The Exchange ProjectStanford University

We study whether trust toward general others can be learned through induced behavior or technological interventions. We call this hypothesis the “engineering of trust” and our investigation focuses on members of the sharing economy. The sharing economy is composed of companies that allow their members to share services or goods in return for a fee.

To what extent can technology influence somebody’s perceptions of trust in others?

We explore the impact that having a direct exchange as either a service provider or a consumer had on interpersonal trust and the impact that the accumulation of a reputation in the form of ratings had on trust.

Research group

This research is supported by National Science Foundation Grant 1257138

 

What’s new

  • 8-28-2017 : Our paper Reputation offsets trust judgments based on social biases among Airbnb users has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)[Full Text][pdf]
  • 7-28-2017 : Our paper Reputation offsets trust judgments based on social biases among Airbnb users was accepted to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
  • 2-6-2016 : Joe Gebbia (Airbnb’s co-founder) gives a talk in the main TED conference based on our research

Publications

  • W. Qiu, P.Parigi, B. Abrahao, More stars or More Reviews? Differential Effects of Reputation on Trust in the Sharing Economy, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’2018), Montreal, Canada, 2018
  • B. Abrahao, P. Parigi, A. Gupta, K.S. Cook, Reputation offsets trust judgments based on social biases among Airbnb users, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2017 [Full Text][pdf]
  • B. State, B. Abrahao, K.S. Cook, Power Imbalance and Rating Systems, In Proceedings of the 10th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), Cologne, Germany, 2016 [pdf]
  • J. Santana, P. Parigi, Risk aversion and engagement in the sharing economy, Games 6:560–573, 2015 [Full Text][pdf]
  • P. Parigi and B. State, Disenchanting the World: The Impact of Technology on Relationships, SocInfo, 6th Annual Conference, 2014, Social Informatics, 1(1): 166-182. Best Paper Award [pdf]
  • P. Parigi, B. State, D. Dakhlallah, R. Corten, K. Cook, A Community of Strangers: The Dis-Embedding of Social Ties, PLoS ONE 8(7): e67388, 2013 [Full Text][pdf].
  • B. State, B. Abrahao, K.S. Cook, From Power to Status in Online Exchange, In Proceedings of the 4th ACM International Conference on Web Science, Evanston, IL, USA, 2012 Best Extended Abstract Award [pdf] [slides]

Press

Awards

  • Best Extended Abstract Award for paper From Power to Status in Online Exchanges. Given by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference on Web Science, 2012
  • Best Paper Award for paper Disenchanting the World: The Impact of Technology on Relationships. Given by SocInfo, 6th Annual Conference, 2014