Economics-Inspired Instant Trust Mechanisms for the Service Provision Industry

This feasibility study determines if the economics-inspired mechanisms recently proposed by Huberman and Jurca can create on-line service provision businesses that can be trusted by customers without reliance on brand or reputation of the provider. Practical deployment of these economics-inspired 'instant trust' approaches faces steep challenges and unknowns, both with respect to the feasibility of the technological ICT implementation and to the practicality of the associated business models. In particular, the mechanisms are based on theoretical assumptions (e.g., perfect sharing of information) that may be hard toimplement and may result in business models (e.g., compensation payments) that may pose unacceptable business risks. This feasibility study therefore aims at determining technical as well as business feasibility of these economics-inspired instant trust approaches. We will study this question assuming a service provider scenario, and in collaboration with an entertainment application server provider SME. If successful, the project has the potential to open up the service provision market, allowing small and medium-sized enterprizes to break into these markets, while at the same time better protecting customers against one-sided terms and conditions.