A Study of factors Influencing Consumers¡¦ Trust in Fortune-Telling Websites Abstract Many people still worry the security problem of shopping on the Internet, although Internet shopping is getting more and more popular. Based on a survey in Asia Pacific region in 2001 by VISA, Taiwanese interviewees have the lowest trust in online shopping. It would seriously impede the development of electronic commerce. However, on the other hand, Fortune-Telling, a very popular activity in Chinese community for thousand of years, has been embedded in almost every hot portal website and become its milk cow. Consumers are willing to not only pay a fee for the service, but also disclose personal information such as birth date, etc. If we can understand more about how consumers¡¦ trust in Fortune Telling website are influenced, it would give some implications for a website to get more trust from its consumers. The purpose of this research is to find factors influencing consumers¡¦ trust in Fortune-Telling websites. This research adopts three major research methods: experiment, interview and grounded theory. Based on literature review and an interview to a professional fortune-teller, a primitive conceptual research framework is developed and an experimental fortune-telling web site is thus established. There are twenty subjects joining the experiment. Most of subjects are interviewed twice, before and after learning the fortune telling results. Then the grounded theory research procedure is applied to the conversations of interviews. Finally, a consumer trust model of the fortune-telling website is established. The model shows that Well-Known, Product, Profession& Integrity, and Content of Website are main factors influencing customers¡¦ trust. Key words: trust, electronic commerce, fortune-telling, grounded theory, trust model

<p>Information fusion is to combine information from a variety of sources, or sensors. When the sources are uncertain or contradicting conflict can arise. To deal with such uncertainty and conflict a trust model can be used. The most common ones in information fusion currently is bayesian theory and Dempster-Shafer theory. Bayesian theory does not explicitly handle ignorance, and thus predetermined values has to be hard coded into the system. This is solved in Dempster-Shafer theory by the introduction of ignorance. Even though Dempster-Shafer theory is widely used in information fusion when there is a need for ignorance to be modelled, there has been serious critique presented towards the theory. Thus this work aims at examining another trust models utility in information fusion namely subjective logic. The examination is executed by studying subjective logic using two scenarios from the literature. The results from the scenarios points to subjective logic being a reasonable approach for modelling trust in information fusion.</p>

Information fusion is to combine information from a variety of sources, or sensors. When the sources are uncertain or contradicting conflict can arise. To deal with such uncertainty and conflict a trust model can be used. The most common ones in information fusion currently is bayesian theory and Dempster-Shafer theory. Bayesian theory does not explicitly handle ignorance, and thus predetermined values has to be hard coded into the system. This is solved in Dempster-Shafer theory by the introduction of ignorance. Even though Dempster-Shafer theory is widely used in information fusion when there is a need for ignorance to be modelled, there has been serious critique presented towards the theory. Thus this work aims at examining another trust models utility in information fusion namely subjective logic. The examination is executed by studying subjective logic using two scenarios from the literature. The results from the scenarios points to subjective logic being a reasonable approach for modelling trust in information fusion.

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are a next generation network that is expected to solve the wireless spectrum shortage problem, which is the shrinking of available wireless spectrum resources needed to facilitate future wireless applications. The first CRN standard, the IEEE 802.22, addresses this particular problem by allowing CRNs to share geographically unused TV spectrum to mitigate the spectrum shortage. Equipped with reasoning and learning engines, cognitive radios operate autonomously to locate unused channels to maximize its own bandwidth and Quality-of-Service (QoS). However, their increased capabilities over traditional radios introduce a new dimension of security threats. In an NSF 2009 workshop, the FCC raised the question, “What authentication mechanisms are needed to support cooperative cognitive radio networks? Are reputation-based schemes useful supplements to conventional Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication protocols?” Reputation-based schemes in cognitive radio networks are a popular technique for performing robust and accurate spectrum sensing without any inter-communication with licensed networks, but the question remains on how effective they are at satisfying the FCC security requirements. Our work demonstrates that trust-based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) protocols are vulnerable to rogue signals, which creates the illusion of inside attackers and raises the concern that such schemes are overly sensitive Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). The erosion of the sensor reputations in trust-based CSS protocols makes CRNs vulnerable to future attacks. To counter this new threat, we introduce community detection and cluster analytics to detect and negate the impact of rogue signals on sensor reputations.

