A graph theoretic framework for trust - from local to global

Abstract

Traditional approaches to trust, be it in agent-based societies, or within a more theoretical framework often consider trust to be a local phenomenon. Here we propose that trust should be viewed from a global perspective. Our motivation is the area of pervasive computing although we believe that our formal framework applies in many domains. Here we present our framework and formalize it in the form of graph theory. We present some open problems and discuss the wider application of our work.