1. Howard Rosenbaum <hrosenba@indiana.edu>
"Your Vulnerability in CyberSpace FBI and IU perspectives on Internet security, intellectual property, and privacy issues"
Ecommerce and the importance of trust: A social informatics perspective
Howard Rosenbaum

2. Ecommerce and the importance of trust:
Ecommerce and the importance of trust: A social informatics perspective
Social informatics is the interdisciplinary study of the design and uses of ICT that takes into account their interactions with people, and institutional and cultural contexts
The “context”
Mutual shaping

3. “There is … need to understand the psychological and social dimensions of “trust” since trust is a critical component of any sort of commercial transaction”
National Research Council (1998)
Trust is “crucial wherever risk, uncertainty, or interdependence exist. These conditions … certainly exist in the relationship between e-commerce vendors and customers. As conditions become more uncertain because business complexity increases through computer-mediated commerce, the need for trust grows
McKnight and Chervany (2001; 1)

4. From an SI perspective, we learn that trust
Does not reside in integrated circuits or fiber optic cables
Although it involves the exchange of information, trust is not reducible to information
Secure networks and the encrypted transmission of information may contribute to trust in the pipeline, but a lack of trust in the people or organizations at the other end means that people will not engage in or complete the transaction
(Fukuyama, 1999, 1995)

5. We learn that:
Trust is constituted, maintained, managed, broken, and repaired in a process of social construction that typically develops over time
The formation of trust, then, involves at least one and more likely a series of sustained interactions between an individual (trustor) and a locus of trust (trustee)
The interactions take place in a specific social and/or organizational context in which the formation process unfolds

6. Decomposing the problem of trust in ecommerce
The first step is to understand how trust is formed and managed in digital markets
How do people who regularly engage in online transactions with a range of companies develop trust in these companies?
What is it about ecommerce web sites that helps or hinders people as they decide whether they trust the company enough to engage in transactions with it?
How can ecommerce web sites be designed to maximize the probability that people will decide that the companies can be trusted?

7. One view of trust in ecommerce
Locus of trust
Perception of trust
Intentional construction of trust
Formation of swift trust
Site as artifact:
Trust formation, maintenance and repair

8. Vulnerabilities
Personal information
Financial information
Official information
Work information
Threats
Unauthorized use
Profiteering
Data mining
Security breaches
Identity theft
Concerns
Security
Privacy
Lack of vendor info
Lack of recourse

9. Security
Encryption
Trusted 3rd parties
Remedies
National and international privacy policies
Data protection
Consumer protection
Technological
Legislative
Social
Seal programs
Screening sites
Online arbitration
Full disclosure

10. Individual trust is a “willingness …to be vulnerable to the actions of another …based on the expectation that the other will perform [an] action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”
(Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman, 1995; 712)
Social trust is an “expectation that arises, within a community, of regular honest and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community”
(Fukuyama 1995; 26).

11. Psychological or behavioral trust
Having confidence that the other will carry thorough on their obligations; can also be a learned behavior based on prior knowledge and experience
Interpersonal trust
An expectation that others will behave in a predictable way and a willingness to be vulnerable during the trust relation
Organizational trust
The belief that an organization will carry through on its obligations

12. Legal trust
A belief in the power of contracts and other statutory instruments to regulate the fulfillment of obligations
Situational trust:
Based on cues and clues in the immediate social environment (swift trust is a special case)
Product trust
A buyer's belief that goods and services will perform their functions as claimed by the seller
Technology trust
A belief that ICTs will perform reliably and will not be used for untoward purposes such as surveillance