Measuring trust in online social networks : the effects of network parameters on the level of trust in trust games with incomplete information

The most currently popular method for assessing trust in online social networks is Trust Game. The major studies in this area have established results formed into hypotheses for the effects of a number of network parameters on the extent to which individuals would place trust on each other. However, hypotheses for the effects of a few number of network parameters, such as Indegree, are not deducible since the restrictive game-theoretic assumptions that are imposed into the model do not let any such evidence available. To relax the game-theoretic assumptions, we develop a model for games with incomplete information, based on a game-theoretic model developed by Buskens (1998), and conduct a series of computer simulation of a model of Iterated Heterogeneous Trust Games (IHTG). We compare the results with those of Buskens’ (1998) model and introduce Link-Strength as a new network parameter to investigate. Our results show a positive effect of both Indegree and Link-strength on the level of trust in a noisy environment. In addition, we come to a conclusion that current models can be fooled by the existing noise in the context of information transmission, such as inactive users in our case.Godkänd; 2012; 20120808 (ysko)