How does an online platform impact on human behavior and human perception: Evidence from the P2P lending market and the e-book market

Abstract

The development of information systems and the Internet has facilitated the creation of an online platform where two or more groups are involved and interact online with each other. We explore the impact of an online platform on human behavior and human perception. There are various online markets. We focus on two markets: the online P2P market, and the e-book market. This paper includes three essays: 'Herding behavior in online P2P lending: An empirical investigation', 'Does borrowers' information renewal change lenders' decision in P2P lending? An empirical investigation', and 'Dynamics of price elasticity over time: Evidence from the e-book industry'. Since the first essay was published in the journal and the third one was submitted to the conference, we simply present the abstracts of these essays in this paper. Also, we mainly focus on explaining the current stage and plans for completion of the second paper. Although this paper is not yet completed, we empirically confirm some characteristics of the online markets. We expect that it would be useful to understand online business and get insights into the online markets.