| 刘诚.数字化进程与线上市场配置效率[J].数量经济技术经济研究,2023,(6):175-194 | | 数字化进程与线上市场配置效率 | | Digitization Process and Online Market Allocative Efficiency: Based on Micro-evidence of Platform Traffic Skew | | | | DOI： | | 中文关键词: 数字化进程 资源配置效率 流量倾斜 数据机制 | | 英文关键词: Digitization Process Allocative Efficiency Traffic Skew Data Mechanism | | 基金项目:本文获得国家社会科学基金重大项目（20&ZD087）的资助。 | | | 中文摘要: | | 数字化进程助推中国进入数字经济时代，资源配置场所逐渐从线下转移到线上。与传统的线下市场相比，流量成为线上市场资源配置的重要手段，而平台往往对与之建立紧密合作关系的部分商家进行流量倾斜，这深刻影响了资源配置效率。本文基于携程网特牌酒店准自然实验，使用入住率体现线上市场配置效率，实证考察享受流量倾斜的特牌酒店是否获得更高的入住率及其作用机制。研究发现，流量倾斜显著提升了酒店的入住率，与价格机制相比其作用较为突出。在数字化进程不同时期、对于不同类型酒店，流量倾斜对资源配置效率的提升作用分别具有动态递增性和普遍性。流量倾斜的作用机制可以归纳为数据机制，即针对性强化特牌酒店的数据流量及其数据服务，提升酒店产品和服务质量，提高网上评分，从而提高入住率。此外，流量倾斜可以引导用户提前预订，促进跨时间的供需匹配。相关结论对各行业推进数字化进程、研判平台流量实际效益以及提高线上市场配置效率具有一定的现实意义和政策启示。 | | 英文摘要: | | In recent years, the digitization process has prompted a change in resource allocation. Based on the progress of digital technology, the decrease in related equipment costs, the increase in enterprise digital investment, and the active promotion of Internet platforms and other factors, the enterprise digital application scenarios continue to expand and deepen. Moreover, online economic activities continue to expand, prompting the online market to improve the ability of resource allocation.The allocation of resources in the online market is more about factors than price. The process of digitalization is to optimize, reshape, transform, and subvert economic activities, change production relations and production modes, and thus change the efficiency of resource allocation. The platform has become a powerful player, deciding resource allocation together with inherent market forces (such as market share concentration and potential competitors), leaving a deep “digital” imprint on the market mechanism. We need to have a deep insight into the operation mode of the online market and determine the mechanism that affects the allocation of resources.Traffic has become an important means of resource allocation in the online market. Based on the two-sided market theory, an online platform gathers a large number of market players on both sides of buying and selling and the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain as well as their production and marketing information, which is commonly known as “traffic.” Traffic skew is a strategic behavior commonly adopted by platforms. Given the importance of traffic, platforms naturally use it for profit and target more traffic to merchants who are willing to pay more for their services (mainly commissions). This type of traffic skew practice obtains the favor of some merchants. They sign cooperation agreements with platforms in the form of strategic cooperation, exclusive cooperation, and so on to obtain traffic skew. Therefore, skewed merchants can get more traffic from the platform than other merchants and improve the frequency of contact with users, thus improving the quality of supply and demand matching to obtain certain benefits.Based on the quasi-natural experiment of Ctrip's Special Hotels (i.e., hotels that have established close cooperation with Ctrip in reality) and using panel data of 17.16 million samples of about 100,000 hotels from January 1 to June 30, 2019, the empirical findings are as follows. (1) Compared with that of other hotels, the occupancy rate of Special Hotels increased by 4.5 percentage points, indicating that traffic skew can bring great benefits to merchants. (2) Using the average proportion of Special Hotels in the city, excluding the hotel itself, the Bartik instrument variable (IV), and the number of post offices in the city as three IVs, the overlapping difference-in-difference method was used for dynamic analysis, carrying out a subsample test of high- and low-end hotels, and the Gold hotels and Silver hotels that enjoyed the traffic skew were taken as the control group of Special Hotels, obtaining robust empirical results. (3) The mechanism of traffic skew on occupancy rate can be summarized as a data mechanism, which is verified with online scoring data in this paper. In addition, traffic skew can guide users to book in advance, facilitating supply and demand matching across time. The relevant conclusions have significant policy implications for guiding platform traffic reasonably and promoting the digitization process.Our work contributes to the literature in the following three aspects. First, the micro influence of platform traffic skew is tested and compared with the price mechanism. Some scholars have discussed the failure of the price mechanism in the online market, and the phenomenon of live streaming, hot search, and traffic speculation is often discussed in society, but there are few empirical analyses on how traffic skew affects the benefit of merchants. This paper uses the data of Ctrip hotels to conduct a micro test and tries to compare the role of traffic skew and the price mechanism. Second, it examines the data mechanism of the online market. Regarding the specific mechanism of how digitalization promotes economic growth and improve economic efficiency, existing literature mainly analyzes the transaction cost and believes that online transaction breaks through geographical boundaries, institutional restrictions, and principal-agent problems. Based on the differences between online and offline markets, this paper proposes a data mechanism from the perspective of traffic. Third, this paper explores the online market resource allocation efficiency. Although the size of the online market is growing and gradually equal to that of the offline market, there are still few studies on the efficiency of resource allocation in the online market. This paper attempts to empirically test this phenomenon. | | 查看全文 相关附件： 下载数据代码附录 |
| | |
