Trust Decision Making in Delegation Relationships

Trust and reputation are vital concepts in multiagent systems where diverse, self-interested agents interact in pursuit of their own goals. While much work to date has focussed on enabling agents to form beliefs about the trustworthiness of potential delegation partners, the problem of deciding to trust on the basis of such beliefs has received relatively little attention. Without a model of trust decision, agents cannot take into account the risks involved in delegation. For example, different candidates may incur different costs, and tasks may offer varying payoffs in case of success or failure. In this paper, we present a decision theoretic model of trust decision which employs probabilistic trust beliefs within a Principal-Agent framework. We show how both agents in a two-party delegation relationship can make use of trust and reputation, as well as implicit reputational incentives, to make decisions about who (and indeed whether) to trust.