Trust and Privacy in Distributed Work Groups
by Denise Anthony, Tristan Henderson, and James A. Kitts
Published in
Social
Computing
and
Behavioral Modeling,
Edited
by Huan Liu,
Michael J. Young, and John J. Salerno. New York: Springer.
ABSTRACT
Trust
plays
an
important role in both group cooperation and economic
exchange. As new technologies emerge for communication and exchange,
established mechanisms of trust are disrupted or distorted, which can
lead to the breakdown of cooperation or to increasing fraud in
exchange. This paper examines whether and how personal privacy
information about members of distributed work groups influences
individuals’ cooperation and privacy behavior in the group.
Specifically, we examine whether people use others’ privacy settings as
signals of trustworthiness that affect group cooperation. In addition,
we examine how individual privacy preferences relate to trustworthy
behavior. Understanding how people interact with others in online
settings, in particular when they have limited information, has
important implications for geographically distributed groups enabled
through new information technologies. In addition, understanding how
people might use information gleaned from technology usage, such as
personal privacy settings, particularly in the absence of other
information, has implications for understanding many potential
situations that arise in pervasive computing environments.