社会评价信号影响下电商商家行为研究

Research on E-Commerce Merchants’ Behaviors under the Influence of Social Evaluation Signals

摘要: 在数字消费快速发展的背景下，在线评论已成为电子商务平台中影响消费者购买决策的重要信息来源。消费者消费选择受服务价值、等待成本与评论信息共同作用。文章将订单履约过程抽象为M/M/1排队系统，刻画评论操纵对消费者购买概率和商家利润的影响机制。结果显示：评论操纵能提升服务质量预期与消费者购买概率；消费者对评论越依赖，商家操纵动机越强。但同时平台需要提高评论识别概率和违规处罚力度，以免商家通过操纵评论来争夺需求。研究有助于揭示电子商务平台中评论信号的经济后果，并为平台治理和市场监管提供理论参考。

Abstract: In the context of the rapid development of digital consumption, online reviews have emerged as a crucial information signal affecting consumers’ purchase decisions on e-commerce platforms. Consumer choice is jointly determined by service value, waiting costs, and review information. To examine the economic effects of review manipulation, this study models the order fulfillment process as an M/M/1 queueing system and analyzes how manipulated reviews influence consumers’ purchase probability and merchants’ profits. The results indicate that review manipulation increases consumers’ expected service quality and, in turn, raises their likelihood of purchase. Furthermore, the greater consumers’ reliance on online reviews, the stronger the incentive for merchants to engage in review manipulation. These findings also imply that platforms should enhance the detection probability of manipulated reviews and impose stricter penalties on fraudulent behavior, so as to curb merchants’ incentives to capture demand through review distortion. This study contributes to a better understanding of the economic consequences of review signals in e-commerce platforms and offers theoretical implications for platform governance and regulatory policy.