An Empirical Study On Influential Factors Of Users’ Adoption Decisions On Third-Party Payment Platform

In recent years, with the rapid development of e-commerce, third-party payment platform is gradually rising. As a credit intermediary in e-commerce transactions, third-party payment can effectively solve the game between buyers and sellers caused by information asymmetry, and thus solve the problem of integrity of network transactions. It can promote the development of e-commerce and vice versa. As of July 2014, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has issued a total of 269 third-party payment licenses. The competition among third-party payment platforms is increasingly fierce, and how to occupy a place in the fierce market competition is critical to platform enterprises. Due to network effects, the more users a third-party payment platform has, the more competitive it is, that’s to say, users play a key role in the survival of the platform.Based on the above background, this paper studies factors that affect users’ adoption of third-party payment platform and divides them into internal and external factors. The internal factor refers to service processes the third-party payment platform provides, and the external factors refer to the word-of-mouth effect and cross-network effect. This paper constructs four conceptual models:(a) the influence of service processes on users’adoption decisions model; (b) the influence of word-of-mouth effect on users’adoption decisions model; (c) the influence of cross-network effect on buyers’adoption decisions model; and (d) the influence of cross-network effect on sellers’adoption decisions model. The questionnaires are issued through online and offline, and the number of valid questionnaires is 256,227, 204 and 153. Then using SPSS19.0 and AMOS 21.0 to process the data, including reliability analysis, validity analysis and factor analysis. And using SEM to analyze whether these factors will affect users’adoption decisions on third-party payment platform and the degree of the impact.Based on empirical study, it concludes that both internal and external factors have impacts on users’adoption decisions on third-party payment platform. (a) Both certification and help process have significant positive impacts on users’adoption decisions; (b) the trust propensity of recipients has a significant impact on their adoption decisions; (c) the number of sellers and their products has a significant impact on buyers’adoption decisions, and the number of buyers has a significant impact on sellers’adoption decisions. The theoretical value of this paper is (a) providing a new perspective (internal and external) to study the adoption and diffusion of third-party payment platform; (b) enriching the theory of third-party payment platform service processes, finding that most of third-party payment platform service processes have no significant effect on users’adoption decisions; and (c) expanding the factors of cross-network effect, which further promotes empirical research in the field of two-sided platform and provides some reference for the research on adoption and diffusion of platforms.In addition to the theoretical value, this paper also has some practical value. Based on the above conclusions, platform managers can develop and execute their marketing strategies from internal and external perspectives to get more users, (a) Optimizing the platform service processes to get new users and improve the loyalty of old users, especially the certification process and help process; (b) popularizing the main functions and service processes of the platform, encouraging and guiding professional users to spread the platform; (c) according to financial budget, investing buyers, sellers or both of them to increase the number of users on one side to attract the users on other side.