Quality Regulation on Two-Sided Platforms: Exclusion, Subsidization, and First-Party Applications
研究了双边平台管理互补应用质量的三种策略：排除低质量、补贴高质量和自研高质量应用，发现补贴和自研策略能提升平台利润和消费者网络，但只有补贴总能改善社会福利。
Managing the quality of complementary applications is vital to the success of a two-sided platform. While prior research has focused solely on restricting platform access based on a quality threshold, we compare three quality regulation strategies: (1) the platform excludes access to low-quality complementors, (2) it provides a fixed amount of subsidy to high-quality complementors, and (3) it develops its own high-quality applications in addition to those from third-party complementors. Our analyses reveal that the widely adopted exclusion strategy is a special case of the subsidization strategy, and it does not always benefit the platform. In contrast, both subsidization and first-party applications strategies render the platform owner better off, with higher profits, higher average quality, and a larger consumer network, but only subsidization always improves social welfare. In addition, the trade-off between subsidization and first-party applications strategies depends on the development cost of first-party applications and the fraction of high-quality complementors, but the relationship is not monotonic. Our results demonstrate that the platform does not have to sacrifice application quantity for higher application quality. With the right choices, it can profitably improve both measures simultaneously. This research provides concrete guidelines to help platform managers make decisions about regulating the quality of complementary applications. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.