TruPASS studies how trust is built, shared and sustained in Digital Product Passport ecosystems, so that supply chains can move from trust to sustainability.
Under the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are becoming the tool that carries sustainability information across a product's life. Battery passports are required from 2027, other product groups are following, and the long-term aim is a passport for every product on the EU market.
Complying is only half the story. A DPP connects many parties who have never had to share data with one another before. It creates a new ecosystem, and that ecosystem only works if the people and organisations in it are willing to rely on each other's data.
That makes trust the central problem. Regulation can require a passport, but it cannot make anyone trust what is in it.
Trust in a DPP ecosystem is neither purely social nor purely technical. It comes from the combined trustworthiness of data, systems, products, people and organisations. TruPASS brings three lenses together along that continuum, each addressing a gap in what we know today.
Sociocentric lens · social and management sciences
Existing trust models are generic, fragmented and rarely tested in real DPP ecosystems.
We will study how trust is built, transferred, sustained and eroded across a network of actors, and develop an ecosystem-level trust model grounded in real cases.
Balanced lens · requirements engineering
DPPs are shaped top-down by regulation, with little room for the real, and often misaligned, trust needs of different actors.
We will develop methods to capture, analyse and align trust requirements from the bottom up, while staying compliant with evolving rules.
Technocentric lens · computer science and digital identity
Tools like verifiable credentials and selective disclosure are powerful but framed for technical experts only.
We will turn digital identity technology for products, people and organisations into trust building blocks that match actors' real needs and routines.
Each lens informs the others: understanding trust shapes what we design, and testing designs in real supply chains deepens our understanding of trust.
TruPASS aims to make trust a core organising principle of DPP ecosystems, and to give companies, solution providers and policymakers practical ways to design for it.
What trust means in DPP ecosystems, and how it can be defined and managed.
How to capture and align trust requirements across many different actors.
How technology can meet those requirements in ways that work in practice.
TrustDPP adoptionSustainable, circular supply chains
At the Trust in the Spotlight workshop (Pre-ECIS 2026, Università Bocconi, Milan, 13 June 2026), TruPASS researchers and colleagues from nine universities agreed on shared principles for trustworthy data sharing. They are a living agenda, open to refinement by research and practice.
Schafheitle, S., Ozkan, B., Weritz, P., Hüllmann, J., Turetken, O., Söllner, M., Buzila, E., Zwede, T., Guazzo, G., Osterwyk, G., Körner, M., Panigrahi, A., & Meywirth, S. (2026, June 13). A trust manifesto for data-sharing ecosystems [Workshop]. Trust in the Spotlight: Control–Trust Dynamics in the Design and Performance of Data-Sharing Ecosystems (Pre-ECIS 2026 Workshop), Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy.
TruPASS brings together universities, industry and technology providers across the supply chain.
