Exploring the impact of trust information visualization on mobile application usage

Trust allows people to live in a risky and uncertain situation by providing the means to decrease complexity. It is the key to decision making and engaging in usage. Visualizing trust information could thus leverage usage behavior and decisions. This article explores the impact of trust information visualization on mobile application usage with a three-stage experiment conducted in both Finland and China (1) by studying users’ opinions on the importance of mobile applications, (2) by evaluating the impact of a trust indicator on mobile application usage, and (3) by evaluating the impact of a trust/reputation indicator on mobile application usage. Although the results achieved in this study for Finland and China showed small differences on usage willingness and remarkable difference on trust information check willingness, both countries indicated that visualizing the reputation value of an application and/or the individual trust value of a user can assist in mobile application usage with different importance rates. In addition, the article discusses possible reasons for the difference in impact in Finland and China, other impact factors related to mobile application usage, and implications of our experiments with regard to a trust management system for mobile applications.