Computational Trust applies the human notion of trust into the digital world, that is seen as malicious rather than cooperative. The expected benefits result in an exploitation of others' ability through delegation and in an achievement of more cooperation in an open and less protected environment.

The scientific research in the area of computational mechanism for trust and reputation in virtual societies is oriented to increase the reliability and performance of electronic communities.

Computational Trust have been acquiring a great relevance in the last decade in the Computer Science field, mostly in the area of distributed Artificial Intelligence. The multi-agent system paradigm and the huge evolution of e-commerce are factors that contributed to the increase of interest on trust and reputation. In fact, Trust and reputation systems have been recognized as the key factors for a successful electronic commerce adoption.

These systems are used by intelligent software agents bots as an incentive in decision-making, when deciding whether or not to honor contracts, and as a mechanism to search trustworthy exchange partners. In particular, reputation is used in electronic markets as a trust-enforcing mechanism or as a method to avoid cheaters and frauds.