The Game Analysis of Escrow Services Adoption in Online Auction Market

摘要

Online auctions have reduced the transaction cost, while they also bring some problems like ascertaining trader's credit as it is difficult because of the characteristic of Internet itself. It is considered to be one kind of comparatively effective way to advance the marketing credit that uses trusted third parties as an intermediary agent. Recently, a new online payment credit intermediary service has started — online escrow service. It supervises the total transaction process and builds the credit systems as an intermediary. Online escrow service has overcome the bottleneck of the online auction payment. This paper introduces the conception and concrete program of online escrow service. The research also proposes a two-stage dynamic game model to analyze the traders' optimal strategy and establishes an effective online escrow service in the online auction market. The results show that as long as the commission proportion of the online escrow service is not very high, the buyers and honest sellers will choose the escrow service in trading. The honest sellers have stronger will in choosing online escrow service than the strategy sellers. Higher the marketing credit, lower chances that buyers and sellers will adopt the online escrow.