Platform Disintermediation: Information Effects and Pricing Remedies

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sekar, Shreyas; Siddiq, Auyon
• 署名单位: University of Toronto; University Toronto Scarborough; University of Toronto; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: OPERATIONS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0030-364X
• DOI: 10.1287/opre.2025.2046
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: online; systems

摘要

Two-sided platforms, such as labor marketplaces for hiring freelancers, typically generate revenue by matching prospective buyers and sellers and extracting commissions from completed transactions. Disintermediation, where sellers transact off-platform with buyers to bypass commission fees, can undermine the viability of these marketplaces. Although circumventing the platform allows sellers to avoid commission fees, it also leaves them fully exposed to risky buyers (given the absence of the platform's payment protections) and incurs switching costs (given the absence of the platform's transaction infrastructure). In this paper, we consider interventions for addressing disintermediation, focusing on the pricing and informational levers available to the platform, where the latter refers to the accuracy of the signal sellers receive about buyers' riskiness. First, whereas intuition suggests platforms should counter disintermediation by lowering commission rates, in a high-information environment, a platform may be better off raising them. Further, when information quality is high, an increase in sellers' switching costs may hurt platform revenue. Finally, a platform may strictly benefit from sellers receiving a partially informative buyer signal (i.e., not perfectly revealing nor concealing a buyer's riskiness), particularly when switching costs are low. As extensions, we examine the efficacy of two interventions: implementing platform access fees to capture revenue upfront and banning sellers caught disintermediating. Overall, our results shed light on how disintermediation disrupts platform operations and offer prescriptions for platforms seeking to counteract it.