Feasibility of multi-agent simulation for the trust and tracing game

Abstract

Trust is an important issue in trade. For instance in food trade, market actors have to rely on their trade partner's quality statements. The roles of trust and deception in supply networks in various cultural and organisational settings are subject of research in the social sciences. The Trust And Tracing game is an instrument for that type of study. It is a game for human players. Conducting experiments is time-consuming and expensive. Furthermore, it is hard to formulate hypotheses and to test effects of parameter changes, as this requires many participants. For these reasons the project reported in this paper investigated the feasibility of multi-agent simulation of the game and delivered a prototype. This paper briefly describes the game and introduces the process composition of the agents. The prototype uses simple, but effective models. The paper concludes with directions for refinement of models for agent behaviour. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.