Reputation inflation detection in a Chinese C2C market

1567-4223/$ see front matter ̆ 2011 Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2011.06.001 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Xia). In consumer-to-consumer (C2C) markets, sellers can manipulate their reputation by employing a large number of puppet buyers who offer positive feedback on fake transactions. We present a conceptual framework to identify the characteristics of collusive transactions based on the homo economicus assumption. We hypothesize that transaction-related indicators including price, frequency, comment, and connectedness to the transaction network, and individual-related indicators including reputation and age can be used to identify collusive transactions. The model is empirically tested using a dataset from Taobao, the largest C2C market in China. The results show that the proposed indicators are effective in identifying collusive traders. ̆ 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.