Trust is a social phenomenon fundamental to relationships and a building block of our society. People experience it daily, such as in a borrowing between friends, in an e-commerce transaction, in a mother-son relationship, in a connection between autonomous agents, or to show faith in God (\"In God we trust\"). In the specific case of Biodiversity domain, trust is one of the pillars of the Citizen Science projects, which are helping to solve the lack of biodiversity data by engaging citizens to work as volunteers to address this problem. Measuring and simulating levels of trust on these projects might reveal or anticipate losses; for example, the disposal of data because a deficit of trust on the technical capacity of the volunteers, opening an opportunity to manage and improve it. However, trust is a hard concept to define. The word \'trust\' may carry different meanings, such as honesty, security, integrity, competence, etc. and this is an attribute of the \'suitcase words\'. Adopting the \'suitcase\' perspective would change the way as we define, model, and simulate trust, once people would identify, decode, and simulate many meanings of trust with a single approach. In this scenario, the main objective of our research was to verify the hypotheses 1) that trust is a suitcase word, and 2) that trust can be modeled and simulated under a suitcase word perspective. A network analysis of the Web of Science citation database was able to confirm the hypothesis that trust is a suitcase word, since a distribution analysis of articles showed that trust occurs across a wide range of disciplines, and since co-occurrence maps of keywords showed that trust meanings from these disciplines may be significantly different. To verify the second hypothesis, we proposed a framework to manage trust with three components: 1) a suitcase model to identify different meanings of trust, which is the main purpose of this work, 2) a procedure to detail trust situations in terms of the suitcase model, and 3) a behavioral decision model of confidence, which was required for our simulation, since trust and control play complementary roles in the development of confidence, and consequently, to generate a confident behavior to cooperate. In our suitcase model the decision to trust (or distrust) the trustee depends on the trustors\' general capacity to take risks (= trustfulness) and on the assessment of trustee\'s interests and capacity to behavior as the trustor expects (= trustworthiness). In a practical and workable way, trustworthiness was considered a function of the trustor\'s expectations (expected evidence) and the trustee\'s previous behavior (collected evidence) for each situation. We proposed a formalism to the suitcase model, and then replicated the PlayGround simulator to modify it and incorporate our model. The new simulator, the PlayGround 2.0, was used to run a case study using trust situations from Citizen Science projects. Our main goal with this case study was to test the hypothesis that trust can be simulated under a suitcase perspective. A successful simulation would plot agents in the field reacting differently according to each situation. Results were as expected, what demonstrated the comprehensive utility of our model, with potential to handle different meanings of trust in the context of Citizen Science in the Biodiversity domain. / Trust, que em português não possui uma tradução que reflita a sua complexidade, é um fenômeno fundamental para os relacionamentos e uma peça fundamental da nossa sociedade. Trust é vivenciada diariamente pelas pessoas, seja em um empréstimo entre amigos, em uma transação de comércio eletrônico, na relação entra uma mãe e um filho, na conexão entre agentes autônomos, ou para demonstrar a nossa fé. No caso específico da ciência da Biodiversidade, trust é um dos pilares dos projetos de Ciência Cidadã, que ajudam a resolver a falta de dados de biodiversidade engajando cidadãos para trabalhar como voluntários para solucionar o problema. Medir e simular trust nestes projetos pode revelar ou antecipar perdas, por exemplo, o descarte de dados devido à falta de trust na capacidade técnica dos voluntários, abrindo oportunidades para sua gestão e incentivo. Contudo, trust é um conceito difícil de definir. A palavra pode carregar muitos significados, tais como honestidade, segurança, integridade, competência, etc., e esta é uma característica das suitcase words (palavras-mala). Adotar uma perspectiva de suitcase pode mudar a maneira como definimos, modelamos e simulamos trust, pois as pessoas poderiam identificar, decodificar, e simular vários significados de trust com uma única abordagem. Neste cenário, o objetivo principal