Impacts of information asymmetry on users' payment rates: evidence from trading data of Chinese knowledge payment platform

Purpose This paper aims to clarify the impact of information asymmetry on users' payment rates and examine the role of perceived uncertainty (PU) and acceptable price (AP) in the relationship between information asymmetry and users' payment rates. Design/methodology/approach To test the influences of information asymmetry on users' payment rates, this paper collects 18,489 transaction data from the Chinese knowledge payment platform Zhihu with a Python crawler. This paper constructs a mediation model to define the relationship between information asymmetry and users' payment rates by introducing PU and AP as the mediators. Findings Information asymmetry negatively affects users' payment rates. In addition, PU and AP mediate the information asymmetry in users' payment rates bond. Research limitations/implications This study only explores the mediators of the information asymmetry users’ payment rates bond, ignoring the effect of potential moderators, which would be an important direction for future research. Practical implications The findings of this paper suggest that information communication is essential in knowledge market transactions. Knowledge providers, as well as knowledge platforms, should enhance information exchange with consumers in order to increase product sales. Social implications This paper provides a new perspective for understanding how information asymmetry affects users' payment rates and helps to guide suppliers to improve product quality. The research framework of this paper is universal to a certain extent. Originality/value This paper is one of the first to propose using PU and AP to construct a mediation model to study the information asymmetry between users' payment rates relationship. It provides a new perspective for understanding the channel of information asymmetry in customer behavior.