A Distributed Reputation Management Scheme for Mobile Agent-Based E-Commerce Applications

Abstract

This paper examines current approaches used in reputation management and defines five basic metrics for the evaluation of reputation of trusted third party (TTP) hosts employed in mobile agent-based e-commerce applications. By taking these metrics into account, a new distributed reputation management scheme is proposed for quantifying and managing the reputation of the TTP-hosts based on a transaction-based feedback system. The scheme exhibits several interesting features not seen in previous work: firstly, it offers better efficiency and robustness for an application that employs it, and secondly, it credits/penalizes a TTP-host according to its transactional behavior, the transaction value and the reputation of the source of feedback. In this way, TTP-hosts may be deterred from misbehaving.