A user behavior based trust model for mobile applications

Abstract

A mobile application is a software package that can be installed and executed in a mobile device. Which mobile application is more trustworthy for a user to purchase or install becomes a crucial issue that impacts its final success. This paper proposes a trust model based on users' behaviors, which assists the evaluation and management of the mobile application's trust with user friendliness. We achieve our model through exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis and correlation analysis based on the data collected from a questionnaire survey. It is indicated that a user's trust behavior is a multidimensional construct composed of four aspects: usage behavior, reflection behavior, correlation behavior and management behavior. Particularly, the practical significance of our work towards usable trust management, the limitations of current empirical study and future work are also discussed. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.