Internet-based information systems (IS) have enabled various forms of collective intelligence, action, and resources (e.g. open source software, innovation marketplaces, crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding). Within the domain of crowdfunding, Internet-enabled Peer-to-Peer Lending Systems (IP2PLS) have emerged as a disruptive technology, with implications for the financial services sector, business capitalization strategies, and personal and community development. IS research investigating user behavior in IP2PLS has revealed the saliency of social identity and personal transparency (as expressed through information sharing) in such systems. Prior research has largely focused on a small number of IP2PLS providers, thus this study examines a very large but under-researched platform. The study tests a theoretical model based on Social Identity Theory and prior IP2PLS studies, through an analysis of 116,667 loan records, and a subsequent analysis of 1000 manually coded records, to investigate the impact of information sharing on user (lenders and borrowers) behavior. The study reveals the importance of social (vs financial) data, and further reveals relationships that frequently contradict prior findings from other IP2PLS. The study thus implies the need for a more heterogeneous view of the IP2PLS domain, and the need to more fully understand as systems that support user behavior by enabling social information exchanges.
AnsoffH.I. (1975). Managing Strategic Surprise by Response to Weak Signals, California Management Review18(2): 21–33.
2.
AshforthB.E., and MaelF. (1989). Social Identity Theory and the Organization, Academy of Management Review14(1): 20–39.
3.
AshmoreR.D., DeauxK., and McLaughlin-VolpeT. (2004). An organizing framework for collective identity: Articulation and significance of multidimensionality, Psychological Bulletin130(1): 80.
4.
AlvessonM. (2010). Self-doubters, strugglers, storytellers, surfers and others: Images of self-identities in organization studies, Human Relations63(2): 193–217.
5.
ArnettD.B., GermanS.D., and HuntS.D. (2003). The identity salience model of relationship marketing success: The case of nonprofit marketing, Journal of Marketing67(2): 89–105.
6.
BachmannA., BeckerA., BuercknerD., HilkerM., KockF., LehmannM., TiburtiusP., and FunkB. (2011). Online Peer-to-Peer Lending - A literature review, Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce16(2): 1–18.
7.
BarryJ.J. (2012). Microfinance, the Market and Political Development in the Internet Age, Third World Quarterly33(1): 125–141.
8.
BergerS.C., and GleisnerF. (2009). Emergence of Financial Intermediaries in Electronic Markets: The case of online P2P lending, Business Research2(1): 39–65.
9.
BerkovichE. (2011). Search and herding effects in peer-to-peer lending: Evidence from prosper.com, Annals of Finance7(3): 389–405.
10.
BenbasatI., and ZmudR.W. (2003). The Identity Crisis within the IS Discipline: Defining and communicating the discipline's core properties, MIS Quarterly27(2): 183–194.
11.
BhattacharyaC.B., and SenS. (2003). Consumer-company identification: A framework for understanding consumers' relationships with companies, Journal of Marketing67(2): 76–88.
12.
Briceno OrtegaA.C., and BellF. (2008). Online social lending: Borrower-generated content. AMCIS 2008 Proceedings, Paper 380, http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2008/380.
13.
BurkeP.J. (1991). Identity Processes and Social Stress, American Sociological Review56(6): 836–849.
14.
BurkeP.J., and StetsJ.E. (1999). Trust and commitment through self-verification, Social Psychology Quarterly62(4): 347–366.
15.
BurkeP.J., and ReitzesD.C. (1991). An Identity Theory Approach to Commitment, Social Psychology Quarterly54(3): 239–251.
16.
CalleroP.L. (1985). Role-identity salience, Social Psychology Quarterly48(3): 203–215.
17.
CeyhanS., ShiX., and LeskovecJ. (2011). Dynamics of Bidding in a P2P Lending Service: Effects of herding and predicting loan success, in Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on World Wide Web (Hyderabad, India, 2011), ACM New York, NY, USA, 547–556.
