The Effect of Monetary Incentive on Microfinance Lending Decisions: An Economic Experiment

• Main Authors: CHEN, TON, 陳彤
• Other Authors: CHEN, I
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5k8xr5

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 經濟學系 === 107 === 　　Recently, microfinance, also known as “peer-to-peer lending” or “P2P lending”, becomes an increasingly popular way for investment. Previous studies have focused on the factors influencing the lending decisions of the microfinance lenders. In the present study, we constructed an economic experiment in which subjects were asked to decide how much they would lend to a Kiva borrower with varying financial returns, in order to examine whether the change of financial returns affects the lenders’ decisions. 　　Our experimental results show that there is no significant correlation between financial returns and the lending amount. Additionally, subjects’ willingness to loan are not significantly different between the treatment groups. All together, these results contribute to build a new hypothesis about the relationship between financial returns and the lending decision: Financial returns will not affect the lending decision if the amount is not over a certain percentage. Based on the hypothesis, we argue that the current payoff policy of Kiva.org is a viable option from an operational perspective.