A strategy-proof trust mechanism for pervasive computing environments

As pervasive applications become prevalent in our day-to-day lives, the interactions of service provision and consumption between unknown and strange users are commonplace. Trust and reputation systems play a vital role in such application scenarios. One of the problems is that selfish users are reluctant to render the truthful recommendation without incentive. Even if there are incentives, self-interested users may maximise their profit by falsely declaring their opinions strategically. In this paper, we propose a strategy-proof trust mechanism which is a VCG (Vickrey-Clarke-Groves) mechanism for honest recommendation elicitation. The characteristics of the mechanism, such as the characteristics of social choice function and the properties of the payments, are also discussed. Simulation results show that our mechanism is effective in preventing strategic manipulation and guarantee that selfish users will give honest recommendations.