Trust-based Service Provider Selection in Open Environments

The problem of selecting correct counterparts to interact with is of particular relevance in open and dynamic environments. This problem increases when third parties may vary their behaviour at will. In this paper we examine the problem of service provider selection using trust and reputation techniques. Most approaches to service provider selection are based on the client's proper experiences about particular services from particular providers. A problem arises when no previous experience is available. To solve this problem, previous approaches have proposed that clients obtain the required reputation information from their acquaintances. In contrast, our work advocates an experience-based approach for service provider selection, in which clients use trust and reputation mechanisms to infer expectations of future providers' behaviour from past experiences in similar situations. We present some experimental results that support our proposal.