18.
ChaffeeE.C., and RappG.C. (2012). Regulating Online Peer-to-Peer Lending in the Aftermath of Dodd-Frank: In search of an evolving regulatory regime for an evolving industry, Washington and Lee Law Review69(2): 485–533.
19.
ChenD., and HanC. (2012). A Comparative Study of Online P2P Lending in the USA and China, Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce17(2): 1–15.
20.
ChenN., GhoshA., and LambertN. (2009). Social Lending, in Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (Stanford, California, USA, 2009), ACM, 335–344.
21.
CollierB.C., and HampshireR. (2010). Sending Mixed Signals: Multilevel reputation effects in peer-to-peer lending markets, in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Savannah, Georgia, USA, 2010), ACM, 197–206.
DezsőL., and LoewensteinG. (2012). Lenders' Blind Trust and Borrowers' Blind Spots: A descriptive investigation of personal loans, Journal of Economic Psychology33(5): 996–1011.
24.
DoH., JeonS., BankerR., LeeB., and YooB. (2012). Is the Leaderboard Information Useful to Investors?: The leaderboard effect in P2P lending, in Proceedings of the International Conference for Information Systems, (Orlando, USA, 2012).
25.
DuarteJ., SiegelS., and YoungL. (2012). Trust and credit: The role of appearance in peer-to-peer lending, Review of Financial Studies25(8): 2455–2483.
26.
DuttonJ.E., DukerichJ.M., and HarquailC.V. (1994). Organizational images and member identification, Administrative Science Quarterly39(2): 239–263.
27.
EliasophN., and LichtermanP. (2003). Culture in interactionl, American Journal of Sociology108(4): 735–794.
28.
FormanC., GhoseA., and WiesenfeldB. (2008). Examining the relationship between reviews and sales: The role of reviewer identity disclosure in electronic markets, Information Systems Research19(3): 291–313.
29.
FreedmanS., and JinG.Z. (2008). Do Social Networks Solve Information Problems for Peer-to-peer Lending? Evidence from prosper.com. NET Institute Working Paper (No. 08–43), Indiana University, Bloomington: School of Public & Environmental Affairs, doi:https://dx-doi-org.web.bisu.edu.cn/10.2139/ssrn.1936057.
30.
GranovetterM.S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties, American Journal of Sociology78(6): 1360–1380.
31.
GreinerM.E., and WangH. (2009). The Role of Social Capital in People-to-People Lending Marketplaces, ICIS 2009 Proceedings. Paper 29, http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2009/29.
32.
GreinerM.E., and WangH. (2010). Building Consumer-to-Consumer Trust in E-Finance Marketplaces: An empirical analysis, International Journal of Electronic Commerce15(2): 105–136.
33.
Guiral-ContrerasA., Gonzalo-AnguloJ.A., and RodgersW. (2007). Information content and recency effect of the audit report in loan rating decisions, Accounting & Finance47(2): 285–304.
34.
HaslamS.A., OakesP.J., ReynoldsK.J., and TurnerJ.C. (1999). Social identity salience and the emergence of stereotype consensus, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin25(7): 809–818.
35.
HaslamN., RothschildL., and ErnstD. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories, British Journal of Social Psychology39(1): 113–127.
36.
Herrero-LopezS. (2009). Social Interactions in P2P Lending, in Proceedings of the Workshop on Social Network Mining and Analysis (Paris, France, 2009), doi:10.1145/1731011.1731014.
37.
HerzensteinM., DholakiaU.M., and AndrewsR.L. (2011a). Strategic Herding Behavior in Peer-to-Peer Loan Auctions, Journal of Interactive Marketing25(1): 27–36.
38.
HerzensteinM., SonensheinS., and DholakiaU.M. (2011b). Tell Me a Good Story and I May Lend You Money: The role of narratives in peer-to-peer lending decisions, Journal of Marketing Research48(November 2011): S138–S149.
