TY - GEN
T1 - An empirical examination of cultural biases in interpersonal economic exchange
AU - Burtch, Gordon
AU - Wattal, Sunil
AU - Ghose, Anindya
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Economic trade between individuals, supported by an array of global electronic marketplaces, comprises an ever-growing proportion of the global economy. Prominent online companies like eBay, Amazon and Freelancer.com regularly afford individuals the opportunity to engage others the world over. Importantly, however, such trade has may introduce new hurdles. Though technology reduces the role of distance, it does very little to mitigate cultural differences. As such, in this study, we seek to identify and quantify the effects of cultural differences on economic exchange between individuals. We focus upon the world's largest micro-lending website, employing an aggregate dataset that incorporates three million loans. Referring to theories of bounded rationality and cyber-balkanization, we demonstrate that lenders prefer culturally similar borrowers. Further, we find that lenders only appear to concern themselves with cultural differences insofar as they are aware of those differences, as the preference for similar borrowers is much stronger in local lending.
AB - Economic trade between individuals, supported by an array of global electronic marketplaces, comprises an ever-growing proportion of the global economy. Prominent online companies like eBay, Amazon and Freelancer.com regularly afford individuals the opportunity to engage others the world over. Importantly, however, such trade has may introduce new hurdles. Though technology reduces the role of distance, it does very little to mitigate cultural differences. As such, in this study, we seek to identify and quantify the effects of cultural differences on economic exchange between individuals. We focus upon the world's largest micro-lending website, employing an aggregate dataset that incorporates three million loans. Referring to theories of bounded rationality and cyber-balkanization, we demonstrate that lenders prefer culturally similar borrowers. Further, we find that lenders only appear to concern themselves with cultural differences insofar as they are aware of those differences, as the preference for similar borrowers is much stronger in local lending.
KW - Crowdfunding
KW - Cultural differences
KW - Electronic markets
KW - Micro-lending
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84886466497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84886466497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84886466497
SN - 9781627486040
T3 - International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2012
SP - 3329
EP - 3346
BT - International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2012
T2 - International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2012
Y2 - 16 December 2012 through 19 December 2012
ER -