An incentive mechanism to reinforce truthful reports in reputation systems

The success of current trust and reputation systems is on the premise that the truthful feedbacks are obtained. However, without appropriate mechanisms, in most reputation systems, silent and lying strategies usually yield higher payoffs for peers than truthful feedback strategies. Thus, to ensure trustworthiness, incentive mechanisms are highly needed for a reputation system to encourage rational peers to provide truthful feedbacks. In this paper, we model the feedback reporting process in a reputation system as a reporting game. We propose a wage-based incentive mechanism for enforcing truthful report for non-verifiable information in self-interested P2P networks. A set of incentive compatibility constraint rules including participation constraint and self-selection constraints are formulated. We design, implement, and analyze incentive mechanisms and players’ strategies. The extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed incentive mechanisms reinforce truthful feedbacks and achieve optimal welfare.