39.
HiltunenE. (2008). The Future Sign and Its Three Dimensions, Futures40(3): 247–260.
40.
HoelterJ.W. (1983). The effects of role evaluation and commitment on identity salience, Social Psychology Quarterly46(2): 140–147.
41.
IacobuzioT. (2006). Can't Get a Bank Loan? Try Asking Your Online Peers, Bank Technology News19(7): 25–27.
42.
IyerR., KhwajaA.I., LuttmerE.F., and ShueK. (2009). Screening in New Credit Markets: Can individual lenders infer borrower creditworthiness in peer-to-peer lending? (August 2009). AFA 2011 Denver Meetings Paper. https://dx-doi-org.web.bisu.edu.cn/10.2139/ssrn.1570115.
43.
JeongG., LeeE., and LeeB. (2012). Does Borrowers' Information Renewal Change Lenders' Decision in P2P Lending? An empirical investigation, in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Electronic Commerce Singapore (Singapore, August 7–8, 2012); New York, NY: ACM, 83–86.
44.
KatzM.L. (1996). Remarks on the Economic Implications of Convergence, Industrial and Corporate Change5(4): 1079–1095.
45.
KatzM.L., and ShapiroC. (1985). Network Externalities, Competition, and Compatibility, The American Economic Review75(3): 424–440.
46.
KlafftM. (2008a). Online Peer-to-peer Lending, in ArabniaH. R, and BahramiA., (eds.) A lenders' perspective, in Proceedings of the International Conference on E-Learning, E-Business, Enterprise Information Systems, and E-Government; Las Vegas, USA: CSREA Press, 371–375, doi:https://dx-doi-org.web.bisu.edu.cn/10.2139/ssrn.1352352.
47.
KlafftM. (2008b). Peer to Peer Lending: Auctioning microcredits over the internet, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, Technology and Management (Dubai, UAE, 2008).
48.
KuppM., and AndersonJ. (2007). Zopa: Web 2.0 meets retail banking, Business Strategy Review18(3): 11–17.
49.
LarrimoreL., JiangL., LarrimoreJ., MarkowitzD., and GorskiS. (2011). Peer to Peer Lending: The relationship between language features, trustworthiness, and persuasion success, Journal of Applied Communication Research39(1): 19–37.
50.
LeeE., and LeeB. (2012). Herding Behavior in Online P2P Lending: An empirical investigation, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications11(5): 495–503.
LivingstonL.S., and GlassmanT. (2009). Creating a New Type of Student Managed Fund Using Peer-to-Peer Loans, Business Education & Accreditation1(1): 1–14.
53.
LuY., GuB., YeQ., and ShengZ. (2012). Social Influence and Defaults in Peer-to-Peer Lending Networks, in Proceedings of the International Conference for Information Systems (Orlando, Florida, 2012).
54.
LuoC., XiongH., ZhouW., GuoY., and DengG. (2011). Enhancing Investment Decisions in P2P Lending: An investor composition perspective, in Proceedings of The 17th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (San Diego, USA, 2011), 292–300, ACM.
55.
MesterL.J. (1997). What's the point of credit scoring?Business Review3(Sep/Oct): 3–16.
56.
MoodieM. (2013). Microfinance and the Gender of Risk: The case of Kiva.org, Signs38(2): 279–302.
57.
MichalskiS., and HelmigB. (2008). What do we know about the identity salience model of relationship marketing success? A review of the literature, Journal of Relationship Marketing7(1): 45–63.
58.
PavlouP.A., and GefenD. (2004). Building effective online marketplaces with institution-based trust, Information Systems Research15(1): 37–59.
59.
PopeD.G., and SydnorJ.R. (2011). What's in a Picture? Evidence of Discrimination from Prosper.com, Journal of Human Resources46(1): 53–92.
60.
