技术研发投入、用户补贴和分享经济平台发展——基于交易费用理论视角的研究

R&D Investment,User Allowance and the Development of Sharing Economy Platform——A Study Based on Transaction Cost Theory

文章以近年来兴起的分享经济为研究对象,基于交易费用理论,研究了分享经济条件下市场中交易费用降低的具体机制。分享经济平台在技术研发(包括信息技术开发和应用)上进行投入,用于市场机制设计、线上运营的商业模式开发和标准化合约的设计,从而降低了交易费用。技术研发投入在长期可以降低交易费用,但是在短期将会增加交易费用,这是因为增加投入要求平台向用户收取更高的手续费。用户是分享经济市场中的交易主体,用户基于收益—成本原则选择是否进行交易。以用户为视角,构建模型研究了技术研发投入和用户补贴对分享经济发展的影响,并运用分享经济上市公司的数据进行了实证检验。研究发现,技术研发投入和分享经济平台的发展呈负相关关系,用户补贴和分享经济平台的发展呈正相关关系。在分享经济发展初期,平台没有动力为了降低交易费用而加大技术研发投入,任何降低交易费用的尝试将导致市场规模的萎缩,此时风险投资资金的支持(用于用户补贴)对平台的发展具有重要意义。

Taking the rise of sharing economy as the research object in recent years and based on the theory of transaction cost,this paper studies the specific mechanism of transaction cost reduction in the context of sharing economy.Sharing economy platform invests in R&D(including information technology development and application)for market mechanism design,online operational business model development,and standard contract design,thereby reducing transaction cost.R&D investment can reduce transaction cost in the long run,but it increases transaction cost in the short run,because the increase in investment requires the platform to charge users higher fees.Users are the main trading bodies in the sharing economy market,they choose whether to trade or not based on the principle of profit-cost.From the perspective of users,the paper builds a model to study the impact of R&D investment and user allowance on the development of sharing economy,and applies the data of listed sharing-economic-companies to make an empirical test.The study finds that there is a negative correlation between R&D investment and the development of sharing economy platform,and a positive correlation between user allowance and the development of sharing economy platform.In the early stage of sharing economy development,the platform has no incentive to increase R&D investment in order to reduce transaction cost.Any attempt to reduce transaction cost will lead to the shrinkage of the market size.Meanwhile,the support of venture capital funds(for user allowance)is of great significance to the platform development.