Issues of Quality and Trust in Computing

Jo Lumsdenj.lumsden@aston.ac.uk

Aston UniversityBirmingham, UK

Why Should We Consider Trust?

• GeoViQua is all about quality so why is trust important?

• trust as a human construct encompasses the concept of quality

• when making a decision to trust an individual, organisation, service, or to select a product, we are internally making some intrinsic decisions or assessments about the quality of the service, individual, organisation or productTrust

Quality

Why Should We Consider Trust?

• “The concept of trust is crucial because it affects a number of factors essential to online transactions [...] without trust, development of e-Commerce cannot reach its potential” (www.cheskin.com)

• most IT-based trust research has emerged from e-Commerce...

• ...so what do we know about trust representation?• ...how does that knowledge relate to quality in

GEOSS?

What is Trust?

• trust is a complex concept that has been the subject of study across many different disciplines – e.g.:– sociology: trust can be held by individuals, social

relationships, and social systems → modern society would not be possible without trust

– psychology: individual personality differences and interpersonal relationships

– business studies: credibility (belief that vendor has good intentions and will behave favourably) is critical component of trust

Models of Trust

• variety of classifications of trust – e.g.:– soft trust v. hard trust (Head et. al)

• former cannot be resolved through application of technology, latter can

– technological trust v. relational trust (McCord & Ratnasingam)

• technological trust relates to an individual’s belief that the underlying technology infrastructure and control mechanisms of a website are capable of facilitating transactions– distils perception of security and reliability

• relational trust concerns consumer’s willingness to accept vulnerability in an online transaction on the basis of positive expectations regarding vendor’s behaviour– based on attitudes and behaviours of consumers as they relate to UI

components such as privacy policies, assurance seals, and testimonial or vendor information

Models of Trust

• variety of classifications of trust (contd.) – e.g.:– initial (‘grabbing’) trust v. experiential trust (Marsh & Meech)

• many of our initial trusting decisions are spontaneous – if a user is turned off by a website, a vendor will never succeed in moving consumers from initial to more established (experiential) trust

– strategic trust v. moralistic trust (Uslaner)

• strategic trust helps us decide whether a website is safe; moralistic trust is based on our world view which we learn as a child and which helps us take risks (strong role in people’s view of the Internet as an opportunity or threat)

Models of Trust

• Sutherland & Tans’ multidimensional trust model

DispositionalTrust

InstitutionalTrust

InterpersonalTrust

Outcomes

Online Purchase Behaviour

Intention to Trust

trust that lies deep within us

strong determinant

of initial trust • greater disposition to trust = more likely to trust based on

only limited information; other consumers will require more information before trusting

Trust Triggers

• make trust-related decisions based on intrinsic cues we collected from environment in which decision is made

• trust needs to be integral part of design, not an afterthought

• set of verified website elements that have been empirically shown to serve as cues for trust establishment – trust triggers

Trust Triggers

• immediate trust triggers– customer testimonials/feedback– professional website design– branding– 3rd party security seals– up-to-date technology & security measures– alternative channels of communication between consumers

and vendor– clearly stated policies and vendor information

• interaction-based trust triggers– ease of navigation– consistent (professional) graphic design

Trust Triggers

Importance of Trust Triggers

• different people attribute different levels of importance to different sets of triggers

• purchase type influences importance of triggers

Questions for GeoViQua

• isn’t establishing a concrete definition of quality not part of a larger goal to engender trust in Geo data users?– trust in a provider of data to deliver a “product” that will

meet the user’s needs

• isn’t quality, like trust, multifaceted and different facets will differ in importance to different people for different projects in different contexts?– square pegs in round holes...influence of context in terms

of quality

Questions for GeoViQua

• what can we learn from trust triggers and extrapolate to visualisation of quality?– what can successful trust triggers tell us in terms of

designing counterparts for quality?

• given the complexity of quality, is it possible to have a one-size-captures-all label?– would it not be better to represent the different facets of

quality independently to allow users to make informed decisions based on what is important to them?

Happy to talk to anyone about research I do in this area!

Jo Lumsdenj.lumsden@aston.ac.uk

Aston UniversityBirmingham, UK