Research On Legal Regulation For Illicit Credit Evaluation Practices In Online Transactions

With the rapid development of Internet technology,the Internet transaction market is growing mature.Online shopping has gradually become a necessity in people's daily life as a result of its advantages of great convenience,price and diversity.The online transaction,as a new trading model,breaks the constraints of time and space and rapidly evolves to a significant business model in the Internet era with its increasing market share.However,there are still problems with online transactions.As the Internet is virtual,online consumers can only depend on the product information provided by the merchants and the feedback of previous consumers when choosing a product.Therefore,the credit rating of the merchants plays a significant role in the process of online transactions.In order to achieve higher transaction volumes and make more profits,some merchants start to take illicit practices to get a higher credit rating,which greatly mislead online consumers.Such unlawful practices significantly harm consumers' legal rights,grab other merchants' business opportunities and degrade the business reputation of the online transaction platform providers.Credit is the foundation of the online transaction market.The laws and regulations for the credit evaluation of online transactions will not only facilitate the establishment of the online transaction credit system,but also prosper the online transaction market and therefore boost the development of national economy.However,currently there is still a lack of mature laws and regulations for online transactions in our country.Therefore it is highly necessary to establish a legal system to regulate illegal practices in online transactions.This dissertation is divided into four parts,in addition to the Introduction and the Epilogue.The first part is a summary of the illicit credit evaluation practices in online transactions.Based on the concept of credit evaluation,the author further introduces the effects of credit evaluation and defines certain illicit practices in online transactions.Currently,the main patterns of such illicit credit evaluation practices include cash back for good evaluations,intentional negative evaluations,forced modification of evaluations.Such unlawful practices not only significantly harm consumers' legal rights,but also grab other merchants' business opportunities in the industry and degrade the business reputation of the online platform provider.The second part first describes the current laws and regulations for illicit credit evaluation practices in online transactions,and then manifests the shortcomings in the current legal system through the difficulties in safeguarding consumer rights,the weak regulations for merchants with illicit practices,and the neglect of online transaction platform providers.The third part introduces successful foreign experiences from Germany,USA,European Union,Japan and Korea,which provide good examples for us to complete our laws and regulations for illicit credit evaluation practices in online transactions.The fourth part proposes recommendations on the establishment of laws and regulations for illicit credit evaluation practices,which target on the following three aspects: protecting consumer rights,regulating the practices of online transaction merchants,and propelling self-discipline within the online transaction market.