Public Trust in Automated Decision Systems

Authors

  • Ethan Ward Author

Keywords:

public trust, automated decisions, procedural fairness, accountability, institutions

Abstract

This interdisciplinary review examines public trust in automated decision systems. The organizing question is how competence, procedural fairness, transparency, recourse, and institutional legitimacy shape warranted trust. Ten related scholarly sources are synthesized through a decision-centered framework spanning problem definition, mechanism, measurement, evaluation, implementation, and governance. The review does not invent experiments, pooled estimates, or unreported quantitative results. It instead evaluates the strength and transferability of the available evidence, with particular attention to treating acceptance or adoption as equivalent to justified trust. The resulting framework links technical or empirical performance to explicit use conditions and identifies tests that should precede wider adoption in public-sector and socially consequential automation.

References

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Published

2026-08-08

Issue

Vol. 1 (2026): Archive

Section

Interdisciplinary Review

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Convergence in Science and Society

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.