This paper aims to uncover the deterrent effect of external social ties on online peer-to-peer lending by extracting valuable information from the phone usage data. Contrary to the studies viewing online internal friendships as the signal of credit quality, we find that the total number of outgoing calls made in the month before loan requests is positively associated with the probability of default, which suggests that more social interactions offline mediated by mobile phones are more likely to signal poor trustworthiness. Only the features pertaining to the calls made during the morning for a given day have the potential as an effective predictor for the borrower’s credible social collateral. However, the online peer-to-peer lending platform studied by us fails to perfectly judge borrowers by their external social ties since the total number of outgoing calls generally has a negative relationship with the interest rates charged for funded loans. Overall, our work advances the understanding of the economic value carried by call logs in the context of disintermediated financial markets with information asymmetry.

本文旨在通过从电话使用数据中提取有价值的信息，揭示外部社会关系对在线 P2P 借贷的威慑作用。与将在线内部友谊视为信用质量信号的研究相反，我们发现贷款请求前一个月内拨出的电话总数与违约概率呈正相关，这表明更多的线下社交互动由移动设备介导手机更有可能表明可信度差。只有与某一天早上拨打的电话有关的特征才有可能成为借款人可信社会抵押品的有效预测指标。然而，我们研究的网络P2P借贷平台未能通过外部社会关系完美判断借款人，因为拨出电话的总数通常与融资贷款的利率呈负相关。总的来说，我们的工作促进了对信息不对称的非中介金融市场背景下通话记录所承载的经济价值的理解。