Trust Modeling in a Virtual Organization Using Social Network Metrics

Abstract

One of the most important factors in human interaction and communication is trust. Each organization performing its quotidian tasks use intentionally or involuntary established trust relations to estimate the probability of achieving the expected results or the level of confidentiality. As in societies that evolved from real world relationship (e.g. school, office, sport activity, etc.) also in virtual communities (e.g. chat rooms, Web boards, mailing lists, etc.) trust is one of the most fundamental type of binding among the group members. In this article the trust relation establishment and evolution in virtual communities has been investigated. The presented model uses some typical parameters like node degree and centrality coefficient related to social network description and analysis.