Game-based trust

Abstract

Trust stands at the beginning of every meaningful interaction between members of any kind of community - be it in the real world or in a virtual one. But how could an application look like that helps to create or even foster the interpersonal trust of its users? We developed a game - Kokochi - with the goal to positively affect the interpersonal trust level of its players. We evaluated Kokochi in two case studies and compared the results with a control group that didn't play the game. We could show that playing the game - featuring three unique game elements to enhance trust: disclosure of personal information (emotional statements), collaborations (face-to-face) and showing goodwill towards other players (virtual hugging) - resulted in an (significant) higher interpersonal trust level of the subjects after the game than they had before. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.