Balancing consumer protection with seller welfare is a central challenge in platform governance. This study examines returnless refunds—an innovation that reimburses buyers without requiring product returns—and analyzes a policy shift that delegated refund authority to highly rated sellers on a leading e-commerce platform. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that delegated sellers reject opportunistic requests more often while improving service performance. While delegation strengthens reputation-based incentives and benefits smaller, high-quality sellers, it also increases negotiation costs, highlighting tradeoffs in decentralized platform governance and the need for trilateral mechanisms.
About Jinan Lin
Dr. Jinan Lin joined the Wisconsin School of Business in August 2024 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Operations and Information Management. His research focuses on digital platforms and the sharing economy, with particular emphasis on user growth strategies and regulatory policies in multi-sided marketplaces. He earned his M.Phil. in Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to joining UW-Madison, he conducted research with Microsoft, Amazon, DiDi Labs, and Nokia Bell Labs.