Online car-hailing services are becoming a key component of the public transportation system, despite there being some certain risks, especially default risk. Turning to the evolutionary game method, this research constructed an evolutionary game model of online car-hailing platform, and then analyzed the equilibrium state of three scenarios (i.e., no supervision, internal supervision of platform enterprises, and external supervision of regulators), followed by carrying out a simulation. The results showed that to realize the evolution stability strategies (ESS) of default risk control, a strong credit constraint or the establishment of a coordinated supervision mode with appropriate intensity are needed. On this basis, this research puts forward the coordinated “platform enterprise + regulator” supervision mode, as well as the following four specific strategies: Promoting the construction of a credit system, strengthening the construction of laws and regulations, establishing a service process control mechanism, and introducing innovative regulatory means.

The development of e-commerce has formulated the hybrid platform mode for retail enterprises. We studied how the differences in product distribution cost, unit retail price, and competition conflict affect the business model decision making. The theoretical model shows the following results: (1) When the hybrid platform sells complementary products with third-party sellers, the profit of choosing the hybrid mode is always the best. (2) When the hybrid platform competes with third-party sellers, if the unit retail price is in a higher range, the merchant mode is the best choice; when the unit retail price is in the lower range, the hybrid platform mode is the best choice. (3) Competition between the hybrid platform and third-party sellers determines the profit level of the operating enterprise. The excessive price competition between the self-operated business and the third-party sellers is magnified by the existence of cross-network externalities, resulting in a strong anti-competitive effect, and affecting the profits of the hybrid platform’s two businesses. These findings guide retail enterprises to design their business model as well as address competition conflict.

The Chinese peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market is expanding quickly but has a relatively poor level of operation. Using panel-structured data from a leading P2P lending portal in China, we investigate the effects of venture capital (VC) investment on the performance of P2P lending platforms. Specifically, we identify a short-term signaling effect and a long-term governance effect of VC investment on platform performance in terms of transaction volume, and numbers of lenders and borrowers. However, we only find a decrease in average interest rates after venture capitalists' (VCs') entry in the long run. Moreover, we verify both the effects of investment from listed VCs, but no signaling effect and a weak governance effect of investment from non-listed VCs. Our analysis provides new insights into how VC investment improves the performance of target firms.

The peer-to-peer lending market has developed rapidly over the past decade and reveals a severe problem of information asymmetry. This research constructed a four-party evolutionary game model to analyze the influence pathway of the guarantee mechanism on the users’ participation of the peer-to-peer lending platform and conducted an empirical study applying the mediating effect model and simultaneous equation model based on data of China’s peer-to-peer lending platform. The theoretical model shows that the guarantee mechanism reduced the participation of borrowers of the peer-to-peer lending platform through a screening effect, but increased the participation of investors through a signal effect. In the case of the platform self-guarantee, there existed a self-screening effect, whose influence on the participation of investors depended on the strength of external constraints imposed on the platform enterprises. Further, the empirical study shows that during the sample period, the platform self-guarantee mechanism reduced the scale of borrowers and investors of the peer-to-peer lending platform at the same time, thus reducing the transaction volume of the platform. Although the third-party guarantee mechanism reduced the scale of borrowers, it increased the scale of investors, and the comprehensive effect was to increase the transaction volume of the platform. On this basis, this research puts forward suggestions such as strengthening the qualification examination of the platform enterprises, transforming the platform self-guarantee mechanism into the third-party guarantee mechanism, and introducing more signal mechanisms.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the performance of China's bankcard market during 1999‐2005 when China's local card association – China UnionPay (CUP) was established in 2002, which integrated many small closed payment systems into an open payment system.Design/methodology/approachDifference‐in‐difference (DID) estimator and fixed effects model are employed to assess the potential influences of the establishment of CUP on the performance of China's bankcard businesses. In implementing DID method, it is possible to view the banks (payment entities) that are members of the CUP as the “treatment group” and others outside the CUP as the “reference group”, and introduce the “CUP member” dummy variable. Simultaneously, the paper introduces the “incident year” dummy variable labeling 2002 and afterward since the CUP was founded. Therefore, effects of establishing the CUP on the performance of its members can be simply obtained by estimating the coefficient of the interaction term between the “CUP member” dummy variable and “incident year” dummy variable in the estimation equation. The data used in this paper come from the official CUP website and Chinese Financial Statistic Almanac (2000‐2006).FindingsThe empirical evidence shows that from the micro‐perspective of maximizing platform transaction volume, the “closed to open” organizational reform, i.e. introducing the CUP into the market decreased rather than increased the performance of CUP's members. The fundamental reason for this was imperfections in the market's internal management mechanism and multi‐party profit distribution mechanism, which led to dislocation and distortion in the positioning and function of the card association‐CUP.Originality/valueDifferent with most other studies that are pure theoretical ones, this study represents one of the few studies that use empirical methods to investigate two‐side markets.