The game of trust: Using behavioral experiment as a tool to assess and collect trust-related data

Abstract

Trust is one of the most important dimensions in developing and maintaining business relationships. However, due to the difficult to collect trust-related data from industry, given its concerns surrounding privacy and trade secret protection, it still very problematic to investigate it. Motivated by the growing interest in behavioral research in the field of operations and supply chain management, and by the lack of supply chain trust-related datasets, the authors of this paper proposed and designed a novel trust behavioral experiment. Utilizing concepts of gamification and serious games, the experiment is capable of gathering information regarding individuals’ behavior during procurement, information exchange, and ordering decisions considering trust relations in the context of supply chains.