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Significant attempts have been made by national governments in recent years to provide services and information on the Internet using information and communication technology. However, the accomplishment of these efforts strongly depends on how the targeted users, such as citizens, relay, use and adopt them. As a consequence, a common need to understand the adoption and diffusion of electronic government, or e-government, has emerged in both developed and developing countries. Several impediments may prevent citizens from adopting e-government services, however, and trust is one of the major barriers. Therefore, this study aims to understand the influence of citizens' trust on the adoption of e-government services in the example of Saudi Arabia. From the data analysis, the exogenous variables of trust in Internet, government ability, government benevolence and integrity, and social influence were found to significantly affect citizens' trust in e-government services, whilst citizens' trust propensity was found to more usefully predict citizens' behavioural intention to use e-government services.

Crowdsourcing competitions have been introduced as powerful instruments to integrate users in new product development. While abundant research has investigated motives for participation, little research so far has addressed the reasons why users choose not to participate. We suggest that some potential solvers may refrain from participation from the outset on account of their personality dispositions. In our study, we complement existing knowledge about user motivation to engage in co-creation with findings from personality research. In particular, we investigate individual differences resulting from enduring personality dispositions that might affect potential solvers’ decisions whether or not to enter crowdsourcing competitions. The results of our study show that the likelihood that users will participate in a crowdsourcing competition increases when they score high on openness, extraversion and trait competitiveness. Dispositional trust was not, however, a discriminating factor between participants and non-participants.

In this study, we discussed several aspects, including the definition of the general concept of traditional crowdfunding, which aims to finance emerging small projects and innovative ideas as well as financing medium-sized projects that cannot provide sufficient guarantees for banks to obtain the necessary liquidity for their projects. These companies use crowdfunding to obtain this required liquidity for new projects through electronic platforms. In the same context, some of the challenges facing these companies when obtaining crowdfunding from these electronic platforms were discussed, with the presentation of the regulatory framework for crowdfunding in light of Islamic funding standards, which differ from traditional funding in that it is essentially non-profit as much as it targets charitable and social work as well as it regulates the collection of funds and the distribution of profits to the principles of Islamic finance. On the other hand, the general concept of blockchain, its general characteristics, and working mechanisms were discussed. Then, the reasons that may lead to the shift from traditional models in Islamic crowdfunding to the use of blockchain in enhancing Islamic crowdfunding mechanisms were discussed through exposure to the Ventera project model of crowdfunding using blockchain technology as a model as well as exposure to other models of Islamic crowdfunding, where the study suggests that it can improve their performance through the use of blockchain technology as it may bring them a number of benefits and help them overcome a number of challenges. This chapter aims to explore the impact of the application of blockchain technology in Islamic crowdfunding operations and also bridge the gap between the academic side and the applied professional side in the field of using modern technologies, such as blockchain as a safer, faster, and lower-cost alternative in Islamic finance projects, as there are only few studies that dealt with this area despite its importance. This chapter discusses the benefits of blockchain in Islamic crowdfunding with an illustration of some projects as an applied model, after identifying the challenges facing traditional Islamic crowdfunding and the advantages of developing it using blockchain applications; this study ends with presenting models of Islamic crowdfunding projects that can be developed using blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology has been hailed as the technology of the future, not only for banking and finance but also for supply chain management and logistics. As lack of transparency in global supply chains is a major risk for sustainability, blockchain offers an attractive solution in the form of a reliable platform to create transparency and risk management. Not considering the nascent stage of the technology, companies are investing millions of dollars into blockchain solutions for many business problems including that of supply chains. However, blockchain-enabled networkwide transparency and visibility also inject new dynamics into supply chains through introduction of structural changes like redefining what is organizational boundary, creating new resources, and a new transactional economy for supply chain management. The structural changes also create a fundamental need for organizations in a supply network to adapt their supply chain processes to this new and emerging supply chain structural dynamics for organizational and network-level efficiency and sustainability. For efficient restructuring of the supply chain processes, organizations need clarity regarding what should be the focus of their processes for creating sources of competitive advantage.

Using topic modeling, a text mining technique, this work finds the focus areas of supply chain processes in organizations with examples of successful application of blockchain technology. Apart from how these organizations have integrated the strengths of blockchain in their supply chain processes, we also provide an exhaustive theoretical explanation about how firms can create sources of competitive advantage from blockchain technology. Identification of the focus areas will also help operations and supply chain managers planning to implement blockchain technology and devise plans for data-centric decision-making for their SCM processes for efficiency.

