PlumX Metrics
SSRN
Embed PlumX Metrics

Buyer-Seller Social Interaction and Sales Activity in Online P2P Markets for Used Goods

SSRN, ISSN: 1556-5068
2021
  • 0
    Citations
  • 1,512
    Usage
  • 7
    Captures
  • 0
    Mentions
  • 0
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Usage
    1,512
    • Abstract Views
      1,357
    • Downloads
      155
  • Captures
    7
  • Ratings
    • Download Rank
      273,383

Article Description

P2P Markets for used goods suffer from acute information asymmetry. Sellers often have little transaction history, and goods are of uncertain quality. Many platforms thus integrate social features so buyers and sellers may achieve trust through unstructured socialization. However, prior research provides scant evidence about the benefits of these features for seller performance. Although engaging socially with peers may provide a means for trust-building, recent work points to misbehavior by some sellers, who spread misinformation and spam to undermine competitors. We thus examine the value of these features, exploiting a natural experiment wherein a large P2P market for second-hand goods (Xianyu) unexpectedly removed its social interaction feature (Fishponds). Leveraging data capturing more than 180,000 transactions over a multi-week period around the event, we provide evidence that eliminating social interaction features led to a large, statistically significant decline in seller revenues. Further, exploring heterogeneity in the effects around a variety of seller and product listing features, we nd evidence consistent with the notion that the sellers who benefit most from social interaction features are generally those who have the hardest time establishing trust. Our results provide robust evidence that social interaction thus serves a crucial role in mitigating information asymmetry in P2P markets for used goods. Our work offers nontrivial managerial implications, both for marketplace operators and individual sellers.

Bibliographic Details

Siliang Tong; Yingjie Zhang; Gordon Burtch; Zhijie Lin

Elsevier BV

Multidisciplinary; Digital Platform Design; Quasi-Natural Experiment; Social Media; P2P; Marketplaces; Social Capital Theory

Provide Feedback

Have ideas for a new metric? Would you like to see something else here?Let us know