Credit Asymmetry of Buyers and Sellers in E-Commerce

This paper finds that e-commerce platform impose asymmetric measures on buyers and sellers. There are three reasons for the buyer-bias trading rules: First, seller has higher viscosity than the buyer in the E-commerce market where buyer has the option to trade; Second, buyer does exhibit a higher creditworthiness than buyer, as buyer has less method of cheating to choose, weaker position in trading mechanism, and people has an asymmetric perception toward the integrity of the seller and the buyer; Third, the loss incurred by buyer after being cheated is usually greater than that incurred by seller. The integrity choice model shows that sellers can get higher fraudulent return than buyers, data from Taobao shows that the sellerpsilas integrity degree is lower than buyerpsilas. Hence, asymmetry management on buyers and sellers can help to build the confidence of buyers and constraint the behavior of sellers on e-commerce platform.