Exploring trust in group-to-group video-conferencing

Previous work has shown that supporting trust via computer-mediated communication can be a challenge, especially among strangers. In this paper, we report on an experiment comparing two group-to-group video-conferencing environments and face-to-face communication in their ability to support trust and mutual cooperation in a social dilemma task. There are pronounced differences in participant behaviour between the two video-conferencing designs, indicating higher mutual trust in one of the video-conferencing conditions. The decisive factor seems to be a discrepancy in the type of group identity that develops during the game. Moreover, our results suggest that a combination of personal displays and a unique video-stream of each participant present in the better video-conferencing condition contributed to this result.