scholarly journals Seller Reviews and Consumers' Perceptions of Trust, Risks, and Uncertainty

Author(s):  
Jing Yang ◽  
Rathindra Sarathy ◽  
Tao Wu

Based on the principal-agent theory, the authors posit that seller-related uncertainty is derived from buyer (the principal) fears of hidden information (information asymmetry) and hidden action (seller opportunism) on the part of sellers (the agents). The study evaluates the effects of the three antecedents of trust in the seller reviews context with a quasi-experiment. The authors enhance the validity of the research manipulation through a unique approach of creating reviews through a text mining process of actual seller reviews. This allows control over the content of reviews while retaining their realism. The findings validate that the principal-agent theory provides a good fit for understanding seller-related uncertainty in e-commerce transactions. Second, buyers appear to be more concerned about seller opportunism than with information asymmetry. Third, while assessments of integrity and competence of the vendor, assessed through reviews, play a role, benevolence does not.

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Liu ◽  
Guanghong Ma

PurposeThe high uncertainty of technological innovation in megaprojects brings great challenges to the R&D institution and also acts as a trigger for moral hazard. The incentive and supervision are effective means to improve the performance of innovation. The purpose of this paper is to propose appropriate incentive and supervision mechanisms to reduce information asymmetry and improve the efficiency of incentives. Suggestions on technological innovation are put forward to megaprojects management.Design/methodology/approachAccording to the principal-agent theory, the research develops incentive models under three states, i.e. information symmetry, information asymmetry and information asymmetry based on supervision mechanism. The Bayesian theory is employed to prove the effectiveness of the novel supervision method based on risk assessment.FindingsThe results indicate that under the information asymmetry, the incentive intensity is positively correlated with the social benefits coefficient, and negatively correlated with the patent benefits coefficient. The R&D effort and the owner's incentive intensity decline with the increase of information asymmetry. The supervision of risks can effectively reduce the degree of information asymmetry, and the higher the uncertainty of innovations, the more significant the effect of supervision is. As the supervision intensity increases, the incentive intensity, the R&D effort and the innovation output will increase. In addition, the R&D institutions with high innovation capability, low unit cost of R&D and low risk-aversion are more willing to make efforts to innovate.Originality/valueThis study fills the research gap on incentive and supervision of technological innovation in megaprojects. The externality of innovation benefits is considered in the model. The traditional incentive model is extended through the introduction of supervision. Furthermore, a novel supervision method based on risk assessment is proposed. The results validate the importance of risk management in technological innovation and provide a new insight for project management.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingsheng Su ◽  
Hongmei Guo ◽  
Xianyu Wang

The supply chain always appears inefficient because of the different targets of members and information asymmetry, especially when upstream enterprises not only hide information about their effort levels, but also hide information about their technology level. The paper uses principal-agent theory and the theory of regulation to design the contract to realize the maximization of principal's profit on the condition that the contract satisfies the participant and incentive conditions of agent. As a result, it is obvious that the contract achieves the goal of control. In addition, it also can be concluded that the amount of rent that the manufacturer can obtain is up to the value of his information and the condition of his resource.


Politics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Poth ◽  
Torsten J. Selck

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 468-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengcheng Xiang ◽  
Jinan Wang

There exists the problem of information asymmetry among the participants in construction project who form economic partnerships one another. Information asymmetries among the participants in construction project places a premium on adverse selection and moral hazard. The major objective of this article is to implement the mechanisms of incentive and monitoring under the framework of principal-agent theory in analysis of moral hazard of construction project and to explore how to prevent it. The optimization model of incentive and monitoring under the circumstance of asymmetric information will be founded on the basis of the analysis of the effect of incentive and monitoring mechanisms in the principal- agent relationship. It indicates that reliability of information can be increased when bringing incentive and monitoring mechanisms into reward contract, which can prevent moral hazard of construction project.


2019 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 03009
Author(s):  
Liang Zhao ◽  
Chuiyong Zheng

Without considering the existence of third-party audit supervision and considering the existence of third-party audit supervision, the principal-agent model of major engineering audits between government and audit organizations was constructed. The analytical solutions under various hypothetical conditions were analyzed for the government. The optimal incentive policy for major engineering audits provides the basis. The analysis results prove that, the introduction of third-party units for audit supervision can effectively stimulate audit behavior, reduce information asymmetry, and create higher engineering quality and audit quality in the process of major engineering audit.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 967-978

The success of every construction project is highly dependent on effective communication and trust between key project participants. It is assumed that all participants in the project will work smoothly together to complete the project. Nevertheless, according to the principal-agent theory, there is information asymmetry between project participants because they also have their own self-interests. Information asymmetry is the situation in which one of the two parties is better informed than the other. Due to complexity of construction projects and the number of participants involved, implementation of blockchain technology would reduce information asymmetry. This paper provides a framework for implementation of blockchain technology in construction projects so as to reduce information asymmetry and enhance trust between project participants. Blockchain technology ensures that all project participants have access to all the information exchanged between them over the duration of the project, and thus helps in developing a more trustful relationship between them.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109634802098857
Author(s):  
Zvi Schwartz ◽  
Timothy Webb

Index scores and competitive sets (compsets) play a critical role in the performance and evaluation of hotels. The reliance on these metrics has drawn skepticism in recent years as competitive sets may be opportunistically chosen, creating bias in performance evaluation. Drawing from the principal–agent theory and the theory of incentives, we explore whether the distance of the competitors chosen for a hotel’s compset influences revenue per available room (RevPAR) index scores. Based on the concepts of resource similarity and market commonality, we develop a novel mathematical model through which we empirically analyze a large dataset of 10,000 compsets. We find evidence that competitor distance influences index performance and that this relationship is bidirectional. Results show that hotels that outperform the competition may use distance to inflate RevPAR indices, while those that underperform may use distance to further reduce scores. These conflicting results may be reflected from the reverse motivations of the stakeholders.


2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Wiese

AbstractEconomic principal-agent theory deals with asymmetric information. It has two aspects. (i) If one person is better informed than another one, the former may outwit the latter.


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