The goal of this paper was to suggest the best structure of a management system standard that is capable of creating the conditions for the growth of a circular economy (CE) (on the basis of popular ISO management systems) and that can be used by SME food industry organisations. That standard can also constitute the framework for independent evaluation and certification. In this work, desk research was carried out based on scientific databases. This scholarly approach was complemented by another, using Internet search engines to find additional documents of a professional nature. The state-of-the-art in this field is presented, characterised by the differences in approach to CE in the literature. This work suggests the assumptions of a management system standard (MSS) structure that is capable of creating the conditions for the growth of a circular economy and that can be used by SME food industry organisations. The described system applies only to food producers, which is a significant limitation of the study. Important elements supporting a developed system are actions addressed to other organisations in the loop, such as primary food producers, packaging producers, recovery organisations or retail chains. Moreover, onsite analyses among all the interested parties are necessary so as to refine the standard. The paper presents a set of relevant theoretical considerations that support CE in SME. It can be used by managers of the food industry who have the will to embrace in practice circular economy principles. Moreover, it can be used to develop a CE MSS.

The purpose of this research is to study mobile health (m-health) in Indonesia through looking at four factors of information quality, trust, use and user satisfaction and the relations among those four factors. The electronic survey was conducted among m-health users by employing purposive sampling method. 152 university students who have experiences using m-health (especially getting health information and services) were selected as participants of the research. Data obtained was analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach, and SmartPLS software was employed. The results of this study indicate that all six hypotheses are supported, and such results illustrate that m-health users in Indonesia has concerns for the quality of information and trust, and such concerns will in turn has impact on their use and satisfaction of m-health.

Advancement of wireless technologies and high penetration of Smartphone led to the emergence of m-Commerce. In order to develop a useful m-Commerce system, user need must be considered. In addition, m-Commerce adoption must be assessed among users before the final development of the system. In order to use m-Commerce a set of skills and knowledge is required among Smartphone users. For this reason, a Five Dimensions m-Commerce Literacy (5DmCL) Model is developed in this study first. Then a survey is conducted to discover how m-Commerce Literacy can affect Smartphone users’ attitude towards using m-Commerce. e-Torch, a mobile commerce location-based promotion system was used as a case study for conducting the survey. The survey was conducted among 124 Smartphone users in Penang, Malaysia using questionnaire. To analyse the collected data, a theoretical framework called the Model of m-Commerce Literacy on Attitude (mCLoA) is proposed in order to understand the Smartphone users’ attitude towards using e-Torch for enhancing the quality of m-Commerce services. Partial Least Squares (PLS) is utilized to analyse the proposed measurement model. For this reason, validity and the structural equation modelling (SEM) technique is utilized in order to assess the proposed model. The results indicated that respondents with more m-Commerce Literacy show positive attitude towards using e-Torch and they trust on this kind of m-Commerce system. Moreover, they believe that e-Torch is useful and easy to use for advertisement services and it can improve the quality of m-Commerce.

Privacy and trust of biomedical solutions that capture and share data is an issue rising to the center of public attention and discourse. While large-scale academic, medical, and industrial research initiatives must collect increasing amounts of personal biomedical data from patient stakeholders, central to ensuring precision health becomes a reality, methods for providing sufficient privacy in biomedical databases and conveying a sense of trust to the user is equally crucial for the field of biocomputing to advance with the grace of those stakeholders. If the intended audience does not trust new precision health innovations, funding and support for these efforts will inevitably be limited. It is therefore crucial for the field to address these issues in a timely manner. Here we describe current research directions towards achieving trustworthy biomedical informatics solutions.

Crowd-powered telemedicine has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, especially during times that require remote access to care. However, sharing private health data with strangers from around the world is not compatible with data privacy standards, requiring a stringent filtration process to recruit reliable and trustworthy workers who can go through the proper training and security steps. The key challenge, then, is to identify capable, trustworthy, and reliable workers through high-fidelity evaluation tasks without exposing any sensitive patient data during the evaluation process. We contribute a set of experimentally validated metrics for assessing the trustworthiness and reliability of crowd workers tasked with providing behavioral feature tags to unstructured videos of children with autism and matched neurotypical controls. The workers are blinded to diagnosis and blinded to the goal of using the features to diagnose autism. These behavioral labels are fed as input to a previously validated binary logistic regression classifier for detecting autism cases using categorical feature vectors. While the metrics do not incorporate any ground truth labels of child diagnosis, linear regression using the 3 correlative metrics as input can predict the mean probability of the correct class of each worker with a mean average error of 7.51% for performance on the same set of videos and 10.93% for performance on a distinct balanced video set with different children. These results indicate that crowd workers can be recruited for performance based largely on behavioral metrics on a crowdsourced task, enabling an affordable way to filter crowd workforces into a trustworthy and reliable diagnostic workforce.

Product quality scandals are a major issue in China. Not only do they erode public trust and consumer confidence but they can also destroy the image of a company, even an entire industry. Enter the role of public relations as it relates to crisis management. This case will detail a dispute involving Nongfu Spring Company (Nongfu) and the Beijing Times.

