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The growth in cryptomarkets has reinvigorated the research on illicit drug distribution due to the availability of large-scale data. This data has enabled researchers to ask new and detailed questions about how participants in these markets trust each other enough for the market not to collapse. This question deserves more attention because it has become a taken-for-granted notion that repeated transactions and social categories create trust. Whether online or on the street, economic exchanges under illegality are more uncertain than transactions in the legal economy. This puts higher demands on trust, as there is less information and the stakes are higher. In this chapter, the author presents definitions, typologies, and disciplinary contributions to the study of trust and examine how it has been operationalised in a sample of 13 peer-reviewed articles. These articles focus on three dimensions of trust: process-based trust that derives from repeated transactions with known partners; character-based trust measured by the networked reputation scores; and institutional-based trust in the platform and its administrators. In practice, the trust bases are intertwined. Drawing on the broader social science literature on trust, a mesolevel operationalisation that centres on networked reputation scores as embedded in processes and institutions can draw the research together in a multidisciplinary framework.

This chapter aims to shed light on the role that a sustainable orientation plays in strengthening the relationships between global consumers and online brands. Despite many previous studies about the importance of sustainability considerations for national consumers’ brand commitments and purchase intentions, there is a lack of empirical studies focussing on this relationship from a global consumer perspective. A pre-study (consisting of focus group discussions) and a widely distributed international survey with responses from 74 countries show mixed results. Whereas the results from the focus groups imply that a sustainable orientation influences both global consumers’ purchase intentions and brand commitments towards online brands, the survey results imply that global consumers’ sustainable orientations do not affect purchase intentions directly, even though they influence brand commitments. An implication of these results is that an international online brand’s possibility to portray a sustainable orientation plays an important role in strengthening the relationship with global consumers, especially regarding brand commitment.

Mobile dating apps are widely used in the queer community. Whether for sexual exploration or dating, mobile and geosocial dating apps facilitate connection. But they also bring attendant privacy risks. This chapter is based on original research about the ways gay and bisexual men navigate their privacy on geosocial dating apps geared toward the LGBTQI community. It argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that people who share semi-nude or nude photos do not care about their privacy, gay and bisexual users of geosocial dating apps care very much about their privacy and engage in complex, overlapping privacy navigation techniques when sharing photos. They share semi-nude and nude photos for a variety of reasons, but generally do so only after building organic trust with another person. Because trust can easily break down without supportive institutions, this chapter argues that law and design must help individuals protect their privacy on geosocial dating apps.

The online sourcing, supply, and purchase of illicit drugs is fast transforming drug markets worldwide. Although the long-term development of simple communications technology over time (from pagers to mobile phones) continues to impact and extend local drug supply dynamics, it is the recent developments of dark web cryptomarkets, social media applications (like Instagram), encrypted messaging applications (like WhatsApp), and surface web platforms, such as LeafedOut, that are changing the drug supply landscape online. The use of technology in drug supply has tended to go hand in hand with improving the efficiency of supply and opportunities to reduce exchange-related risks for both buyers and sellers. In relation to app-mediated supply, for example, the use of encrypted messaging provides enhanced security for arranging purchases beyond the lurking surveillance of law enforcement. Despite the perception of improved safety, however, the use of social media apps and other online platforms can expose both buyers and sellers to risk scenarios they may not fully appreciate. Drawing on two recent studies on the use of social media apps and the online platform LeafedOut as mediators of drugs supply, this chapter will consider how these mid-range (between cryptomarkets and traditional telecommunications such as basic texting/calling and material ‘street’ markets) virtual spaces are being utilised for drug supply and the extent to which this is ‘just more of the same’ or provides new structures and experiences for those engaging with it and in what ways. Consideration will also be given to contradictions in the mid-range market space where the broad perception of reduced risk from the use of encrypted messaging can in fact produce greater levels of risk for some buyers and sellers depending on how they engage with the process/es.

