Trust Needs Touch: Understanding the Building of Trust through Social Presence

Trust is gaining in importance in today’s digital world where interactions become more and more impersonal. In this context, many studies show that social presence, i.e. the feeling of human contact, has a positive effect on the formation of trust. However, the theoretical explanation of the relationship is still somewhat unexplored in the IS domain. In this study, we draw on psychology literature and derive a comprehensive framework to conceptualize and explain the relationship in detail. Particularly, we identify four mechanisms that were not yet explicated by IS research. Using the developed framework as a structuring device, we then carry out a structured literature review in the IS domain to identify existing studies and their theoretical focus as well as to point out research gaps. We are able to show that there is much more to the relationship between social presence and trust than the IS domain has yet recognized

How Good Are We at Detecting a Phishing Attack? Investigating the Evolving Phishing Attack Email and Why It Continues to Successfully Deceive Society

Phishing attacks are on the increase. The fact that our ways of living, studying and working have drastically changed as a result of the COVID pandemic (i.e., almost everything being done online) has created many new cyber security concerns. In particular, with the move to remote working, the number of phishing emails threatening employees has increased. The 2020 Phishing Attack Landscape Report (Greathorn: 2020 Phishing attack landscape. https://info.greathorn.com/report-2020-phishing-attack-landscape/, 2020) highlights a sharp increase in the frequency of attempted phishing attacks. In this paper, we are interested in how the phishing email attack has evolved to this very threatening state. In detail, we explore the current phishing attack characteristics especially the growing challenges that have emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper documents a study that presented test participants with five different categories of emails (including phishing and non phishing) . The findings from the study show that participants, generally, found it difficult to detect modern phishing email attacks. Saying that, participants were alert to the spelling mistakes of the older phishing email attacks, sensitive information being requested from them and any slight change to what they were normally used to from an email. Moreover, we have found that people were not confident, worried and often dissatisfied with the current technologies available to protect them against phishing emails. In terms of trust, these feelings alerted us to the increasing severity of the phishing attack situation and just how vulnerable society has become/ still is

Evaluating e-commerce trust using fuzzy logic [article]

Trust is widely recognized as an essential factor for the continual development of business to customer electronic commerce (B2C EC). Many trust models have been developed, however, most are subjective and do not take into account the vagueness and ambiguity of EC trust and the customers’ intuitions and experience when conducting online transactions. In this article, we develop a fuzzy trust model using fuzzy reasoning to evaluate EC trust. This trust model is based on the information customers expect to find on an EC Website and is shown to increase customers trust towards online merchants. We argue that fuzzy logic is suitable for trust evaluation as it takes into account the uncertainties within e-commerce data and like human relationships; it is often expressed by linguistics terms rather then numerical values. The evaluation of the proposed model will be illustrated using two case studies and a comparison with two evaluation models was conducted to emphasise the importance of usin fuzzy logic

Evaluating trust in electronic commerce : a study based on the information provided on merchants' websites

Lack of trust has been identified as a major problem hampering the growth of Electronic Commerce (EC). It is reported by many studies that a large number of online shoppers abandon their transactions because they do not trust the website when they are asked to provide personal information. To support trust, we developed an information framework model based on research on EC trust. The model is based on the information a consumer expects to find on an EC website and that is shown from the literature to increase his/her trust towards online merchants. An information extraction system is then developed to help the user find this information. In this paper, we present the development of the information extraction system and its evaluation. This is then followed by a study looking at the use of the identified variables on a sample of EC websites

Usability and Trust in Information Systems

The need for people to protect themselves and their assets is as old as humankind. People's physical safety and their possessions have always been at risk from deliberate attack or accidental damage. The advance of information technology means that many individuals, as well as corporations, have an additional range of physical (equipment) and electronic (data) assets that are at risk. Furthermore, the increased number and types of interactions in cyberspace has enabled new forms of attack on people and their possessions. Consider grooming of minors in chat-rooms, or Nigerian email cons: minors were targeted by paedophiles before the creation of chat-rooms, and Nigerian criminals sent the same letters by physical mail or fax before there was email. But the technology has decreased the cost of many types of attacks, or the degree of risk for the attackers. At the same time, cyberspace is still new to many people, which means they do not understand risks, or recognise the signs of an attack, as readily as they might in the physical world. The IT industry has developed a plethora of security mechanisms, which could be used to mitigate risks or make attacks significantly more difficult. Currently, many people are either not aware of these mechanisms, or are unable or unwilling or to use them. Security experts have taken to portraying people as "the weakest link" in their efforts to deploy effective security [e.g. Schneier, 2000]. However, recent research has revealed at least some of the problem may be that security mechanisms are hard to use, or be ineffective. The review summarises current research on the usability of security mechanisms, and discusses options for increasing their usability and effectiveness

