Investigating interactions of trust and interest similarity [An article from: Decision Support Systems]

This digital document is a journal article from Decision Support Systems, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Online communities that allow their users to express their personal preferences, such as the members they trust and the products they appreciate, are becoming increasingly popular. Exploiting these communities as playgrounds for sociological research we present two frameworks for analyzing the correlation between interpersonal trust and interest similarity. We obtain empirical results from applying the two frameworks on two real, operational communities, that suggest there is a strong correlation between both trust and interest similarity. We believe our findings particularly relevant for ongoing research in recommender systems and collaborative filtering, where people are suggested products based on their similarity with other customers, and propose ways in which trust models can be integrated into these systems.