The Evaluation of Situational Transaction Trust in E-Service Environments

Trust is a critical issue in e-commerce and e-service environments. In some applications (such as eBay), the trust management mechanism has been introduced to provide valuable information to buyers prior to placing orders and making payments. However, most studies and applications focus on determining the general trustworthiness of individuals but not providing transaction specific trust information that involves factors associated with forthcoming transactions. In this paper, we present a new concept - situational transaction trust, and propose a novel approach to evaluate it, which binds existing trust data with a new transaction. This can deliver more accurate trust information to buyers and prevent some typical attacks.