53,845 research outputs found
The Cost of Trust in the Dynamics of Best Attachment
The need of trust is growing in several contexts as e-commerce, virtual communities, distributed on-line services and many others as an essential precautionary component for users during interactions with strangers, either other people or virtual agents. Generally trust metrics endorse the principle "the higher the trust, the more legitimate that user will be''; a consequence is that getting trusted must require some effort, otherwise all participants would easily achieve high trustworthiness. In this work we study how a user can achieve and preserve a good trust and what costs it requires over time; we also investigate some heuristics that allow reducing the complexity in exploring the rank-effort space especially for large networks
Prediction and Prevention of Disproportionally Dominant Agents in Complex Networks
We develop an early warning system and subsequent optimal intervention policy
to avoid the formation of disproportional dominance (`winner-takes-all') in
growing complex networks. This is modeled as a system of interacting agents,
whereby the rate at which an agent establishes connections to others is
proportional to its already existing number of connections and its intrinsic
fitness. We derive an exact 4-dimensional phase diagram that separates the
growing system into two regimes: one where the `fit-get-richer' (FGR) and one
where, eventually, the `winner-takes-all' (WTA). By calibrating the system's
parameters with maximum likelihood, its distance from the WTA regime can be
monitored in real time. This is demonstrated by applying the theory to the
eToro social trading platform where users mimic each others trades. If the
system state is within or close to the WTA regime, we show how to efficiently
control the system back into a more stable state along a geodesic path in the
space of fitness distributions. It turns out that the common measure of
penalizing the most dominant agents does not solve sustainably the problem of
drastic inequity. Instead, interventions that first create a critical mass of
high-fitness individuals followed by pushing the relatively low-fitness
individuals upward is the best way to avoid swelling inequity and escalating
fragility
Trust-based quality culture conceptual model for higher education institutions
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) play a crucial role in societies as they enhance the sustainable development of nations. In a context of increasing competition and financial difficulties in higher education institutions, the loyalty of students, faculty and administration staff as well as institutional reputation are key factors for survival and success. They are built upon trust and high quality of services rendered by HEIs. The intentional development of trust serves the purpose of enhancing the quality culture in higher education. The concept of quality culture has become a natural successor of quality management and quality assurance in universities presenting a new perspective for viewing quality at HEIs - as a combination of structural and managerial with cultural and psychological components. This paper provides an elaboration of a novel Trust-Based Quality Culture Conceptual Model for Higher Education Institutions which presents the perceived interconnections between trust and quality culture at HEIs. It can form a source for an inquiry process at HEIs, thus contributing to better contextual diagnosis of the stage where HEI is in the process of building the quality culture based on trust. The findings of this study are important in better understanding the quality culture development in HEIs that is based on trust, loyalty and reputation. It may have an impact on the decision-making processes concerning HEIsâ management. The proposed model contributes to the need for greater clarity, ordering and systematization of the role of trust in the processes of quality culture development
âThis is the way âIâ create my passwords ...":does the endowment effect deter people from changing the way they create their passwords?
The endowment effect is the term used to describe a phenomenon that manifests as a reluctance to relinquish owned artifacts, even when a viable or better substitute is offered. It has been confirmed by multiple studies when it comes to ownership of physical artifacts. If computer users also "own", and are attached to, their personal security routines, such feelings could conceivably activate the same endowment effect. This would, in turn, lead to their over-estimating the \value" of their existing routines, in terms of the protection they afford, and the risks they mitigate. They might well, as a consequence, not countenance any efforts to persuade them to adopt a more secure routine, because their comparison of pre-existing and proposed new routine is skewed by the activation of the endowment effect.In this paper, we report on an investigation into the possibility that the endowment effect activates when people adopt personal password creation routines. We did indeed find evidence that the endowment effect is likely to be triggered in this context. This constitutes one explanation for the failure of many security awareness drives to improve password strength. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research to confirm our findings, and to investigate the activation of the effect for other security routines
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