desta pesquisa foi verificar as hipóteses de que 1) trust é uma suitcase word e de que 2) trust pode ser modelada e simulada em uma perspectiva de suitcase com potencial para manipulação de diferentes significados. Uma análise de distribuição utilizando o banco de dados Web of Science foi suficiente para confirmar a primeira hipótese de que trust é uma suitcase word, pois uma análise dos seus registros de citações mostrou que trust é estudado por muitas disciplinas da ciência, e além disso, mapas de co-ocorrência de palavraschaves mostraram que os significados de trust nas disciplinas podem ser diferentes. Para verificar a segunda hipótese, nós propusemos um framework com três componentes: 1) um \'modelo suitcase\' para identificar diferentes significados de trust, que é o objetivo principal deste trabalho, 2) um procedimento para detalhar as situações de trust em componentes do modelo suitcase, e 3) um modelo de decisão comportamental sobre confiança, que foi necessário para nossa simulação, uma vez que trust e controle tem papéis complementares no desenvolvimento da confiança, e consequentemente, na exibição de um comportamento de confiança que pode levar à cooperação. No nosso modelo, a decisão de trust o trustee (aquele a quem trust é direcionada) depende da capacidade do trustor (aquele que direciona trust) em aceitar riscos (= trustfulness), e da avaliação do interesse e da capacidade do trustee em agir como o esperado (= trustworthiness). De uma maneira prática, trustworthiness foi considerada como uma função das evidências esperadas e coletadas em cada situação. Nós propusemos um formalismo para o novo modelo, e depois replicamos um simulador chamado PlayGround para depois modificá-lo e incorporar o modelo suitcase. O novo simulador, o PlayGround 2.0, foi utilizado para rodar um estudo de caso utilizando situações comuns em projetos de Citizen Science. Nosso maior objetivo foi testar a hipótese de que trust poderia ser simulada em uma perspectiva de suitcase. Uma simulação bem-sucedida plotaria os agentes em campo reagindo diferentemente de acordo com as situações apresentadas. Os resultados foram como esperados, o que demonstrou a utilidade abrangente do nosso modelo, com potencial para lidar com diferentes significados de trust no contexto dos projetos de Ciência Cidadã para Biodiversidade, ou em outros contextos.

Trust is a social phenomenon fundamental to relationships and a building block of our society. People experience it daily, such as in a borrowing between friends, in an e-commerce transaction, in a mother-son relationship, in a connection between autonomous agents, or to show faith in God (\"In God we trust\"). In the specific case of Biodiversity domain, trust is one of the pillars of the Citizen Science projects, which are helping to solve the lack of biodiversity data by engaging citizens to work as volunteers to address this problem. Measuring and simulating levels of trust on these projects might reveal or anticipate losses; for example, the disposal of data because a deficit of trust on the technical capacity of the volunteers, opening an opportunity to manage and improve it. However, trust is a hard concept to define. The word \'trust\' may carry different meanings, such as honesty, security, integrity, competence, etc. and this is an attribute of the \'suitcase words\'. Adopting the \'suitcase\' perspective would change the way as we define, model, and simulate trust, once people would identify, decode, and simulate many meanings of trust with a single approach. In this scenario, the main objective of our research was to verify the hypotheses 1) that trust is a suitcase word, and 2) that trust can be modeled and simulated under a suitcase word perspective. A network analysis of the Web of Science citation database was able to confirm the hypothesis that trust is a suitcase word, since a distribution analysis of articles showed that trust occurs across a wide range of disciplines, and since co-occurrence maps of keywords showed that trust meanings from these disciplines may be significantly different. To verify the second hypothesis, we proposed a framework to manage trust with three components: 1) a suitcase model to identify different meanings of trust, which is the main purpose of this work, 2) a procedure to detail trust situations in terms of the suitcase model, and 3) a behavioral decision model of confidence, which was required for our simulation, since trust and control play complementary roles in the development of confidence, and consequently, to generate a confident behavior to cooperate. In our suitcase model the decision to trust (or distrust) the trustee depends on the trustors\' general capacity to