The Influence of Entrepreneurs’ Online Popularity and Interaction Behaviors on Individual Investors’ Psychological Perception: Evidence From the Peer-To-Peer Lending Market

Abstract

Inappropriate social interactions of entrepreneurs can generate negative effects in the peer-to-peer lending market. To address this problem and assist peer-to-peer entrepreneurs in customizing their online interaction strategies, we used the cutting-edge cognitive-experiential self-system conceptual model and studied the relationship between peer-to-peer entrepreneurs’ interactions and financing levels. Online interactive information was categorized as emotional or cognitive, adding the moderator of entrepreneur popularity, and the effect of these interactions on individual investors was analyzed. We found that the entrepreneurs’ online interactive information affected psychological perception of entrepreneurs and their corresponding brand image. The interaction between popularity and interactive information types was significant. The findings imply that less popular entrepreneurs should engage in emotional interactions, while more popular entrepreneurs should choose cognitive interactions. Online interaction created comparative advantages in the financing activities of peer-to-peer companies. These results expand understanding of the psychological facets of the consumer–brand relationship in the digital world, and extend the current literature. This study also highlights key areas of learning and application for both practitioners and scholars of organizational psychology.

The Antecedents of the Technology Acceptance Model in Microentrepreneurs’ Intention to Use Social Networking Sites

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Evolutionary game analysis of FinTech transformation: A social co-governance pattern of peer-to-peer lending market in China

“…The game-changing technological innovations have been triggered and introduced into Financial Technology (FinTech), transforming the way the financial industry operates and fulfilling customers' needs (Agarwal and Zhang, 2020 ; Brandl and Hornuf, 2020 ; Chen and Sivakumar, 2021 ; Weng and Luo, 2021 ; Lei et al, 2022 ). Taking its place as one of the most significant segments in the broad area of FinTech (Luther, 2019 ), peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has emerged as an infomediary platform that links up investors and borrowers to form debt–credit relationships via the Internet (Lee and Lee, 2012 ; Lin et al, 2013 ; An et al, 2022 ). Compared with the traditional financing channel, P2P lending platforms not only facilitate a convenient approach for small- and medium-sized enterprises to attain short-term loans (Feng et al, 2015 ) but also provide feasible investment options to investors for their idle capital (Bachmann et al, 2011 ; Wei and Lin, 2017 ).…”