Understanding the Platform Economy: Signals, Trust, and Social Interaction

Two-sided markets are gaining increasing
importance. Examples include accommodation and car
sharing, resale, shared mobility, crowd work, and
many more. As these businesses rely on transactions
among users, central aspects to virtually all platforms
are the creation and maintenance of trust. While
research has considered effects of trust-building on
diverse platforms in isolation, the overall platform
landscape has received much less attention. However,
cross-platform comparison is important since
platforms vary in their degree of social interaction,
which, as we demonstrate in this paper, determines the
adequacy and use of different trust mechanisms. Based
on actual market data, we examine the mechanisms
platforms employ and how frequent users rely on them.
We contrast this view against survey data on users’
perceptions of the context-specific importance of these
trust-building tools. Our findings provide robust
evidence for our reasoning on the relation between
platforms’ degree of social interaction and the
associated expressive trust cues.