E-commerce trust metrics and models

Traditional models of trust between vendors and buyers fall short of requirements for an electronic marketplace, where anonymous transactions cross territorial and legal boundaries as well as traditional value-chain structures. Alternative quantifications of trust may offer better evaluations of transaction risk in this environment. This article introduces a notion of quantifiable trust and then develops models that can use these metrics to verify e-commerce transactions in ways that might be able to satisfy the requirements of mutual trust. The article uses two examples in illustrating these concepts: one for an e-commerce printing enterprise and the other for Internet stock trading.