Gender Discrimination in Online Peer-to-Peer Credit Lending: Evidence from Lending Platform in China

Gender discrimination in accessing financial resources is a mounting concern in developing countries, but empirical evidence of such discrimination is limited. Using data collected from PPdai.com, one of the largest P2P lending platforms in China, we investigate potential gender discrimination in online P2P credit lending market in China. The results illustrate that female borrowers are more likely to be funded than male borrowers; but for the funded loans, female borrowers have to pay higher interest rates. Moreover, the default rate of loans from female borrowers is lower than that from male borrowers. The findings imply that statistical discrimination and costly taste-based discrimination co-exist in this online peer-to-peer lending market, but the underlying reasons for the discriminations are different. The implications for research and practice along with the limitations of this study are discussed accordingly.