The year 2018 is barely underway and, already, digital trust initiatives have captured headlines. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has said his platform will de-prioritize third-party publisher content to keep users focused on more “meaningful” posts from family and friends. Google has led off the new year by blocking websites that mask their country of origin from showing up on Google News. And the European Union’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will affect every organization around the world that handles personal data for EU residents. The regulations will also, no doubt, inform data protection laws and corporate trust-building strategies elsewhere.
The 4 Dimensions of Digital Trust, Charted Across 42 Countries
Our digital evolution and productive use of new technologies rests on how well we can build digital trust. But is it possible to measure digital trust and compare it across countries? Are there countries where guaranteeing trust is a more urgent priority and will draw a larger share of trust-building resources and regulations? Measuring four dimensions – Behavior, Attitudes, Environment, and Experience – across 42 countries sheds new light on how users assign trust and provides a comprehensive framework for calibrating digital trust, facilitating cross-country comparisons, and benchmarking. Effectively building trust in a global digital marketplace requires a strategic choice of knowing where to play. You can’t put equivalent investments in every market. And as with everything else in our digital evolution, users’ expectations and interests will change quickly.