How Platforms Build Trust

Abstract

Two-sided platforms have gained increasing importance as a business model and research attention over the last couple of years. Examples in the consumer-to-consumer domain include platforms for accommodation sharing, shared mobility services, car sharing, resale, crowd-work, and many more. As these consumer-to-consumer business models rely on the realization of transactions among users, a central aspect to virtually all platforms is the maintenance of trust. While recent research has considered the effects of trust-building mechanisms on diverse platforms specifically, the overall platform landscape has received much less attention. Based on actual market data, this paper provides a cross-platform overview on the mechanisms that platform operators employ to build and maintain trust and examines how these mechanisms are actually being utilized by the platforms’ users.

Keywords: Platforms, Reputation, Trust, Two-Sided Markets, Signaling