An Empirical Study On Influencing Factors Of P2P Online Lending Behavior

With the Internet finance booming in China,P2P online lending has been growing vigorously in the loan market.At the end of 2015,Ezubao and Dada Group’s scandals have come to light one after another,which cast a huge shadow on the development of P2P in China.Investors are being more and more cautious in the face of huge market risk,especially in the case of the domestic capital market that is fluctuating wildly.Numerous studies of P2P online lending have focused on its overall development and the prevention as well as control of risk.However,little research has been done on a micro level that investigates platform players.This thesis mainly analyzed a typical domestic online lending platform,Renrendai.We firstly introduced the general information and developments of the platform,on which basis its prospects and crises are also presented.The thesis concentrated mainly on lending and borrowing parties on the platform.In peer-to-peer lending,investors are always facing various portfolios.The investment decision is not only determined by the investor’s rational analysis and experience,but also his subjective taste preference.So what borrowers’ information could actually affect investors’ decisions?We divided borrowers’ information into two kinds,borrower-related information and loan-related information.Borrower-related information provides borrowers per se information like gender,age,region,etc.,while loan-related information is what borrowers described and submitted in lending transactions.After a simple data analysis of Renrendai online transactions throughout 2014,we observed that there is a difference between female and male borrowers in the probability of funding success.Similar to gender,education,age and region are also related to the probability of funding success.We empirically found that borrowers’ gender does not affect funding success,ceteris paribus.It could be female borrowers’ own belief that there exists gender discrimination in lending market,that makes them spontaneously offer higher interest rate than male borrowers,ceteris paribus.Whereas the probability of funding success is negatively related to interest rate,thus female borrowers’ funding success is overall lower than males.Besides,we also observed that educational background discrimination does exist in lending transactions,that highly educated borrowers are more likely to get loan than those with low education.Historical data also proved that those with low education showed higher default rate than highly educated borrowers.Therefore,ceteris paribus,it is a rational choice for investors to select borrowers with high education,namely,the educational background discrimination is statistically valid.The study addressed the effect of information on funding-raise activities.At a totally information-intermediary platform,what effective information disclosure and rational decision-making bring is not only expected benefit for both parties,but also the normalization and development of entire financial industry.