutionary Game of Trust in Public-Private Partnership Project Networks

In public-private partnership (PPP) projects, the government plays a role as both regulator and participant. Trust between the government and the private sector is important as it may affect project performance and even cause the problem of a breach of contract, which may lead to project failure. Little is known, however, about the formation and evolution mechanisms of trust in this context. This study analyses the complex evolution of trust in PPP project networks. An evolutionary game of trust model between government and the private sector is established and analysed, the strategic equilibrium points are obtained by solving the replication dynamic equation, and the Jacobian matrix and differential equation stability theory are introduced to analyse the stability of the equilibrium points. The results reveal the relationships among the stable state of trust, the initial state of trust, and the payment matrix, indicating that the payment matrix can effectively shape the evolution process and stable state of trust to influence performance. This study provides a novel contribution in solving the complex trust problem in PPP project networks and it provides a new analytical tool for PPP project management practice.

Secure Localization Technology Based on Dynamic Trust Management in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have critical applications in various fields, and the algorithm of their secure localization has become a vital technology to support a network. In the light of the self-organization, random deployment and dynamic topology, the localization process is vulnerable to various kinds of malicious attacks. The model of dynamic trust management for a given node is proposed to deal with security concerns in wireless sensor networks. The trust computation is divided into three stages, which are the stage of trust initialization, trust establishment, and trust evolution. The initial value of a global trust relationship is established through a corresponding global trust relation graph in the initial stage of trust. The trust value of each node is calculated by the attribute value in the stage of trust establishment. In the evolution of trust, the iterative process of trust value is accelerated via the finite state machine. Compared with the existing wireless sensor networks, simulation results show that the proposed security localization technology method can resist many kinds of attacks with low communication and time consumption.

Does Terrorism Reduce Trust?: Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

ABSTRACT The literature on social capital and its economic implications shows that trust plays a significant role in the transaction of goods and services. However, few studies empirically investigate the evolution of trust over time. In this paper, we show how individuals’ trust in Pakistan is affected by the persistent shock of terrorism. By matching the country representative survey data with district-level terrorist attacks, we observe that exposure to terrorism is associated with lower levels of interpersonal trust. This finding is robust to various robustness checks including different indicators of terrorism risk and trust. Furthermore, our results are also consistent with the IV identification strategy.

The Evolution of Trust Within a Global Health Partnership With the Private Sector: An Inductive Framework.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in global health are increasingly common to support sustainable development and strengthen health systems in low- and middle-income countries. Since the release of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 culminating in a discrete goal "to revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development," public health scholars have sought to understand what makes PPPs successful in different contexts. While trust has long been identified as a key component of successful strategic alliances in the private sector, less is known about how trust emerges between public- and private- sector partners, particularly in global health. Therefore, we investigated how trust between partners evolved in the context of Project Last Mile (PLM), a global health partnership that translates the business acumen of The Coca-Cola Company to strengthen public health systems across Africa. This study draws upon secondary analysis of qualitative data generated as part of the longitudinal, mixed-methods evaluation of PLM across country settings. Seventy-seven interviews with a purposeful sample of key stakeholders were conducted in Mozambique, South Africa and eSwatini between August 2016 and July 2018. Trained qualitative interviewers followed a standard discussion guide, and audio-recorded interviews with participants' consent. In this secondary analysis, we analyzed qualitative data to understand how trust between partners was cultivated across settings. We drew upon stakeholder experiences to inform an inductive framework for how trust develops over time. Our analysis revealed five domains that were foundational to building trust: (1) reputational context, (2) team composition, (3) tangible outputs, (4) shared values, and (5) effective communication. The framework may be useful for private and public sector entities seeking to establish and sustain trust within their global health partnerships.

On the Transmission of Guilt Aversion and the Evolution of Trust

On the Transmission of Guilt Aversion and the Evolution of Trust

Stochastic evolutionary dynamics of trust games with asymmetric parameters.

Trusting in others and reciprocating that trust with trustworthy actions are crucial to successful and prosperous societies. The trust game has been widely used to quantitatively study trust and trustworthiness, involving a sequential exchange between an investor and a trustee. Deterministic evolutionary game theory predicts no trust and no trustworthiness, whereas the behavioral experiments with the one-shot anonymous trust game show that people substantially trust and respond trustworthily. To explain these discrepancies, previous works often turn to additional mechanisms, which are borrowed from other games such as the prisoner's dilemma. Although these mechanisms lead to the evolution of trust and trustworthiness to an extent, the optimal or the most common strategy often involves no trustworthiness. In this paper, we study the impact of asymmetric demographic parameters (e.g.,different population sizes) on game dynamics of the trust game. We show that, in a weak-mutation limit, stochastic evolutionary dynamics with the asymmetric parameters can lead to the evolution of high trust and high trustworthiness without any additional mechanisms in well-mixed finite populations. Even full trust and near full trustworthiness can be the most common strategies. These results are qualitatively different from those of the previous works. Our results thereby demonstrate rich evolutionary dynamics of the asymmetric trust game.