Towards a Unified Trust Model for M-commerce Systems

M-commerce has become one of the most evolutionary fields not only in the developed countries but also in the developing countries. It facilitates transactional procedures using mobile devices that are being enhanced rapidly to become simpler and more secured. Currently users can make any monetary transaction such as booking tickets or buying goods online anywhere anytime. One of the most challenging concerns in developing m-commerce systems and applications is trustworthiness, because trust is very hard to gain and very easy to lose. Trust is a fuzzy concept as it is defined differently in each discipline even within each, it´s perceived in a subjective way. A key step to incorporate trust in m-commerce is to acquire an in-depth understanding of the trustworthiness. This paper presents an attempt to develop a unified trust model for m-commerce. To achieve unification and abstraction, the proposed unified trust model for m-commerce separates changeable and endurable aspects of trustiness. In addition, the proposed model is validated through the demonstration of how existing trust models are embedded within the proposed unified model.