Trust requirements in sociotechnical systems: A systematic literature review

Context:

Trust in Sociotechnical Systems (STS) has emerged as an essential requirement in everyday interactions, with notable relevance in fostering user acceptance of novel technologies. The growing dependence on automated and interactive systems underlines the importance of understanding the trust requirements in these systems in depth.

Objective:

This study aims to synthesize primary studies that address trust requirements in sociotechnical systems to identify key definitions, approaches, tools, processes, and application domains.

Methods:

We conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to answer four research questions. We searched studies from four databases: IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Scopus, and Springer. In addition, we performed snowballing to complement the automatic search.

Results:

We reviewed 42 primary studies. Our analysis indicates that the definition of trust requirements in sociotechnical systems is multifaceted and context-dependent. We observed that trust is influenced by factors such as data security, transparency in interactions, and the reliability of systems. We identified different approaches to specify trust requirements in sociotechnical systems, such as agent-oriented modeling, goal-oriented modeling, and ontological modeling.

Conclusion:

The study highlights the crucial need for more research that adopts holistic and interdisciplinary approaches to address trust requirements in several domains and popular areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). The findings suggest the importance of developing approaches based on conceptual models to address users’ trust requirements effectively.