An Endorsement Trust Model

Inspired by the role endorsements play in traditional commerce, the institutional trust promoting mechanism proposed allows all vital data to be endorsed by category specific endorsement intermediaries with established trust relationships. The resulting endorsement trust provides a much stronger basis for e-commerce trust propagation than past transitive trust models. The centralized trust network modeling trust as a derived value based on past conduct, trust disposition and trusting beliefs allows trust paths to be generated in real time.