Engineering Incentives in Social Clouds

KIT – University of the State of Baden-Württemberg andNational Research Center of the Helmholtz Association

KARLSRUHE SERVICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (KSRI)

www.kit.edu

Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds

A Research Agenda

Christian Haas

2 Christian Haas – Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds13.04.2023 Karlsruhe Service Research Institute www.ksri.kit.edu

Research Agenda

1• Motivation• Concept of Social Clouds

2• Incentive Engineering in Social Clouds• Relation of Incentive Schemes and Sharing Mechanisms

3• Related Work

4• Research Questions and Methodology


How does resource sharing happen today

Required:

Available:

Where to get these resources?

Buy servers

Grid

Cloud

Volunteer1,2

Scenario:A user wants to backup personal data, but doesn’t have the required amount of computational resources/storage

1: Anderson 2002; 2: Stainforth 2002


Existing approaches all have certain shortcomings

Buy servers

Grid

Cloud

Volunteer

Data control

Willingness to provide resources

Access to (heterogeneous) resources

Resources available on demand

Costs, inflexibility

Exchange not necessarily bilateral

QoS, user-friendliness, access

Trust assumptions

None of the above mechanisms meets all requirements. What other approaches can we consider, e.g. Social Computing?


Social Computing is on the rise

Sharing of WLANs

Sharing of Policies

Sharing of Storage

Social Aspects in Resource

Sharing

Social aspects are becoming more important: • social sharing of resources • business models building upon social relationships

Social NetworkPlatform

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Facebook: Active Users (Mil-lions)

FB: Social Graph


The vision of a social cloud

(Extended) Definition: (based on Chard et al. 2011)“Social Clouds are a scalable, dynamic and user-centric resource sharing framework in which computational resources, services and information are shared amongst members on the premise of the relationships encoded in a social network.”

Socially-oriented Sharing Platform

Social Clouds enable the sharing of (heterogeneous) resources in a framework where the social structures infer an implicit level of trust


Socially-oriented Sharing Platform

Incentives play a crucial role in this scenario

Suitably designed (economic) mechanisms are able to provide proper incentives in order to address incentive issues in all phases

Subscribing

What are users’ incentives to join a SC?

Incentives to provide resources

Disincentives to free-ride1

Adherence to trading agreements

Avoiding “anti-social” and malicious behavior

Mechanism Design

Active user participation

Adherence to (informal)

Agreements

1: Hardin 1968


Choice of incentives depends on design specifications

Application Scenario

Trading/Interaction Mechanism

Relationship Type

• Social Computing or Storage Cloud• Social Research Cloud• Enterprise Social Cloud

• Volunteer, Reciprocal• Reputation, Trophy• Posted Price, Auction, Spot Market

• Family, close friends• Colleagues, friends• Other people, virtual “friend”

Incentive Scheme


Example: Choice of incentives depending on relationship types

Family, close friends

Friends, Colleagues

Other People

Different groups have different levels of perceived trustChoice of interaction mechanism could depend on relationship type

Example:• Non-monetary

incentives for close friends

• Monetary incentives for other people

Volunteer

Trophy

Posted Price

Reciprocal

Auction


Related Work: Incentive Engineering in other contexts

Anonymous Networks

Incentive schemes to provide resources1

Free-rider problem2

Resource Sharing with social structures

Online photo-sharing community3

Sharing of scientific workflows4

Social Incentives/Preferences5

1: Feldman 2004; 2: Golle 2001 3:Nov 2010; 4: De Roure 2009; 5: Charness 2002

Research Gap: Explicit need for incentive mechanisms for resource sharing frameworks with social fabrics

Do not capture social structures Do not explicitly consider incentive schemes


Several Research Questions will be targeted in future research (1)

What types of incentives do users have in a Social Cloud context, with respect to participation, sharing and adherence to agreements?

Engineering suitable incentives in Social Clouds

Are existing mechanisms for resource sharing suitable for Social Clouds? How can a mechanism be specifically designed for Social Clouds in order to foster participation and resource sharing?

Theoretical model Experiments

Methodology

Prototype


Several Research Questions will be targeted in future research (2)

What are the strategic options for users in a Social Cloud, and how are they affected by the mechanism used?

Is the Social Cloud mechanism robust against malicious user behavior, and how can it be extended to address this issue?

Addressing strategic user behavior

Methodology

Theoretical model ExperimentsSimulation


Summary and next steps

• Concept of socially-motivated resource sharing• Use existing (digital) relationships to enhance trading

frameworkSocial Cloud

• Incentives for users to participate, share and refrain from “anti-social” or malicious behavior

• Consider influence of design issues such as application scenario on incentive scheme

Incentive Engineering

• Build a theoretical model of economic and social incentives in a resource sharing environment

• Analyze user strategies under different trading mechanisms• Compare theoretical results with findings from simulations and/or

experiments

Next steps


Thank you for your attention!

Questions?

Feel free to contact usChristian Haas, [email protected] Caton, [email protected] Weinhardt, [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Engineering Incentives in Social Clouds

Technology

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