Leveraging a Social Network of Trust for Promoting Honesty in E-Marketplaces

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, we examine a trust-based framework for promoting honesty in e-marketplaces that relies on buyers forming social networks to share reputation ratings of sellers and sellers rewarding the buyers that are most respected within their social networks. We explore how sellers reason about expected future profit when offering particular rewards for buyers. We theoretically prove that in a marketplace operating with our mechanism: i) buyers will be better off honestly reporting seller ratings and ii) sellers are better off being honest, to earn better profit. Experiments confirm the robustness of the approach, in dynamically changing environments. With rational agents preferring to be honest, the buyer and seller strategies as specified constitute an effective approach for the design of e-marketplaces.

Extensive Experimental Validation of a Personalized Approach for Coping with Unfair Ratings in Reputation Systems

“…To cope with the problem of unfair ratings, researchers have been developing proactive approaches that create incentives for buyers to provide fair ratings [4], [12], [41]. These approaches have to be deployed in the marketplaces since the very beginning.…”

“…They cannot deal with the already existing unfair ratings. Note that the approach proposed in [41] can in fact deal with the existing unfair rating because it employs the reactive approaches as its basis for creating incentives. However, the discussion of this approach is not the focus of this paper, and the proactive approaches in general cannot deal with the already existing unfair ratings.…”