Trust has always been important in electronic commerce. Prior research in MIS has mainly focused on trust-building mechanisms and insurance against opportunistic behavior. We suggest a “trust-free system” approach, which addresses trust issues by eliminating the need for trust. Using Bitcoin, a decentralized electronic cash system, we illustrate how a system can solve trust issues by becoming “trustfree” through design. We discuss the design features of this approach, and explore research questions for generalizing the design to other information systems. The idea of a trust-free system opens a new way of thinking about trust issues in information systems. We believe that there is an untapped potential for new ideas and research on how to design and evaluate information systems.

When a bank or a credit union turns you down for a loan because your debt-to-income ratio is too high, can you turn to total strangers to get the money? Yes, you can, and we are not talking about criminal acts. It's called peer-to-peer (P2P) lending or social lending. Prosper was the first company to take the vision of social lending and convert it into practice on the Internet in the United States, and it enjoyed fast growth after launch. Four years later, however, it is facing old and new challenges, and its survival is on the line. This case depicts the opportunities and pressures Prosper faced, its actions and reactions, and its future. Prosper has made and will make many important decisions, and Prosper's successes and challenges are rich material to study.

Researcher demand for cognitive style measures is based on individual differences and the need to determine their influence. Several researchers have examined how individuals who desire to 'do things better', termed adaptors, differ from those who desire to 'do things differently', termed innovators. How these two groups vary with regards to information systems provides insight into many aspects of information technology including, development, training, implementation and use. While the basic adaptor-innovator in the workplace (AI-W) scale has been validated, there is a need to extend this measure and test for the existence of three distinct sub-scales. This work attempts to extend the AI-W scale and validate the existence of individual approach to efficiency, rule governance and sufficiency of originality so that other researchers may use this scale in future work. Initial results indicate the existence of the sub-scales providing a foundation for future work.

Herding behavior is widely observed in auctions. There are rational reasons for herding but herding can also be counterproductive. We found evidence of herding behavior and sub-optimal outcome in a multi-winner auction setting. This study adds to the knowledge of herding by looking at herding in an auction setting where there is extra incentive to herd (multi-winner auction). Our findings reconfirm evidence in previous research about strategic usage of herding that diminishes after certain threshold; in addition, our findings indicate sub-optimal outcomes of herding behavior which include unjustified risk-return ratio, low ROI, wasted investment opportunities, and underutilized resource.

People-to-people (P2P) lending, a specialized consumer-to-consumer e-commerce model, facilitates borrowing and lending between individuals in on-line marketplaces. On-line market exchanges are usually characterized by uncertainty and risk. Since trust-building mechanisms and establishing trust can reduce the uncertainty arising from information asymmetries in exchange transactions, trust-building mechanisms are crucial to the prosperity of on-line marketplaces. Based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), which explains attitudinal change, trust-building mechanisms for P2P lending marketplaces are investigated empirically and tested. The study uses data collected from Prosper, the largest U.S. P2P lending marketplace. The results support the importance of the central route (economic status) as the major driver for bidding behavior and of peripheral cues (social capital and listing quality) as trust-building mechanisms that influence trust behavior. These findings will help on-line marketplace providers to build successful P2P lending marketplaces.

People-to-people (P2P) lending, a specialized consumer-to-consumer e-commerce model, facilitates borrowing and lending between individuals in on-line marketplaces. On-line market exchanges are usua...

This paper provides an overview of the concept of people-to-people (P2P) lending, a relatively new e-commerce phenomenon that has the potential to radically change the structure of the loan segment of the financial industry. P2P lending creates a marketplace of individuals and a social fabric through which these individuals interact. It provides efficient information transfer, thus perhaps creating more perfect markets. P2P lending requires information systems support to make it function, and to provide a social network mechanism that may be crucial for its success. We discuss different P2P lending marketplace models, and how information systems support the creation and management of these new marketplaces, and how they support the individuals involved. We conclude by providing some important research questions and directions, and issues for which further investigation is called.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of social capital in for-profit People-to-People (P2P) lending marketplaces such as Prosper, the largest P2P lending marketplace in the US. We examine whether marketplace members (lenders, borrowers) are able to capitalize on borrowers' accumulated social capital. From a borrower's perspective, we investigate the influence of social capital on borrowers' chances to obtain funding and better interest rates in general as well as by borrower groups and over time. From a lender's perspective, we investigate the influence of borrowers' social capital on loan payment. We use data over a time span of two and a half years from Prosper, and analyze more than 200,000 loan requests and 27,500 loans. Our results suggest that social capital does not provide equal benefits to all members of Prosper and that mechanisms to promote social capital should be carefully designed.

In this paper we propose a research model, set of constructs, and instrument for collecting data in China to investigate online behavior in the usage of file sharing technologies by music consumers. Recent studies associated with music download were focused, for the most part, on highly infrastructure-developed countries. Since technology maturity, market conditions, and economical situations in developing countries are different from those of developed countries; we developed a model for investigation online behavior in Chinese music consumers. As a pilot study to test the constructs in our model and its suitability for use in China, we surveyed 152 people the United States. We found the constructs robust for further investigation. The instrument was revised based upon the results of factor analysis and reliability testing and translated into Chinese. Data was further collected from 439 people in China. Results show that the constructs satisfy the reliability testing as well as preliminary regression analysis for the Chinese sample.

The ability to leverage knowledge has become a core competence of organizations to compete in the contemporary economy. Knowledge management systems using knowledge repositories capture valuable knowledge assets for future reuse. How knowledge can be presented in these systems to support effective knowledge reuse becomes a critical challenge. Knowledge transfer is an essential knowledge reuse process which involves adopting knowledge from its original problem-solving context to a different context, and adapting the knowledge to solve new problems. Adaptation is vital, yet challenging. This problem was explored from the individual knowledge worker’s perspective. Integrating the research from the educational psychology and learning literatures, this study posits that a knowledge worker’s flexible understanding of the knowledge has a positive impact on the transfer (as in the sense of application) of that knowledge; and that a knowledge worker’s flexible understanding of specific knowledge content can be improved through knowledge presentations that emphasize cognitive flexibility. Further, it was purported that in an effective, successful knowledge management system, knowledge should be presented to enhance flexible understanding, and consequently, improve knowledge transfer. The principles of knowledge presentation that promote flexible understandings were explored and used in an experiment. The empirical findings partially confirmed the effect of knowledge presentation on developing flexible understandings. It was found that the effect of knowledge presentation depends on individuals’ cognitive traits. This interaction effect and the implications to research and practice are discussed. INDEX WORDS: Knowledge management, knowledge transfer, cognitive flexibility, knowledge presentation, storytelling, cognitive trait Enhancing Knowledge Transfer through Nurturing Cognitive Flexibility