The development of platform economy has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of business and commerce. However, at the same time, the sellers on e-commerce platform are beginning to commit new types of commercial frauds, such as brushing, false transactions, privacy disclosure, traffic fraud, rating fraud, etc. These fraudulent practices in platform economy are emerging in an endless stream. Meanwhile, the government cannot effectively govern sellers’ fraud behaviors on platform due to the existence of practical conflicts in that there are too many sellers, the process of supervision on platform is too much a burden, as well as the present technical skill and law enforcement personnel are rather limited. Therefore, as the direct manager, how the platform enterprise can effectively and efficiently govern sellers’ commercial fraud is a realistic problem that needs to be solved urgently. In the current literature, there have already existed abundant researches on causes and governance related to fraud behavior, yet there are still gaps that should be filled. On theone hand, in terms of theory, the literature is less concerned with external factors that influence fraud, ignoring the influencing factors within the ecosystem and the industrial chain. On the other hand, the understanding of the connotation and types of commercial fraud is mostly limited to financial fraud, accounting fraud and management fraud, leading to the lack of innovation in studying new context and situation where fraud behaviors occur. Yet, with the booming of platform economy, fraud research should no longer be limited to traditional perspectives of finance and accounting. Even though a few studies have started to pay attention to the prevention of e-commerce fraud risk, in-depth and systematic research on commercial fraud from the perspective of platform economy is obviously insufficient. Based on the above review, this research puts commercial fraud into the specific context of platform economy, trying to unpack the black box that holds the emergence and governance of sellers’ commercial fraud in platform economy. Utilizing game theory, the evolutionary process of sellers’ fraud behavior on e-commerce platform and the regulation strategy of the platform enterprise are developed. Throughout the model building, the key relevant influencing factors of the evolutionary process are analyzed and the governance recommendations are proposed accordingly. Specifically, the static game model is firstly applied with individual perspective to analyze one seller’s fraud behavior, and it lays foundation for further establishment of evolutionary game model for the group of sellers after relaxing certain assumptions. In the end, the evolutionary stability strategies under different conditions are drawn. The results show that: (1) From the perspective of individuals, whether a seller is fraudulent or not is closely dependent upon the cost of platform enterprise conducting strong-supervision, the benefit from the network effect of the platform, and the penalties facing the sellers and the platform; (2) From the perspective of groups, whether no-fraud is a stable strategy of the sellers or not will be affected by the platform’s supervision costs and network effect benefits, the sellers’ earnings from fraud, the sellers’ opportunity costs and implementation costs related with the fraud, the material and non-material losses suffered by sellers due to fraud, as well as the penalties facing fraudulent sellers and platform enterprises with weak-supervision. Therefore, the recommendations to govern sellers’ fraud behavior on platform can be put forward as the followings. First, platform enterprises should adjust supervision tactics based on their development stage while the government should formulate flexible reward and punishment system for platform enterprises accordingly. Second, focusing on the matters before and during the event, the platform enterprises need to strengthen technical supervision on different types of fraud. Third, focusing on the matters after the event, the platform needs to establish regulations on punishment and reward for fraudulent and non-fraudulent sellers respectively. To conclude, compared with existing literature, the theoretical contributions this research makes are mainly reflected in the following aspects. First, the subject of commercial fraud is investigated in the specific context of platform economy, enriching the contextual research on fraud. Second, the research breaks through the previous framework of government-led or market-led fraud governance and explores the governance of sellers’ fraud behavior from the perspective of platform enterprises, improving the research on fraud governance. Third, with the interaction between platform enterprises and sellers in platform economy being studied within the specific game problem of regulation and fraud, the black box that contains the interaction among major players in platform economy is deeply examined, which expands the governance research of platform economy. Fourthly, a more realistic evolutionary game model between platform enterprises and sellers is constructed by taking into full consideration of factors such as bounded rationality and dual attributes of platform enterprises in assumptions. In the practical sense, this research helps platform enterprises and government better understand the sellers’ fraud behavior, and provides strategic guidance as to how to govern sellers’ fraud behavior on the platform from the perspective of platform enterprise.
易开刚 张琦. 平台经济视域下的商家舞弊治理:博弈模型与政策建议[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2019, 5(5): 127-.
Yi Kaigang Zhang Qi. Analysis of Sellers’ Commercial Fraud in Platform Economy Based on Evolutionary Game Theory. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2019, 5(5): 127-.