take risks (= trustfulness) and on the assessment of trustee\'s interests and capacity to behavior as the trustor expects (= trustworthiness). In a practical and workable way, trustworthiness was considered a function of the trustor\'s expectations (expected evidence) and the trustee\'s previous behavior (collected evidence) for each situation. We proposed a formalism to the suitcase model, and then replicated the PlayGround simulator to modify it and incorporate our model. The new simulator, the PlayGround 2.0, was used to run a case study using trust situations from Citizen Science projects. Our main goal with this case study was to test the hypothesis that trust can be simulated under a suitcase perspective. A successful simulation would plot agents in the field reacting differently according to each situation. Results were as expected, what demonstrated the comprehensive utility of our model, with potential to handle different meanings of trust in the context of Citizen Science in the Biodiversity domain. / Trust, que em português não possui uma tradução que reflita a sua complexidade, é um fenômeno fundamental para os relacionamentos e uma peça fundamental da nossa sociedade. Trust é vivenciada diariamente pelas pessoas, seja em um empréstimo entre amigos, em uma transação de comércio eletrônico, na relação entra uma mãe e um filho, na conexão entre agentes autônomos, ou para demonstrar a nossa fé. No caso específico da ciência da Biodiversidade, trust é um dos pilares dos projetos de Ciência Cidadã, que ajudam a resolver a falta de dados de biodiversidade engajando cidadãos para trabalhar como voluntários para solucionar o problema. Medir e simular trust nestes projetos pode revelar ou antecipar perdas, por exemplo, o descarte de dados devido à falta de trust na capacidade técnica dos voluntários, abrindo oportunidades para sua gestão e incentivo. Contudo, trust é um conceito difícil de definir. A palavra pode carregar muitos significados, tais como honestidade, segurança, integridade, competência, etc., e esta é uma característica das suitcase words (palavras-mala). Adotar uma perspectiva de suitcase pode mudar a maneira como definimos, modelamos e simulamos trust, pois as pessoas poderiam identificar, decodificar, e simular vários significados de trust com uma única abordagem. Neste cenário, o objetivo principal desta pesquisa foi verificar as hipóteses de que 1) trust é uma suitcase word e de que 2) trust pode ser modelada e simulada em uma perspectiva de suitcase com potencial para manipulação de diferentes significados. Uma análise de distribuição utilizando o banco de dados Web of Science foi suficiente para confirmar a primeira hipótese de que trust é uma suitcase word, pois uma análise dos seus registros de citações mostrou que trust é estudado por muitas disciplinas da ciência, e além disso, mapas de co-ocorrência de palavraschaves mostraram que os significados de trust nas disciplinas podem ser diferentes. Para verificar a segunda hipótese, nós propusemos um framework com três componentes: 1) um \'modelo suitcase\' para identificar diferentes significados de trust, que é o objetivo principal deste trabalho, 2) um procedimento para detalhar as situações de trust em componentes do modelo suitcase, e 3) um modelo de decisão comportamental sobre confiança, que foi necessário para nossa simulação, uma vez que trust e controle tem papéis complementares no desenvolvimento da confiança, e consequentemente, na exibição de um comportamento de confiança que pode levar à cooperação. No nosso modelo, a decisão de trust o trustee (aquele a quem trust é direcionada) depende da capacidade do trustor (aquele que direciona trust) em aceitar riscos (= trustfulness), e da avaliação do interesse e da capacidade do trustee em agir como o esperado (= trustworthiness). De uma maneira prática, trustworthiness foi considerada como uma função das evidências esperadas e coletadas em cada situação. Nós propusemos um formalismo para o novo modelo, e depois replicamos um simulador chamado PlayGround para depois modificá-lo e incorporar o modelo suitcase. O novo simulador, o PlayGround 2.0, foi utilizado para rodar um estudo de caso utilizando situações comuns em projetos de Citizen Science. Nosso maior objetivo foi testar a hipótese de que trust poderia ser simulada em uma perspectiva de suitcase. Uma simulação bem-sucedida plotaria os agentes em campo reagindo diferentemente de acordo com as situações apresentadas. Os resultados foram como esperados, o que demonstrou a utilidade abrangente do nosso modelo, com potencial para lidar com diferentes significados de trust no contexto dos projetos de Ciência Cidadã para Biodiversidade, ou em outros contextos.

