Cookies?
Library Header Image
LSE Research Online LSE Library Services

Judgments in the sharing economy: the effect of user-generated trust and reputation information on decision-making accuracy and bias

Zloteanu, Mircea, Harvey, Nigel, Tuckett, David and Livan, Giacomo (2021) Judgments in the sharing economy: the effect of user-generated trust and reputation information on decision-making accuracy and bias. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. p. 776999. ISSN 1664-1078

[img] Text (fpsyg-12-776999) - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (5MB)

Identification Number: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.776999

Abstract

The growing ecosystem of peer-to-peer enterprise – the Sharing Economy (SE) – has brought with it a substantial change in how we access and provide goods and services. Within the SE, individuals make decisions based mainly on user-generated trust and reputation information (TRI). Recent research indicates that the use of such information tends to produce a positivity bias in the perceived trustworthiness of fellow users. Across two experimental studies performed on an artificial SE accommodation platform, we test whether users’ judgments can be accurate when presented with diagnostic information relating to the quality of the profiles they see or if these overly positive perceptions persist. In study 1, we find that users are quite accurate overall (70%) at determining the quality of a profile, both when presented with full profiles or with profiles where they selected three TRI elements they considered useful for their decision-making. However, users tended to exhibit an “upward quality bias” when making errors. In study 2, we leveraged patterns of frequently vs. infrequently selected TRI elements to understand whether users have insights into which are more diagnostic and find that presenting frequently selected TRI elements improved users’ accuracy. Overall, our studies demonstrate that – positivity bias notwithstanding – users can be remarkably accurate in their online SE judgments.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Copyright © 2021 Zloteanu, Harvey, Tuckett and Livan.
Divisions: Systemic Risk Centre
Date Deposited: 17 Dec 2021 11:24
Last Modified: 28 Mar 2024 04:15
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/112976

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics