Reputation Transfer

Excerpt

Peer-to-peer platforms for selling, renting, and servicing have become a popular alternative to conventional e-commerce channels (Sundararajan 2016). With billions in venture capital and significant market evaluations, the most prominent players in this platform economy have even entered the league of long-established industry incumbents in their respective domains (Stummer et al. 2018). Platforms such as Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, eBay, and many others enable users to take the roles of consumers and/or providers in transactions with other (private) individuals. With an estimate of €27.9bn in annual consumer spending in the EU, economic activity in peer-based online markets is substantial and growing (EU 2017). Importantly, the transactions facilitated on such peer-to-peer platforms critically rely on a sufficient level of trust between the individual consumers and providers. To this end, users need to establish and maintain a reputation on these platforms, based upon which future transaction partners decide whether to engage in a transaction with them or not (Ert et al. 2016; Hawlitschek et al. 2016). …