Speaker: Jingtao Tao (Ph.D. Candidate at National University of Singapore)

Date & Time: Tue. 23, December 2025, from 10:00 to 11:30 AM (Beijing Time)

Location: Tongji Building A2101

ABSTRACT

Most e-commerce research focuses on digitally mature economies with robust legal frameworks and infrastructure. We study platform expansion in emerging markets, where formal institutions, such as legal systems and regulatory enforcement, are underdeveloped, digital literacy is limited, and consumer trust in online transactions is low. In these settings, social capital, reflected as strong interpersonal trust deeply rooted in a community culture, can help overcome these barriers. Using longitudinal data from a leading Indonesian agent-based e-commerce platform, we find that local agents, i.e., ordinary users from the community who partner with the platform, drive higher community sales when they have greater social capital. Moreover, dynamic interactions between agents and users on the platform strengthen this effect through relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital, such as when agents act more benevolently and demonstrate greater familiarity with the product offerings. These moderating effects accumulate and intensify over time as the agent-user bonds deepen. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of local agents in introducing platforms to unfamiliar markets and facilitating digital integration in emerging economies. More broadly, they suggest that community-based social capital can compensate for weak formal institutions and translate into platform performance, offering strategic guidance for platform growth in emerging markets.

Keywords: social capital; emerging market; benevolence; Indonesia; agent-based e-commerce