Friendships in Online Peer-To-Peer Lending: Pipes, Prisms, and Relational Herding1
研究在线P2P借贷中友谊如何作为管道、棱镜和羊群信号影响借贷决策，发现借款人的朋友（尤其是线下密友）会提供资金支持，但朋友的投标会抑制第三方跟投，而潜在贷款人的线下朋友投标则会引发关系性羊群效应。
This paper investigates how friendship relationships act as pipes, prisms, and herding signals in a large online, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending site. By analyzing decisions of lenders, we find that friends of the borrower, especially close offline friends, act as financial pipes by lending money to the borrower. On the other hand, the prism effect of friends’ endorsements via bidding on a loan negatively affects subsequent bids by third parties. However, when offline friends of a potential lender, especially close friends, place a bid, a relational herding effect occurs as potential lenders are likely to follow their offline friends with a bid.