Does information seeking moderate the relationship between financial loan inclusion and Fintech P2P lending?

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the moderating effect of information-seeking on the positive relationship between loan inclusion and Fintech P2P lending. It exploits how information-seeking plays an important role in the Fintech P2P loan decision. Unlike previous studies, we use primary data from 281 Fintech P2P borrowers to test the hypotheses. We use robust OLS regression and two-stage least square to estimate our model, and reveal three essential findings. First, loan inclusive (the individuals with traditional loan access) has lower Fintech P2P credit than the loan exclusive (those without traditional loan access). Second, information-seeking behavior would lower the Fintech P2P credit ratio. Lastly, information-seeking significantly moderates the relationship between loan inclusion and loans from Fintech P2P lending. It implies that those loan-exclusive individuals would have less Fintech P2P credit if they have high information-seeking.