Enhancing user acceptance of feedback in reputation systems using social factors

Abstract

In e-commerce, reputation systems are created as decision making tools that work via gathering reputation information of online sellers, products or services meant for distribution to interested parties. One of the challenges of the current reputation systems is generating trustworthy feedback to overcome fake and inaccurate submitted feedback as this may mislead the feedback receiver in the process of decision making for shopping online. This research used a social approach to investigate the influence of social factors on acceptance of feedback in the reputation systems and how social relationship indicators can be utilized in these systems. A research model was developed based on three main factors comprising homophily, tie strength and source credibility. Seven hypotheses were developed to test the model. A survey was conducted to evaluate the effect of the proposed social factors to improve feedback acceptance in reputation systems. Data analysis and model testing were operated using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique. Then, the proposed model was used to develop the design principles for a social reputation system based on Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT). The results indicated that acceptance of feedback was significantly affected by cognitive and demographic homophily. In addition, expertise and trustworthiness with reference to source credibility had positive influence on the acceptance of feedback. Besides that, based on the three dimensions of the tie strength, closeness of relationship was significant whereas the frequency of interaction and duration of relationship were not significant. In general, the findings of this study supported the proposed theoretical model by emphasizing the role of social relationship of source and recipient on acceptance of feedback to assist users to access trustworthy feedback in reputation systems.