Unraveling Multihoming Sellers’ Coping Strategies to Platform Information Quality Control

To mitigate sellers’ misinformation on e-marketplace platforms, platform owners impose information quality control to ensure authenticity of information presented to consumers. Although information quality control is conducive to bolstering the credibility of information on platforms, it may encourage sellers to pursue multihoming strategy on other platforms, thereby undermining the attractiveness of the platform implementing information quality control (“focal platform” thereafter). Building on coping theory, this study aims to investigate how sellers cope with information quality control imposed by platforms by observing their information withholding and multihoming strategy. The moderating influence of multihoming experience is further considered in this research. To validate our hypotheses, we collected data from two dominant e-marketplace platforms in China. Based on quasi-experimental design, this we employed propensity score matching and difference-in-difference methods to analyze our data. We discovered that platform information quality control culminates in sellers’ information withholding and service-related multihoming strategy but has no impact on product-related multihoming strategy. Additionally, we revealed that sellers tend to react differently to the platform information quality control depending on their multihoming experiences. Findings from this research can be harnessed by platform owners to refine their control policy in the multihoming context.