Open Collections

Mokhberi, Azadeh

University of British Columbia

Although peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces have become increasingly popular, they raise many trust, privacy, and safety issues. There is a growing interest among individuals in using such marketplaces for buying and selling second-hand items. Such platforms foster trading, and expand users’ access to a wide range of items with good prices. However, according to police and previous studies, such platforms raise many new trust challenges, privacy problems, and safety risks. Facebook Marketplace is one type of P2P marketplace platform. Facebook Marketplace (FM) and similar platforms have some unique characteristics that distinguish them from other, previously- studied marketplace platforms. We found a gap in investigating trust, privacy, and safety (TPS) on such platforms. More importantly, there is a lack of study of how FM users manage these aspects in trading. This thesis utilizes a human-centered approach to explore the trust, privacy, and safety aspects of trading on FM from the perspectives and experiences of users. To further facilitate the free expression of thoughts and the addition of information, a total of 42 1-on-1 interviews were conducted through Zoom with recruited various FM users, 19-75-year-olds, who lived in North America. We used this method to understand how FM users manage their TPS aspects during FM trading. To understand and visualize participants’ TPS aspects management, we developed two distinct frameworks that describe the TPS-related factors and strategies of participants. The research findings revealed the complex and multifaceted nature of these aspects. It also highlights the importance of five types of factors including pre-existing concerns, signals, social norms, perceived benefits, and platform design specifics that either hinder, promote, or influence the priority of TPS in shaping participants’ decision making around TPS when using FM. The results highlight that users employ four types of TPS-related strategies, namely: trader selection and screening, information collection and sharing, negotiation of in-person trading details, and in-person interaction. In this study, we have identified various types of challenges, tensions, trade-offs, and discrepancies that users faced. In conclusion, we emphasize the existing gaps in this area of research for future studies and offer recommendations for both researchers and designers.

Text

2023-04-13

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/84194

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/