In recent years Crowdsourced, or Volunteered, Geographic Information (CGI, VGI), has emerged as a large, up-to-date and easily accessible data source. Primarily attributable to the rise of the Geoweb and widespread use of location enabled technologies, this environment of widespread innovation has repositioned the role of consumers of spatial information. Collaborative and participatory web environments have led to a democratisation of the global mapping process, and resulted in a paradigm shift to the consumer of geographic data also acting as a data producer. With such a large and diverse group of participants actively mapping the globe, the resulting flood of information has become increasingly attractive to authoritative mapping agencies, in order to augment their own spatial data supply chains. The use of CGI would allow these agencies to undertake continuous improvement of their own data and products, adding a dimension of currency that has previously been unattainable due to high associated costs. CGI, however, through its diversity of authorship, presents a quality assurance risk to these agencies should it be included in their authoritative products. Until now, this risk has been insurmountable, with CGI remaining a “Pandora’s Box” which many agencies are reluctant to open. This research presents an algorithmic model that overcomes these issues, by quantifying trust in CGI in order to assess its implied quality. Labeled “VGTrust”, this model assesses information about a data author, its spatial trust, as well as its temporal trust, in order to produce an overall metric that is easy to understand and interpret. The VGTrust model will allow mapping agencies to harness CGI to augment existing datasets, or create new ones, thereby facilitating a targeted quality assurance process and minimizing risk to authoritativeness. This research proposes VGTrust in theory, on the basis of existing examinations of trust issues with CGI. Furthermore, a facilitated case study, “Building Our Footprints” is presented, where VGTrust is deployed to facilitate the capture of a building footprint dataset, the results of which revealing the veracity of the model as a measure to assess trust for these data. Finally, a data structure is proposed in the form of a “geo-molecule”, which allows the full spectrum of trust indicators to be stored a data structure at feature level, allowing the transitivity of this information to travel with each feature following creation. By overcoming the trust issues inherent in CGI, this research will allow the integration of crowdsourced and authoritative data, thereby leveraging the power of the crowd for productive and innovative re-use.

Bakgrund och problemformulering: Skiftet till digitala banktjänster innebär ett annat arbetssätt att bibehålla förtroendet hos sina kunder då servicen blir mindre personlig. Förtroende och service är en viktig del hos kunderna samtidigt som det ställs nya krav gällande bekvämlighet och automatiserade självtjänster. Mot denna bakgrund är möjliga problem som kan uppstå en bristande säkerhet samt riskerna kring integriteten.   Syftet: Studiens syfte är att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan kundernas förtroende och bankernas digitala banktjänster. Utöver detta vill forskarna få en förståelse för bankkunders förtroende för sin digitala bank.   Metod: Undersökningen bygger på kvantitativ metod i form av en enkätundersökning som sedan används för att genomföra en korrelationsanalys och regressionsanalys.  Teoretisk referensram: Technology Acceptance Model, Social Exchange Theory, Perceived Risk och Digitala Tillitsmodellen.  Empiri: Empirin har fyra olika fokusområden: kontrollfrågor, förtroende, digitala banktjänster samt risk och säkerhet. Dessa sammanställs och testas i en korrelationsanalys och regressionsanalys för att undersöka samband och testa hypoteser.   Slutsats: Resultatet visar att det föreligger ett positivt samband mellan digitala banktjänsters användbarhet och förtroende för digitala banktjänster samt att upplevd integritetsrisk har ett negativt samband med förtroendet. Trots att det kan finnas ett samband mellan digitala banktjänsternas användarvänlighet och förtroende finns inte tillräckligt med stöd för att bevisa detta. / Background and problem formulation: The shift to digital banking services means a different way of working to maintain the trust of its customers, this as the service has become less personal. Trust and service are valued highly for the customers, while new demands are being made regarding convenience and automated self-service. Against this background, possible problems that may arise are a lack of security and the risks surrounding integrity.  Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate whether there is a relationship between customers' trust and the banks' digital banking services. In addition to this, the researchers want to gain an understanding of bank customers' trust in their digital bank.  Method: The survey is based on a quantitative method in the form of a questionnaire which is then used to carry out a correlation and regression analysis.  Framework: Technology Acceptance Model, Social Exchange Theory, Perceived Risk and Digital Trust Model.  Empiricism: The empiricism has four different focus areas: control questions, trust, digital banking services and lastly risk as well as security. These are compiled and tested in a correlation and regression analysis to examine relationships by testing hypotheses.  Conclusions: The findings show that there is a positive relationship between the usability of digital banking services and trust in digital banking services, and that perceived integrity risk has a negative relationship with trust. Although there may be a link between the ease of use of digital banking services and trust, there is not enough support to prove this.

