Human-Machine Trust Interaction: A Technical Overview

Abstract

Improving user’s trust appropriately could help in designing an intelligent system and make it work effectively, especially with the fast growth of Web-base technology. This chapter introduces the solutions of improving user’s trust in human-machine interaction (HMI), especially for electronic commerce (e-commerce). The author firstly reviews the concept of trust and the main factors that affects the appropriateness of user’s trust in human-machine interaction, such as the properties of machine systems, the properties of human, and context. On the basis of these, the author further discusses the current state, challenges, problems and limitations of establishing and improving the user’s trust in human-machine interaction. Finally, the author summarizes and evaluates the existing solutions for improving the user’s trust appropriately in e-commerce environment. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-682-7.ch020 62 International Journal of Dependable and Trustworthy Information Systems, 1(4), 61-74, October-December 2010 Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. computer-human interaction. Human-machine interaction shows massive potential to improve human performance and enhance safety. However, it is not uniformly beneficial to people. If trust is not properly considered, there are maybe machine-assisted accidents caused by humanmachine interaction. If users trust the capability of the machine even when it does not perform the task perfectly, the disaster could occur. For example the autopilot crashed the Airbus A320 (Sparaco, 1995). In addition, if people refute to utilize the machine even when it could achieve the goal very well, the advanced benefits of using the machine will be lost. Such an improper relationship between human and machine can be described in terms of over-trusting or under-trusting of machines. These are illustrated in Figure 1. Over-trusting (too trusting) and under-trusting (not trusting enough) can lead to user misusing and disusing the machine (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). Reducing over-trusting and under-trusting in the machine system is a very important issue in human-machine interaction. Appropriate trust can improve greatly human-machine interaction. Ideally, the human should maintain a correctly calibrated level of trust that matches the objective capability of the machine system. How to calibrate the user’s trust to an appropriate level? It is essential to understand the factors influencing trust in human-machine interaction. This book chapter studies the factors influencing the user’s trust in human-machine interaction. We believe understanding this issue is important for us to develop human’s trust in the machine system at an appropriate level, neither too high nor too low. Firstly, the concept of trust and the factors influencing the user’s trust in human-machine interaction are introduced. We further discuss the issues, problems and challenges in this area that are introduced by e-commerce and web services, and recommend a number of solutions in order to improve the trust in human-machine interaction based on the trust influencing factors. Finally, we propose future research directions and conclude the chapter.