To Trust or Not to Trust. Is Reputation the Currency of the Future?

In the past, trust was bound to personal relationships and trustworthy institutions. Nowadays sharing economy companies rely on reputation systems for decentralized trust. Profiles and ratings are replacing collaterals and institutional trust. Reputation platforms like Traity aggregate data from different sources like social media and calculate a score that expresses the trustworthiness of a person. In his publication, Markus Bergmann examines an important question: Which influence do the information from social media and reputation platforms have on the assessment of strangers in peer-to-peer transactions? Bergmann therefore simulated a survey with about 100 participants in which the trustworthiness of potential tenants was rated. He focusses on peer-to-peer room rental. But his results generally show to which extend companies and individuals can influence their trustworthiness via Facebook and Traity profiles.