Trust can be at a one-to-one dyadic level between individuals, or more generalised (such as trusting professionals or family). Trust involves risk: making oneself vulnerable to the decisions of others. Credibility is a measure of others perception an individual or group’s trustworthiness.

A Britizen credit score is an independent measure of credibility. Each individual’s score is affected not only by their own actions, but by that of their Britizen ‘friends’.  Having high scoring friends increases the score; lower scoring friends reduce it. Peer pressure encourages individuals to act in a trustworthy and socially responsible fashion, without government interference. Those behaving inappropriately risk the disapproval or exclusion from a friendship group. Essentially Britizen scores provide a global reputation based trust mechanism. This is explored in more detail in a separate post.

Global reputation systems such as Ebay[1] and Tripadvisor[2] are common on  Web platforms. When individual identities are not verified there is a risk of deception by collusion. Britizen accounts are identified with the user’s National insurance number; which makes it difficult to create false identities and reduces the risk of deception.

[1] http://www.ebay.co.uk/

[2] https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/