Collaborative travel apps represent new forms of community that may not be easy for users to grasp . Many apps currently on the market assume users will join an unspecified social network.
Collaborative travel apps therefore present ob-stacles as users need to bridge beyond their immediate social support network to the resources of unknown others.
The apps deployed in these trails aimed to connect users with some pre- existing community, whether this was the campsite, rural village or workplace.
This partially overcame the sense of ‘distance’ from other users and raises issues of ‘presence’, that is the degree of social contact and communication, virtual or real, and knowledge of other users that is needed to build enough trust for transactions to take place.
found that lack of trust in travel information is a key reason to abandon systems.
On-line auctions enhance trust by providing user feedback, however, this was re-sisted by potential users during the design phase as users realized they might ultimately meet other users they had rated leading to social awkwardness.
There was some desire for face-to-face con tact to build a degree of trust, though many users did not see this as essential and collaboration occurred without this Those with existing social ties in the Registered CharityShopX trial collabo- rated more, however, the campsite trial suggested that existing social ties could limit engagement since people can initiate colla- boration via other forms of communication (for example, email, text, phone calls, face-to-face meeting). In this respect, although the apps’ messaging platform proved to be a good medium for communication, this did not totally replace traditional commu-nication channels.