2.2  Recent Empirical Research

Guo (2011) collected 16766 transaction records since 2008.8.25 to 2010.5.15 from PPDAI and studied the P2P lending financing cost and financing availability. Six related conclusions are drawn: (a) financing cost is negatively related to credit scores and the amount of borrowing, (b) the cost of financing and the historical flow standard,  total number of bid are closely relative  to each other, (c) borrowing ways have no significant impact on the cost of borrowing, (d)the finance availability is positively correlated to the borrower credit rating, historical success amounts and the total number of bid, (e) availability of financing are negatively related to borrowing deadline and the amount of borrowing, (f) indication that the existence of the social capital can effectively enhance the availability of credit.

There are also some conclusions draw by using questionnaires and case studies on the influence factors of the P2P lending practices: the borrower’s borrowing information, authentication data has significant influence on borrowing rate, interest rates and borrowing amounts make sense but smaller, borrowing time limits almost means nothing to borrowing progress (Li, 2011). And there are researches on how to improve the yield of investors from the Angle of investment. By developing and combining information of investor behavior and the borrower credit information, Luo (2012) established a quantitative loan evaluation and investment decision-making model from three aspects: the investors structure, the borrower credit risk analysis and comprehensive analysis of the information sources, which can help investors make investment decisions.

We can infer from the articles above that we have quite a few domestic research results but mainly concentrated on the operation comparison between different P2P network credit platforms, system construction, risk study and so on. In terms of domestic empirical research, due to the relatively late start and insufficient published data, there are only a few references. But with the rapid development of P2P, related research should also keep up with the steps of development. First of all, we should make necessary extensions and in-depth progress on the basis of existing research, such as further study on the internal governance issues when do research on the operating mechanism of the net credit platform. In-depth study of risk control, transaction safety and efficiency etc should also be taken into consideration when studying the credit risks. Secondly, in terms of research method, it should also be improved, especially the application of quantitative analysis method on these problems, and targeted research for different problems with different methods. Third is to expand the research angle of view, the P2P network itself is a product of interdisciplinary integration, so a wider perspective on the study of these problems is needed.