Decentralizing Platform Governance: Innovations from China

Funding Scheme : General Research Fund

Project Number : 17614921

Project Title (in English and Chinese ) :

Decentralizing Platform Governance: Innovations from China

平台治理的去中心化:来自中国的创新

Principal Investigator (English) : Zhang, Huyue Angela

Co - Investigator(s) : Prof YANG, Alex

Exercise Year : 2021 / 22

Fund Approved : HK$ 656,825

Completion Date : 31-3-2024

Abstract as per original application (English/Chinese):

Our study will investigate the emerging phenomenon of self-governance in the digital economy, which has seen an ever-increasing number of online platforms relegating the authority to make rules and adjudicate disputes to platform participants. Today’s thriving online platforms face complex governance issues, giving them the appearance of sovereignty to a large extent. Platform operators have traditionally adopted a centralized model of governance: they propose transactional rules for participants, apply and enforce those rules, and mediate and adjudicate conflicts when they arise. In recent years, however, many large Chinese online platforms, including Taobao, JD.com, Didi, WeChat, and Zhihu, have quietly initiated experiments to decentralize their law-making and dispute resolution functions. We are interested in exploring these Chinese innovations within platform governance, the driving forces behind the adoption of the new mechanisms, and their associated merits and challenges, together with their legal and economic consequences. We plan to formulate game-theoretical models of the mechanism designs of these innovations and empirically evaluate their effectiveness. We also plan to conduct a comparative study of platform governance in the United States and China to explore how institutional factors can influence the governance of online platforms in different jurisdictions. Our project represents the first systematic effort to examine the various decentralized governance schemes that Chinese online platforms have introduced. It will contribute to several strands of existing literature, particularly research on platform governance, online dispute resolution, and law and technology. Our findings will offer practical insights for online platforms that desire to improve their governance structures to ease tension and resolve conflicts among their users. The research will also assist policymakers in evaluating the effects of different governance mechanism designs, helping them to make more informed decisions about whether, when, and how to regulate online platforms. We plan to write three articles systematically analyzing the phenomenon and consequences of decentralized platform governance and submit them to leading international peer-reviewed journals.

我们的研究将调查数字经济中新兴的去中心化的治理现象，其中越来越多的在线平台将制定规则和裁决争议的权力下放给平台参与者。如今蓬勃发展的网络平台面临着复杂的治理问题，在很大程度上赋予了它们类似国家主权的权力。平台运营商传统上采用集中式治理模式：他们为参与者提出交易规则，应用和执行这些规则，并在冲突出现时进行调解和裁决。然而，近年来，包括淘宝、京东、滴滴、微信、知乎在内的许多中国大型网络平台，都在悄悄地开展立法和争议解决功能下放的实验。我们有兴趣探索这些中国在平台治理方面的创新、采用新机制背后的驱动力、相关的优点和挑战，以及它们的法律和经济后果。我们计划制定这些创新机制设计的博弈论模型，并根据经验评估其有效性。我们还计划对美国和中国的平台治理进行比较研究，以探索制度因素如何影响不同司法管辖区的在线平台治理。