With the ever-growing popularity of sharing economy platforms, complementors increasingly face the challenge to manage their reputation on different platforms. The paper reports the results from an experimental online survey to investigate how and under which conditions online reputation is effective to engender trust across platform boundaries. It shows that (1) cross-platform signaling is in fact a viable strategy to engender trust and that (2) its effectiveness crucially depends on source–target fit. Implications for three stakeholders are discussed. First, platform complementors may benefit from importing reputation, especially when they have just started on a new platform and have not earned on-site reputation yet. The results also show, however, that importing reputation (even if it is excellent) may be detrimental if there occurs a mismatch between source and target and that, hence, fit is of utmost importance. Second, regulatory authorities may consider reputation portability as a means to make platform boundaries more permeable and hence to tackle lock-in effects. Third, platform operators may employ cross-platform signaling as a competitive lever.

中文翻译：

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解锁在线声誉

随着共享经济平台的日益普及，互补者越来越面临管理其在不同平台上的声誉的挑战。该论文报告了一项实验性在线调查的结果，以调查在线声誉如何以及在何种条件下有效地产生跨平台的信任。它表明（1）跨平台信号实际上是一种产生信任的可行策略，并且（2）其有效性在很大程度上取决于源-目标的匹配。讨论了对三个利益相关者的影响。首先，平台互补者可能会从导入声誉中受益，尤其是当他们刚刚开始使用新平台并且尚未获得现场声誉时。然而，结果也表明，如果源和目标之间发生不匹配，导入声誉（即使它是优秀的）可能是有害的，因此，适合是最重要的。其次，监管机构可能会将声誉可移植性视为使平台边界更具渗透性的一种手段，从而解决锁定效应。第三，平台运营商可能会采用跨平台信令作为竞争杠杆。