Online Trust Cues: Perceptions and Application

This qualitative study analyzes perceptions of online trust cues as identified by shoppers from three countries: Germany, Russia, and the USA. A novel approach of the repertory grid method is used to study online trust cues in business-to-consumers commercial online transactions. This study resulted in the list of web site elements and features that consumers recognize as trust cues and use to evaluate e-vendor’s trustworthiness. Findings show that out of fourteen categories of online trust cues, identified by online shoppers, three categories of online trust cues are found to be common across three cultures while eleven categories are culture specific. This exploratory study was done in the natural environment but participants did not buy a product. They only examined web sites to evaluate perceived trustworthiness. Hence, one has to be cautious in drawing final conclusions and applying them from a sample to a general populatio

Triggering trust:to what extent does the question influence the answer when evaluating the perceived importance of trust triggers?

Trust is a critical component of business to consumer (B2C) e-Commerce success. In the absence of typical environmental cues that consumers use to assess vendor trustworthiness in the offline retail context, online consumers often rely on trust triggers embedded within e-Commerce websites to contribute to the establishment of sufficient trust to make an online purchase. This paper presents and discusses the results of a series of studies which took an initial look at the extent to which the context or manner in which trust triggers are evaluated may exert influence on the perceived importance attributed to individual triggers. We hope that our investigations will help inform the evaluation approaches adopted to assess consumer trust. © 2009 The Author

Nuove dinamiche nel commercio dei prodotti agroalimentari: resistenze all’adozione dell’e-commerce nelle relazioni B2B [New trends in agri-food products trade: resistance to adoption of e-commerce in B2B relationships]

Since some decades, agri-food products exchanges can be carried on using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools. Anyway, their adoption in the agri-food sector appears to be hindered, both because of consolidated dynamics in developing B2B transactions, and of the peculiarities of the agri-food products themselves. The lack of direct relationships between partner heighten problems connected with food safety assessments, and with the definition of standardized production practices able to match business partner’ needs. Standardization is the key point in the relationship between e-commerce and agri-food sector. As for some products it is possible to define standardized requirements, it is hard to find a collocation for the wide range of agri-food differentiated and quality products in e-commerce B2B relationships. Moreover, existing e-marketplaces are not always able to convey properly the degree of differentiation and the peculiarities of agri-food products. The study aims at analyzing the barriers connected with the adoption of e-commerce in B2B relationships in agri-food sector, defining the factors which affect the interaction between the two areas. The attitude towards e-commerce showed by potential ICT tools users, chosen between Italian agri-food operators, has been analyzed; moreover, an overview on the evolution of agri-food e-marketplaces in the last 5 years has been carried on. The results describe the main problems concerning the adoption of e-commerce in agri-food sector, deeply connected with the agri-food products specifics. In spite of positive outcomes about efficiency and transactions for standardized products, the interaction between ICT tools and agri-food sector’s needs becomes problematic in case of high quality levels and differentiation, which can’t be properly conveyed by e-marketplaces. Results also highlight the role of trust and reputation in e-environments.e-commerce, B2B transactions, agri-food products, standardization, quality requirements

The mechanics of trust: a framework for research and design

With an increasing number of technologies supporting transactions over distance and replacing traditional forms of interaction, designing for trust in mediated interactions has become a key concern for researchers in human computer interaction (HCI). While much of this research focuses on increasing users’ trust, we present a framework that shifts the perspective towards factors that support trustworthy behavior. In a second step, we analyze how the presence of these factors can be signalled. We argue that it is essential to take a systemic perspective for enabling well-placed trust and trustworthy behavior in the long term. For our analysis we draw on relevant research from sociology, economics, and psychology, as well as HCI. We identify contextual properties (motivation based on temporal, social, and institutional embeddedness) and the actor's intrinsic properties (ability, and motivation based on internalized norms and benevolence) that form the basis of trustworthy behavior. Our analysis provides a frame of reference for the design of studies on trust in technology-mediated interactions, as well as a guide for identifying trust requirements in design processes. We demonstrate the application of the framework in three scenarios: call centre interactions, B2C e-commerce, and voice-enabled on-line gaming