摘要
“柠檬市场”困境是跨境电商发挥稳外贸作用的重要阻碍,质量认证作为一种有效的声誉机制,有望通过传递质量信号来缓解信息不对称。本文利用全球最大的移动跨境电商平台——Wish的产品认证政策和详细的产品-周度层面数据,通过时间断点设计研究了产品层面的认证机制对跨境电商市场交易的影响。研究发现,跨境电商平台上的质量认证具有显著的声誉效应,产品被认证后,销量平均增加了10.5%,价格平均提高了3.0%。机制分析显示,上述声誉效应主要是由于认证所带来的质量信号削弱了产品的质量不确定性,从而提升了厂商的定价自信和消费者的购买意愿。拓展分析发现,首先,认证效应不具有完全的对称性,失去认证会使得产品价格下降,但并不会显著影响产品销量;其次,认证可能会提高消费者的质量预期,使得评分下降约0.7个百分点;最后,认证不会对同企业的其他产品产生溢出效应,但会使得同行业非认证产品的销量下降,从而提高了高质量产品的市场集中度。本文启示政府应引导跨境电商平台设立公平合理的质量认证标准,合理使用认证机制以突破“柠檬市场”困境,助力数字贸易高质量发展。
Cross-border e-commerce,as a new format that organically integrates international trade and digital technology,is increasingly becoming a significant driving force for China's foreign trade transformation in the era of the digital economy.However,realizing the stabilizing role of cross-border ecommerce in foreign trade faces multiple challenges,with the dilemma of a“lemon market,”in which information asymmetry is one of the prominent causes.To address this issue,reputation mechanisms,which primarily include rating and certification,have been designed by cross-border e-commerce platforms.Among these,the rating mechanism is susceptible to exploitation by dishonest enterprises,which may negatively impact consumer welfare.In contrast,certification mechanisms,leveraged by third parties to comprehensively evaluate the quality of enterprises or products,have greater systemic and authoritative qualities.Therefore,can certification help both buyers and sellers overcome the“lemon market”dilemma in cross-border e-commerce market transactions?To answer this question,this study develops a dynamic reputation model on quality certification with limited information.Then,it examines the effect of a product-level certification mechanism on crossborder e-commerce by implementing a regression discontinuity design(RDD)based on the product certification policy of Wish—a global leader in mobile cross-border e-commerce.Detailed weekly product data are used to facilitate this study.It reveals that quality certification on the cross-border ecommerce platform has a notable impact on market transactions.Certified products experience a 10.5%increase in sales and an average of 3.0%increase in prices.The mechanism analysis reveals that the reputation effect primarily stems from the quality signal introduced by certification,which mitigates quality uncertainty.This boosts manufacturers'confidence in pricing and augments consumers'intent to make purchases.The expansion analysis reveals several key findings.First,the effect of certification is not completely symmetrical;although loss of certification leads to lower prices,it does not significantly impact product sales.Second,certification may elevate consumer quality expectations,resulting in a decrease in ratings by approximately 0.7 percentage points.Lastly,certification does not generate spillover effects on other products of a company.However,it leads to a decline in sales for uncertified products in the same industry,thereby enhancing the market concentration of high-quality products.Compared with existing literature,this article makes the following contributions:First,it utilizes a unique certification policy and employs RDD for cleaner identification of the causal effects between certification and market transactions,thereby bolstering the credibility of existing research conclusions.Previous studies primarily utilized two-way fixed effects analysis.However,due to unobserved product heterogeneity,accurately identifying the causal effects of quality certification was challenging.This article employs a quasi-experimental method to effectively mitigate the endogeneity issues associated with certification.Second,this study expands the literature on certification from the perspective of enterprise quality uncertainty to product quality uncertainty,providing a more intuitive demonstration of the impact of quality signals on market transactions.It is also a novel study to reveal the spillover effects of quality signals in firms and industries.Third,for the first time,this study explores the interactive effects between certification and rating,which are two crucial reputation mechanisms.Existing research has mainly revealed a certain degree of substitutability between these two reputation mechanisms regarding their impact on consumer purchase intentions,but there is a lack of research on how these mechanisms interact with each other.Certification implicitly alters consumers'quality expectations for products,thereby potentially affecting consumers'final evaluations of the products.This study finds that quality certification leads to a 0.7 percentage point decrease in product ratings,providing important insights for cross-border e-commerce enterprises and platforms to better understand the market response caused by certification.This study recommends that the government should guide cross-border e-commerce platforms to establish fair and reasonable certification standards to break through the dilemma of the“lemon market”and promote the high-quality development of digital trade.
作者
马述忠
贺歌
郭继文
MA Shuzhong;HE Ge;GUO Jiwen(China Academy of Digital Trade,Zhejiang University;School of Economics&Trade,Hunan University)
出处
《数量经济技术经济研究》
CSSCI
CSCD
北大核心
2024年第6期88-110,共23页
Journal of Quantitative & Technological Economics
基金
国家社科基金重大项目(23&ZD084)
国家自然科学基金面上项目(72373130)的资助。
关键词
跨境电商
信息不对称
质量认证
声誉效应
产品质量不确定性
Cross-border E-commerce
Information Asymmetry
Quality Certification
Reputation Effects
Product Quality Uncertainty