The rapid growth of the Internet has resulted in the desperate need for alternative ways to keep electronic transactions secure while at the same time allowing entities that do not know each other to interact. This has, in turn, led to a wide area of interest in the issues of trust and trust modeling to be used by machines. A large amount of work has already been undertaken in this area in an attempt to transfer the trust and interaction decision making processes onto the machine. However this work has taken a number of different approaches with little to no correlation between various models and no standard set of criteria was even proposed that can be used to evaluate the value of such models. The proposed research chooses to use a detailed literature survey to investigate the current models in existence. This investigation focuses on identifying criteria that are required by trust models. These criteria are grouped into four categories that represent four important concepts to be implemented in some manner by trust models: trust representation, initial trust, trust update and trust evaluation. The process of identifying these criteria has led to a second problem. The trust evaluation process is a detailed undertaking requiring a high processing overhead. This process can either result in a value that allows an agent to trust another to a certain extent or in a distrust value that results in termination of the interaction. The evaluation process required to obtain the distrust value is just as process intensive as the one resulting in determining a level of trust and the constraints that will be placed on an interaction. This raises the question: How do we simplify the trust evaluation process for agents that have a high probability of resulting in a distrust value? This research solves this problem by adding a fifth category to the criteria already identified; namely: prejudice filters. These filters have been identified by the literature study and are tested by means of a prototype implementation that uses a specific scenario in order to test two simulation case studies. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Computer Science / unrestricted

在龐大且開放的分散式計算環境中，傳統的信賴模型由於缺乏完善的信賴程度更新機制，很容易出現節點間推薦優良服務的效能低落、服務熱點產生、甚至是無法有效排擠詐欺服務的問題，因而導致額外成本的付出。本論文利用社會學行動理論與人際環境關係理論，設計的一個新的信賴模型。在此信賴模型中，發展節點間的 「合作」、 「競爭」 以及 「同業公會」 等橫向關係，提升節點間信賴程度的更新效率，進而增進信賴模型的穩定性。我們設計了一個有視覺化介面的分散式計算環境動態模擬器，以測試信賴模型在面對動態環境中無法預期的計算節點 「上線」、 「離線」、 「無預警當機」 甚至 「出現詐欺服務」 時的應變能力。模擬實驗證實，我們的信賴模型在整體服務滿意度、計算成本等指標上，均有較佳的表現。 / In a large open distributed computing environment, due to the lack of a good mechanism for trust update among computing nodes, traditional trust model often encounters problems such as low quality of service recommendation, occurrence of hot spots, and no effective mechanism to exclude deceptive nodes. In this thesis, we use the action theory and inter-person relation theory in social science to design a new trust model with relations between nodes such as cooperation, competition, and guild to improve the efficiency and stability of trust update. We have designed a dynamic simulator with a visual interface for distributed computing to test the abilities of the trust model under scenarios such as bringing nodes on-line, taking nodes off-line, unexpectedly service outage, and occurrence of deceptive nodes. Our experiments revealed that our trust model has superior performance in various indices such as service satisfaction and computational cost.