Trust and privacy in consumer-to-consumer marketplaces

With the extreme rapid growth of buying and selling products in online Consumer-2-Consumer markets (C2C-markets), like Instagram, Facebook, Marktplaats, Bol.com, and eBay, internet users increasingly require to disclose more and more private information about themselves. Buying in "traditional" buying is relatively simple. However, in online C2C-markets the buyer and seller have to take a leap of faith: there is often no warranty, no money back guarantee, no payment guarantee, fraud risk, etc. In these online "shops" buyer and seller both participate in an intriguing discovery process of checking whether the other can be trusted. Some online C2C-markets like eBay offer the seller the possibility to create a social identity through profile descriptions, images and gain reputation though feedback systems. In this project several theses will investigate the degree and type of privacy information that C2C participants need and are willing to share in order to create trust in successful transactional selling.