A Decision Support Tool for Assessing Trust in an Enterprise Data Sharing Partner

Abstract

Enterprises need to trust that data they share with other enterprises is not exploited maliciously and cause harm. We describe the development and evaluation of a decision support tool for assessing trust in a partner enterprise. The tool is composed of ten statements spanning four well-established organizational trust factors: ability, integrity, benevolence, and vulnerability. Users rate the statements about a partner enterprise and then rate their trust in the partner enterprise. The tool focuses users on these trust factors and mentally prepares them to make the trust rating. As a first evaluation of the tool, participants read 25 statements each about enterprises in three fictional countries and rated their trust without the tool, using only their intuitions. Then they rated three more enterprises while using the tool. The tool led to trust ratings that were significantly closer to the constructed, expected ratings, and participants rated the tool as useful.