A Visualization Approach for Modeling Trust in E-Commerce

E-commerce is presently operating under its expected capacity, mainly because traders find it very difficult to trust one another online for trading decisions. It is therefore very important to develop an effective trust management system that assists e-commerce participants to make good trust decisions. This paper describes a visualization approach towards such a system. The benefits of this approach are threefold: first, it gives a better understanding of the components that can be used in a trust management system. Secondly, it illustrates that the components contributing to the trust making process can be different from one environment to another. Thirdly, it shows that the way one person trusts can be different from others. This approach, rather than using the same static attributes to calculate trust for everyone, uses specific attributes based on each truster´s goals. Moreover, by using GRL and UCM as notations for trust modeling, this approach provides a visual representation of trust, its components and the trusting process.