Advances in Big Data, artificial Intelligence and data-driven innovation bring enormous benefits for the overall society and for different sectors. By contrast, their misuse can lead to data workflows bypassing the intent of privacy and data protection law, as well as of ethical mandates. It may be referred to as the ‘creep factor’ of Big Data, and needs to be tackled right away, especially considering that we are moving towards the ‘datafication’ of society, where devices to capture, collect, store and process data are becoming ever-cheaper and faster, whilst the computational power is continuously increasing. If using Big Data in truly anonymisable ways, within an ethically sound and societally focussed framework, is capable of acting as an enabler of sustainable development, using Big Data outside such a framework poses a number of threats, potential hurdles and multiple ethical challenges. Some examples are the impact on privacy caused by new surveillance tools and data gathering techniques, including also group privacy, high-tech profiling, automated decision making and discriminatory practices. In our society, everything can be given a score and critical life changing opportunities are increasingly determined by such scoring systems, often obtained through secret predictive algorithms applied to data to determine who has value. It is therefore essential to guarantee the fairness and accurateness of such scoring systems and that the decisions relying upon them are realised in a legal and ethical manner, avoiding the risk of stigmatisation capable of affecting individuals’ opportunities. Likewise, it is necessary to prevent the so-called ‘social cooling’. This represents the long-term negative side effects of the data-driven innovation, in particular of such scoring systems and of the reputation economy. It is reflected in terms, for instance, of self-censorship, risk-aversion and lack of exercise of free speech generated by increasingly intrusive Big Data practices lacking an ethical foundation. Another key ethics dimension pertains to human-data interaction in Internet of Things (IoT) environments, which is increasing the volume of data collected, the speed of the process and the variety of data sources. It is urgent to further investigate aspects like the ‘ownership’ of data and other hurdles, especially considering that the regulatory landscape is developing at a much slower pace than IoT and the evolution of Big Data technologies. These are only some examples of the issues and consequences that Big Data raise, which require adequate measures in response to the ‘data trust deficit’, moving not towards the prohibition of the collection of data but rather towards the identification and prohibition of their misuse and unfair behaviours and treatments, once government and companies have such data. At the same time, the debate should further investigate ‘data altruism’, deepening how the increasing amounts of data in our society can be concretely used for public good and the best implementation modalities.

The aim of this study is to develop a framework that incorporates social aspects of housing refurbishment when evaluating the sustainability of refurbishment projects. The research examined whether the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) certification yields a holistic approach to social sustainability.

A framework for social sustainability was established from values identified through reviews of certification systems, published literature and from interviews. The target is to better assess and value holistic and soft parameters like social sustainability when assessing the overall value creation of projects.

The result was a more transparent and systematic structure, which revealed that the DGNB certification had shortcomings in a holistic approach to social sustainability. Counteractions for these shortcomings are discussed.

Researchers are still discussing how to include more soft aspects like social aspects with the more hard measures like energy consumption and initial cost in the same equation for addressing sustainability in a more holistic framework. This research contributes to this.

Considering the current climate situation and the amount and the state of existing European building stock, sustainable renovation is inevitable. In Europe, the DGNB certification is one of the most applied certification systems of sustainability. It approaches all parts of sustainability. Yet, social sustainability has been criticised for being neglected.

A review of literature concerning the concept suggests that it is a concept in chaos. There have been a number of attempts to impose some order to this; however, the attempts have all been made differently and with limited success.

Social relationships play an important role in organizational entrepreneurship. They are crucial to entrepreneurs’ decisions because, despite the bleeding-edge technological advancements observed nowadays, entrepreneurs as human beings will always strive to be social. During the COVID-19 pandemic many companies moved activities into the virtual world and as a result offline Social relationships became rarer, but as it turns out, even more valuable, likewise, the inter-organizational cooperation enabling many companies to survive.

This chapter aims to develop knowledge about entrepreneurs’ SR and their links with inter-organizational cooperation. The results of an integrative systematic literature review show that the concept of Social relationships, although often investigated, lacks a clear definition, conceptualization, and operationalization. This chapter revealed a great diversity of definitions for Social relationships, including different scopes of meaning and levels of analysis. The authors identify 10 building blocks and nine sources of entrepreneurs’ Social relationships. The authors offer an original typology of Social relationships using 12 criteria. Interestingly, with regard to building blocks, besides those frequently considered such as trust, reciprocity and commitment, the authors also point to others more rarely and narrowly discussed, such as gratitude, satisfaction and affection. Similarly, the authors discuss the varied scope of sources, including workplace, family/friendship, past relationships, and ethnic or religious bonds. The findings of this study point to a variety of links between Social relationships and inter-organizational cooperation, including their positive and negative influences on one another. These links appear to be extremely dynamic, bi-directional and highly complex.