ABSTRACT
Building trust online between strangers is difficult. In this chapter I examine how eBay has handled the problem of building trust for auction transactions through its Feedback Forum system. I discuss the relationships among vulnerability, uncertainty, trust, and concern for reputation, and I also provide readers a summary of social science research on eBay relating to trust and reputation. Although the majority of eBay participants interact with strangers, the reputation system serves to communicate trust through a person’s eBay user ID and online profile. Because of the ease of switching trading partners on eBay and the transparency of someone’s reputational rating, one can quickly establish a calculated form of trust and choose among sellers based on their reputations. People cannot trust one another unless they share some form of community or network of relationships, and eBay’s technology makes it easy to develop such a network because one has instant access to how other people within the network rate their participation with a certain user. This trust drives commerce on eBay, as sellers’ reputations affect their selling prices as well as the willingness of potential bidders to participate in their auctions. This online dynamic, I argue, is in contrast to those trends in modern society that obscure trust in favor of mechanisms such as insurance or regulation. Through the use of technology, eBay auctions rely, ironically, on a decidedly old-fashioned method of reputational gossip to develop trust: the return of the town square.
