Ekström, M A and Bjornsson, H C (2002) Trust building tools supporting electronic bidding in construction. Journal of Construction Procurement, 8(2), pp. 133-147. ISSN 1358-9180
Abstract
A rating system can substantially improve the effectiveness of an Architectural Engineering Construction (AEC) e-commerce market by providing a means for market participants to share information about performance. If users are to trust a rating system, one critical issue is the ability to filter out inaccurate and/or dishonest ratings. Therefore it is important to weight the ratings according to who is the rater. Source credibility theory from the area of communication science offers a solution to this problem, providing a means for users to explicitly rate the reliability of a given rater. This paper proposes a model for calculating ratings of AEC subcontractors based on the user's assessment of rater credibility. An experiment was carried out to compare a credibility-weighted rating system prototype to a standard unweighted model in the context of evaluating bids from subcontractors. The experiment showed that the credibility-weighted model fared better both in terms of the extent to which users varied the contingency added to the bids and in terms of their perceived confidence in their valuations. The results of the experiment also indicated that bidding decisions were influenced not only by the overall ratings but also by rater agreement and the total credibility of all raters that had rated a subcontractor. This paper concludes that source credibility is a promising basis for a rating system in AEC.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | rating system, e-commerce, bidding, source credibility, trust |
| Index terms: | subcontractor, e-commerce, trust-building, bidding, experiment, effectiveness, source credibility theory, prototype, architectural engineering, science, critical issue |
| Subjects: | modelling and simulation, performance management, bidding, risk assessment, design practice, digital commerce, psychology, specialized education, practitioner, data collection methods, sociology |
| Topics: | Education, Research Practice, Procurement, Quality Management, Organizational Design, Engineering Principles, Risk Management, Digital Applications, Roles and Professions, Design Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here