Establishing online trust through a community responsibility system

Much of the research on trust building in electronic commerce takes a descriptive approach. The question of what social structures are more appropriate to promote trust in the online world has not been extensively studied. We analyze in this paper, using a prescriptive approach, how a certain social structure—a community responsibility system, supported by present technology, can be set up. We use game theoretic tools to prove that under the community responsibility system for trust building, online transactions that are impersonal can be supported and can preserve at the same time anonymity to a large extent. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.