Fintech platforms and information service quality from the perspective of investor cognition

Abstract

Fintech platforms serve the financial information market as a new player in corporate finance along with traditional analysts, and individual investors' preferences for these two service providers will affect market efficiency. This paper focuses on the financial information service industry in the context of the COVID-19, and discusses the information service quality of financial information service providers (fintech platforms vs. analysts) from the perspective of individual investors' cognition. Based on the theory of organizational information processing, through survey method, it has been found that investors believe that the information service quality of fintech platforms is higher than that of analysts, and is mediated by information planning comprehensiveness. It was also found that economic environment uncertainty moderates the mediating information service providers and information service quality through information planning comprehensiveness. Specifically, in a low economic environment uncertainty (Non-Lockdown Policy), investors believe that financial technology platforms have higher information planning comprehensiveness and higher quality of information services compared to analyst; In a high economic environment uncertainty (Lockdown Policy), the aforementioned impact is weakened. Robustness results indicate that the above main effects remain when considering the sub-sample and investors' Internet search behaviour. In addition, the heterogeneity results indicate that the more economically developed the region, the higher the investors' evaluation of the quality of financial information services. This study promotes the understanding of fintech substitution effect from the perspective of investor perception and reveals the psychological mechanism of individual investors, which provides micro ideas for the governance of fintech platforms for new participants in startups' financing and regional fintech development.