In my dissertation, I study factors that affect the value-creating interactions between value producers and value consumers on two-sided platforms (e.g., Freelancer and Kickstarter). In the first essay, I study how bid price dispersion affects the value-creating interactions (i.e., contracting) between service providers (freelancers) and buyers in online labor markets. I find that bid price dispersion has a negative effect on buyers' offering a contract and service providers' tendency to accept the contract if offered one. I theorize that both service providers and buyers face uncertainty over price as to how much to charge or to pay for IT services and a higher bid price dispersion leads to higher uncertainty, and thus a lower contracting rate. In the second essay, I examine the role of the lottery in value-creating interactions (namely backings) in crowdfunding platforms. I find that the lottery, when designed as an option with a participation cost, decreases backers' average contribution and the total value created for a project, albeit it incentivizes more low-value interactions (i.e., more low-value backings). I theorize that the lottery, on the one hand, incentivizes low-value interactions that would otherwise not happen, but on the other hand, transforms high-value interactions into low-value interactions. In the third essay, I study the effect of backers' online identity concealment on the value-creating interactions (i.e., backings) in crowdfunding platforms. Contradictory to a common practice that crowdfunding platforms often maintain a public list of all backers’ identity information, assuming a positive observational learning effect among peer backers, the empirical results demonstrate with backers' online identity concealed completely, campaigns on average gain more backings and money as well as become more likely to succeed. And this effect is larger for donors-those back a campaign without receiving any reward-than for rewardees-those back the campaign for the reward. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

Rapid digitalisation development has been stampeding widely across today’s societies, and not least in the payment industry. Though, the digitalisation in the payment industry has been very deviating, even between similar well-developed countries, and while there are positive and negative effects with both digital- and physical payment means, there is little knowledge that highlights the influencing factors and accompanied problems. This study therefore explore swhich, and how, different factors influence a country’s degree of digital payments, and creates further understanding of where the payment markets are heading in the future. It is done through a case study of four different industrialised countries, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and Switzerland which involves mapping the countries’ payment markets, as well as potential factors influencing a population’s payment habits, through a perspective of innovation theory in terms of dominant designs and technological discontinuities. Theory of network externalities and two-sided platforms are further used to explain and discuss how a two-sided market, likethe payment market, is affected by changes and other circumstances in different ways.Conclusions are then drawn from the used theories together with a comparison of the findings,and identifies certain influencers to a country’s distribution of payments, as well as provides indications of where the different payments markets are heading in the future. Data is mainly gathered through written material and credible databases, but also from semi-structured interviews. / Den snabba digitaliseringen har slagit sig fram i dagens samhällen, och inte minst i betalningsindustrin. Dock har digitaliseringen i betalningsindustrin varit mycket avvikande mellan liknande välutvecklade länder, och medan det finns positiva och negativa effekter med både digitala och fysiska betalningsmedel, finns det inte mycket kunskap om påverkandefaktorer och medföljande problem. Denna studie undersöker därför vilka, och hur, olika faktorer påverkar ett lands grad av digitala betalningar, och vidare skapar ytterligare förståelse för var betalningsmarknaderna är på väg framöver. Detta görs genom en fallstudie av fyra olika industrialiserade länder, Sverige, Italien, Kanada och Schweiz, som innebär en kartläggning av ländernas betalningsmarknader, och av potentiella faktorer som påverkar befolkningens betalningsvanor, genom ett perspektiv från innovationsteori i form av dominerande design och tekniska diskontinuiteter. Teori om nätverksexternaliteter och tvåsidiga plattformar används vidare för att förklara och diskutera hur en tvåsidig marknad som betalningsmarknadenpåverkas av förändringar och andra omständigheter. Slutsatser dras sedan från de användateorierna tillsammans med en jämförelse av resultaten och identifierar påverkande faktorer tillett lands betalningsdistribution, samt ger indikationer på var de olika betalningsmarknaderna är på väg framöver. Data samlades huvudsakligen in genom skriftligt material och från tillförlitliga databaser, men även från semistrukturerade intervjuer.