Internet fund sale agencies have developed rapidly in recent years. But what factors drive investors to invest in funds through Internet fund sale agencies, and how do these factors shape the intention of the investor to action? Considering TPB and TAM models as basic factors, this paper combines trust theory and potency theory to explore how basic perception characteristics shape consumer trust and consumer behavioral intention through perceived risks and perceived benefits and discusses the logical relationship among them. The results show that investor trust plays a key role in consumer behavioral intention, while investor trust is shaped by the perceived risks and perceived benefits of investors, and different perception characteristics will have different impacts on perceived risks and perceived benefits, respectively.

How an organisation responds to crises and disasters has significant implications, for not only its reputation and brand but also its business continuity. We propose that four important considerations, power, honesty, transparency and timeliness, must be addressed when designing crisis communication. We then discuss how failure to give these priority can lead to emotional contagion, conspiracy theories, moral panics and fake news. We conclude by proposing that if crisis communication management is to be effective, then not only should it be ethical and socially responsible but also contingent, stakeholder centric and involving cycles of sensemaking and sense giving.

Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of trust in KM initiatives. However, very few have been conducted to quantify its effect and its relationship with other KM factors. The purpose of this study is to start filling this gap. Data from 101 US organizations involved in KM were collected. For each organization the level of usage of different KM tools and practices was assessed and the main KM approach adopted by the organization (codification vs. personalization) was estimated. In addition, the level of organizational trust and the level of success of the KM initiative were assessed. Eight hypotheses were postulated to study the relationships between the above three factors. We present that trust and the personalization approach have a significant influence on KM initiative success.

An ad hoc network is a kind of wireless communication network which does not rely on a fixed infrastructure and thus lacks in centralized control. Networks of this kind are based on the fundamental assumption that all the nodes would cooperate and not cheat. This assumption becomes invalid in the situation that compromised or malicious nodes exist. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian network-based trust model and a method for building trust based on the recommendations from other nodes and the node’s own experiences. The model is suitable for ad hoc network without a dedicated trust infrastructure or pre-configuration of nodes. Trusted route can be easily found out and malicious nodes can be circumvented by using the trust model.

This study is centred on the analysis of the different roles performed by the determinants of relationship marketing and the environmental factors in satisfaction and customer loyalty. The importance of satisfaction, trust and commitment as mediating variables is analysed in the process of relationship marketing. The empirical study is carried out with 346 people who patronise Portuguese thermal spas, using a quota sampling process. In order to validate this theoretical model and to test the hypotheses, a structural equation model is used.

Trust modeling is a challenging issue due to the dynamic nature of distributed systems and the unreliability of self-interested agents. In this context, the Agent Reputation and Trust (ART) Testbed has been used to compare trust models in annual Spanish and International competitions from 2006. In this paper we describe the agent we have presented to those competitions. This agent is an extension of a previously-published trust model AFRAS that used fuzzy sets to represent reputation. In addition this model we propose a cognitive model to implement adaptive behaviors. An implementation of this extension of AFRAS trust model has participated in the (Spanish and International) 2006 ART competitions.

This chapter introduces the system for crisis management in Sweden. Over the last century, Sweden has gone from being a poor European backwater to being among the countries with the highest human development in the world. The droughts and harsh winters that killed thousands and drove numerous Swedes to emigrate in the past are mere distractions today and the contemporary system for crisis management is designed to deal with a broader variety of crises than the ones triggered by natural hazards. The system is based on the principles of responsibility, parity and proximity, and distributes sector and area responsibility for crisis management to numerous actors. It is built to a great extent on collaboration between these actors, which is challenging but working relatively well in the cultural context of consensus-seeking and compliance to official guidelines and accepted rules of engagement. However, the system is in itself ambiguous in the sense of distributing responsibility to all kinds of actors and then focusing almost exclusively on public actors in legislation, guidelines and practice. There is also often a gap between policy and practice concerning how area responsibility is exercised, and a lack of clarity in current sector specific legislation.

the fact that cloud computing systems (formally known as pervasive computing systems) are typically embedded or invisible, making it difficult for users to know when these devices are collecting data. So privacy appears as a major issue for this environment In this paper we propose a User-centered privacy and trust Model which provides user control over data, identity, location, and time privacy with less than 10% of unobtrusiveness.

It is essential that web designers understand what users expect of web services, how they perceive service quality dimensions such as security, usability and information quality, and which ones they value the most. In this study, the users' service quality perceptions of two different web sites were investigated. Data were obtained from 1,900 users of web sites of a for-profit online bookstore and a not-for-profit national information center through the E-Qual Index that was administered online. Findings of the study indicate that users of both for-profit and not-for-profit web sites attach more importance to the "trust" and "quality of information" dimensions as web service quality indicators. Users' expectations should therefore be regularly measured to review the design and information structures of both for-profit and non-profit web sites.