Influence Of Governance Mechanisms In Online Retail Platform On Sellers' Opportunism With Perceived Uncertainty As Moderator

Online retail has developed rapidly with the popularization of mobile Internet.However,the number of complaints from online buyers in 2016 rose by 14.78% year on year.Among them,the seller's opportunistic behavior such as false promotion,false delivery,unmatched items,and the difficulty of returning goods are widely criticized by the online buyers.Through literature review and summary of practical experience,we find that the monitoring mechanism,reputation mechanism and communication mechanism are the three governance mechanisms applicable to China's online retail platform,besides,perceived uncertainty of shopping website's behavior and perceived uncertainty of product moderate their governance effects.Based on transaction cost theory and social exchange theory,using data from online buyers,this study not only empirically examined the negative effects of governance mechanisms on perceived opportunism,but also explored the moderating roles of perceived uncertainty.The results from Hierarchical Linear Regression analysis show that(1)reputation mechanism has a significant negative effect on perceived opportunism;(2)perceived uncertainty of shopping website's behavior has moderating effect on the relationship between communication mechanism and perceived opportunism;(3)perceived uncertainty of product has moderating effects on the relationship between monitoring mechanism,reputation mechanism,communication mechanism and perceived opportunism.