Stanford Web Credibility Project

The Stanford Web Credibility Project, which involves assessments of website credibility conducted by the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab, is an investigative examination of what leads people to believe in the veracity of content found on the Web. The goal of the project is to enhance website design and to promote further research on the credibility of Web resources.

The Web has become an important channel for exchanging information and services, resulting in a greater need for methods to ascertain the credibility of websites. In response, since 1998, the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab (SPTL) has investigated what causes people to believe, or not, what they find online. SPTL provides insight into how computers can be designed to change what people think and do, an area called captology. Directed by experimental psychologist B.J. Fogg, the Stanford team includes social scientists, designers, and technologists who research and design interactive products that motivate and influence their users.

The ongoing research of the Stanford Web Credibility Project includes:

A study by the Stanford Web Credibility Project, How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility? Results from a Large Study, published in 2002, invited 2,684 "average people" to rate the credibility of websites in ten content areas. The study evaluated the credibility of two live websites randomly assigned from one of ten content categories: e-commerce, entertainment, finance, health, news, nonprofit, opinion or review, search engines, sports, and travel. A total of one hundred sites were assessed.

This study was launched jointly with a parallel, expert-focused project conducted by Sliced Bread Design, LLC. In their study, Experts vs. Online Consumers: A Comparative Credibility Study of Health and Finance Web Sites, fifteen health and finance experts were asked to assess the credibility of the same industry-specific sites as those reviewed by the Stanford PTL consumers. The Sliced Bread Design study revealed that health and finance experts were far less concerned about the surface aspects of these industry-specific types of sites and more concerned about the breadth, depth, and quality of a site's information. Similarly, Consumer Reports WebWatch, which commissioned the study, has the goal to investigate, inform, and improve the credibility of information published on the World Wide Web. Consumer Reports had plans for a similar investigation into whether consumers actually perform the necessary credibility checks while online, and had already conducted a national poll concerning consumer awareness of privacy policies.

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