PötzschS., and BöhmeR. (2010). The Role of Soft Information in Trust Building: Evidence from online social lending, in AlessandroA., SeanSmith W., Ahmad-RezaS. (eds.) Trust and Trustworthy Computing, Springer Berlin: Heidelberg, pp. 381–395.
61.
PuroL., TeichJ.E., WalleniusH., and WalleniusJ. (2010). Borrower Decision Aid for People-to-People Lending, Decision Support Systems49(1): 52–60.
62.
PuroL., TeichJ.E., WalleniusH., and WalleniusJ. (2011). Bidding Strategies For Real-life Small Loan Auctions, Decision Support Systems51(1): 31–41.
63.
Reay AtkinsonS. (2013). A 21st Century Pacific Bridge. Version, 2, 28.
64.
Reay AtkinsonS., Tavakoli TabaS., GoodgerA., CaldwellN.H., and HossainL. (2014a). Synthetic Standards in Managing Health Lifecycles and Cyber Relation-ships, International Journal on Advances in Life Sciences6(1-2): 41–51.
65.
Reay AtkinsonS., Tavakoli TabaS., and HossainL. (2014b). Seeding Trusts and [In.] Tolerance in Cyber Communities, in Proceedings of the Second ASE International Conference on Big Data Science and Computing (Stanford, USA, 2014). May 27–31, USA, Academy of Science and Engineering (ASE): 1–9.
66.
ShenK.N., YuA.Y., and KhalifaM. (2010). Knowledge contribution in virtual communities: Accounting for multiple dimensions of social presence through social identity, Behaviour & Information Technology29(4): 337–348.
67.
ShihM., PittinskyT.L., and AmbadyN. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance, Psychological Science10(1): 80–83.
68.
SinananJ. (2009). Lenders, Borrowers and Fellows: Personal narrative and social entrepreneurship in online microfinance, in Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7. November 23–27, Melbourne, Australia: ACM, 2009, 293–296.
69.
SonensheinS., HerzensteinM., and DholakiaU.M. (2011). How Accounts Shape Lending Decisions through Fostering Perceived Trustworthiness, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes115(1): 69–84.
70.
StetsJ.E., and BurkeP.J. (2000). Identity theory and social identity theory, Social Psychology Quarterly63(3): 224–237.
71.
StrykerS. (1968). Identity salience and role performance: The relevance of symbolic interaction theory for family research, Journal of Marriage and the Family30(4): 558–564.
72.
StrykerS. (1980). Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version.Benjamin- Cummings Publishing Company.
73.
StrykerS. (2008). From mead to a structural symbolic interactionism and beyond, Annu. Rev. Sociol34: 15–31.
74.
StrykerS., and SerpeR.T. (1994). Identity salience and psychological centrality: Equivalent, overlapping, or complementary concepts?Social Psychology Quarterly57(1): 16–35.
75.
TajfelH. (1979). Individuals and Groups in Social Psychology, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology18(2): 183–190.
76.
TajfelH., and TurnerJ.C. (1979). An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict, in AustinW.G., and WorchelS. (ed.) The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, USA: Brooks/Cole, pp. 33–47.
77.
UzziB. (1996). The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic Performance of Organizations: The network effect, American Sociological Review61(4): 674–698.
78.
WangH., GreinerM., and AronsonJ.E. (2009). People-to-People Lending: The emerging e-commerce transformation of a financial market, in MatthewN.L., MichaelS.J., and TroyS.J. (eds.) Value Creation in E-Business Management, Springer Berlin: Heidelberg, pp. 182–195.
WangH., and GreinerM.E. (2011). Prosper - The eBay for money in lending 2.0, Communications of the Association for Information Systems29(1): 243–258.
81.
YumH., LeeB., and ChaeM. (2012). From the Wisdom of Crowds to My Own Judgment in Microfinance through Online Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications11(5): 469–483.
82.
ZhangJ.J., and LiuP. (2012). Rational Herding in Microloan Markets, Management Science58(5): 892–912.
