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     studies

This profile considers academic and industry of online privacy seals and other trustmarks

The immaturity of the trustmarks industry (or merely the perceived indiference of most end-users, whether site operators or site users) means that there is considerable uncertainty about their effectiveness and even what marks are currently active.

The 2000 Heidelberg Consensus Recommendations on Trustmarks, arising out of a major conference on health informatics, noted a "lack of experience with trustmarks and lack of evidence for the effectiveness or impact of trustmarks".

It concluded that

we have no actual evidence for saying whether and under which conditions trustmarks may create more benefit than harm, and that any project trying to implement a trustmark concept has to be carefully evaluated for the impact of its service on people and information providers

That remains the case. A handful of empirical studies have been conducted since the Heidelberg but their conclusions are contentious. Much of the quite limited literature has a very theoretical flavour, is narrowly restricted to particular sectors (especially in relation to privacy aspects of B2C), serves to promote specific initiatives or confuses aspiration with reality.

From an academic perspective the outstanding empirical study, albeit narrow in scope, is Anna Nöteberg's 1999 dissertation (PDF) Trusting the Web? Web Assurance Seals for an Improved Electronic Commerce Environment.

It is complemented by the 2002 Web Assurance Seals: How & Why They Influence Consumers' Decisions (PDF) by Marcus Odom, Anand Kumar & Laura Saunders, by the 2002 paper Trusting the Trustmark? by Fredrik Nordquist, Fredrik Andersson & Eva Dzepina and by Paolo Balboni's Trustmarks in E-Commerce: The Value of Web Seals and the Liability of their Providers (The Hague: Asser 2009).

Recent EU development is highlighted in the 2006 E-Commerce Trustmarks in Europe: An Overview and Comparison of Trustmarks in the European Union, Iceland and Norway (PDF) report.

An older view of the terrain is provided in Web Seals: A Review of Online Privacy Programs, a 2000 report by the Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner in Ontario and the Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner prior to collapse of the dot-com bubble, and in the 2003 Options Paper - Web Seals of Approval (PDF) from the Australia New Zealand Standing Committee of Officials of Consumer Affairs (SCOCA) E-commerce Working Party. The latter document cites an earlier version of this profile.

John MacDonnell's 2001 dissertation (PDF) Exporting Trust: Does E-Commerce Need A Canadian Privacy Seal of Approval suggests that there is a need for a a single multi-sectoral national seal in Canada, pendinf development of a coherent international regime. MacDonnell notes concerns about policy and administration, suggesting that such a scheme should come under the auspices of a consumer association. Privacy in E-Commerce: Development of Reporting Standards, Disclosure and Assurance Services in an Unregulated Market (PDF) by Karim Jamal, Michael Maier & Shyam Sunder and the 2000 Deceptive and misleading on-line advertising and business practices paper by Russell Smith take a more positive view of self-regulation and extend beyond privacy.

For a vision, which we find unconvincing, that consumers will embrace trustmarks and then seek "lovemarks" see the interview with Saatchi & Saatchi's Kevin Roberts. We've suggested elsewhere that consumers often don't understand (or even encounter) online trustmarks: the marks that are recognised and credible are the trademarks associated with brands: IBM, Amazon.com, Dell, Westpac, Sony.

Questions about self-regulation are highlighted in Organized Interests & Self-Regulation - An Economic Approach (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1999) edited by Bernardo Bortolotti & Gianluca Fiorentini, Peng Hwa Ang's succinct discussion of privacy seals in his 2001 paper The Role of Self-Regulation of Privacy and the Internet, the 2003 PCMLP paper by Matthew Hardy & Marcus Alexander Self-regulation & Certification of the European Information Economy: The Case of the eHealthcare Information Provision (PDF) and PCMLP paper (Zip) on Website Quality Labelling.

An earlier PCMLP paper (PDF) offers An Introduction to the Labelling of Websites.






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