In 25 years, research on reputation-based online markets has produced robust evidence on the existence of the so-called reputation effect, that is the positive relation between online traders’ reputations and these traders’ market success in terms of sales and prices. However, there is an ongoing debate on what the size of the reputation effect means. We argue that the rate of truthful feedback that traders leave after completed transactions is negatively related to the size of the reputation effect. The higher the rate of truthful feedback, the quicker will untrustworthy traders be screened and disincentivized to enter the market. With mostly trustworthy traders entering the market, buyers will demand smaller price discounts from market entrants without a good reputation. We test this mechanism empirically in two laboratory experiments. In both experiments, we systematically vary the probability with which information about sellers’ behavior in an economic trust game is recorded and shown to future interaction partners of these sellers. In the second experiment, we introduce competition among sellers by allowing buyers to choose one of two sellers in each interaction. We find that sellers give discounts to buyers to build or repair their reputation and that sellers who give discounts or have a good reputation are trusted more. However, we do not find support for our hypothesis that a higher feedback rate significantly decreases sellers’ propensity to give discounts. We argue and show in exploratory analyses that this is likely due to the high level of unconditional trust buyers exhibit towards sellers without a reputation. Yet, seller competition increases the propensity to offer discounts among sellers without a reputation the most.

中文翻译：

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建立可信声誉：反馈率作用的实验证据

25年来，对基于声誉的在线市场的研究已经提供了强有力的证据，证明所谓声誉效应的存在，即在线交易者的声誉与这些交易者在销售和价格方面的市场成功之间的正相关关系。然而，关于声誉效应的大小意味着什么，一直存在争论。我们认为，交易者在完成交易后留下的真实反馈率与声誉效应的大小负相关。真实反馈率越高，不值得信赖的交易者就会越快被筛选并抑制进入市场的积极性。随着大多数值得信赖的贸易商进入市场，买家将要求没有良好声誉的市场进入者提供较小的价格折扣。我们在两个实验室实验中凭经验测试了这种机制。在这两个实验中，我们系统地改变了记录经济信任博弈中卖家行为信息并向这些卖家未来的互动伙伴显示的概率。在第二个实验中，我们通过允许买家在每次互动中选择两个卖家之一来引入卖家之间的竞争。我们发现，卖家向买家提供折扣是为了建立或修复他们的声誉，而提供折扣或拥有良好声誉的卖家更容易受到信任。然而，我们的假设并未得到支持，即较高的反馈率会显着降低卖家提供折扣的倾向。我们在探索性分析中认为并表明，这可能是由于买家对没有声誉的卖家表现出高水平的无条件信任。然而，卖家竞争增加了最没有声誉的卖家提供折扣的倾向。