Design, development and evaluation of a human-computer trust scale

Abstract

New technologies, data, and algorithms impact nearly every aspect of daily life. Unfortunately, many of these algorithms operate like black boxes and cannot explain their results even to their programmers, let alone to end-users. As more and more tasks get delegated to such intelligent systems and the nature of user interactions with them becomes increasingly complex, it is important to understand the amount of trust that a user is willing to place on such systems. However, attempts at quantifying trust have either been limited in their scope or not empirically thorough. To address this, we build on prior work which empirically modelled trust in user-technology interactions and describe the development and evolution of a human computer trust scale. We present results of two studies (N=118 & N=183) which were undertaken to assess the reliability and validity of the proposed scale. Our study contributes to the literature by (a) developing a multi-dimensional scale to assess user trust in HCI and (b) being the first study to use the concept of design fiction and future scenarios to study trust.