Initial Interpersonal Trust as a Tool to Commercialize Couchsurfing

Reorganization to corporation in 2011 and venture investors’ backup forces the management of Couchsurfing International to come up with a solution how to effectively monetize their user community. The author of this research proposes to look at this challenge from the perspective of initial interpersonal trust as its presence among community’s users is essential for successful Couchsurfing operation and thus - creates value. Hence understanding of how interpersonal trust is achieved in virtual community leads to the possible techniques of its commercialization.