What is Trusted Referral

This chapter outlines various models which can be used to predict users’ trust on online shopping, to enhance user’s trust on online vendor, and to estimate the risk in an online transaction. The discussed models are selected to provide an overview of different aspects which can be used by the service providers and developers to identify the factors which impact user’s online trust. The factors that have been identified can be further used as a guide to enhance user’s trust levels. The rest of the article is organized as follows. In the next section, four models are discusses starting from Cheung and Lee (2000) conceptual model of trust in electronic environment to the model presented by Mahmood (2006a) that relies on mathematical equations to assist user to compare and evaluate online retailers. After discussing the presented models, the impact and effect of Web 2.0 technologies are discussed in future directions. The potential use of FOAF and RDF to create completely decentralized repository of users’ trust evaluations which can be tapped into any application that uses Web 2.0 is also discussed in future directions. Concluding remarks and model comparison are presented the conclusion.