Hi Alla,
On a personal note, I am currently a graduate student at Indiana University and I have just started working on my thesis project which deals with trust and the Internet. I was wondering if anyone here could recommend some seminal papers on trust, they can be from any perspective (ie social science, computer science, ect).
I have done some research in this area, in particular for health care web sites. You may find the terms trust, credibility and quality are used interchangeably in the literature. I found the BJ Fogg et al material (including his book Persuasive Technology) to be excellent in clarifying proper use of this terminology. Here are a few references to get you started: General background information on trust: Deutsch, M. (1958). Trust and suspicion. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 265- 279. (perhaps the first publication on trust) Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Giffin, K. (1967). The contribution of studies of source credibility to a theory of interpersonal trust in the communication process. Psychological Bulletin, 68(2), 104-120. Lewis, J. D. & Weigert, A. J. (1985). Trust as a social reality. Social Forces, 63(4), 967-985. Rempel, J. K., Holmes, J. G., & Zanna, M. P. (1985). Trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(1), 95-112. Computer trust references: Bailey, B. P., Gurak, L. J. Konstan, J. A. (2001). An examination of trust production in computer mediated exchange. Presented at the 7th Conference on Human Factors and the Web. June 4 to 6, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Retrieved on May 12th, 2002 from http://www.optavia.com/hfweb/7thconferenceproceedings.zip/Bailey.pdf Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H. & Howe, D. C. (2000). Trust Online. [Electronic Version]. Communications of the ACM, 43(12), 34-40. Fogg, B. J. & Tseng, H. (1999). The elements of computer credibility. [Electronic Version]. Proceeding of the CHI 99 conference on Human factors in computing systems, USA, 80-89. Shneiderman, B. (2000). Designing trust into online experiences. [Electronic Version]. Communications of the ACM, 43(12), 57-59. Laura _ Laura O'Grady Ph.D. Candidate OISE / University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~logrady/ logrady@oise.utoronto.ca l.ogrady@sympatico.ca _