Abstract
This paper delves into the impact of live chat signals, manifested by persuasive and informative signals, on contract decision and the moderating role of business familiarity. Utilizing a dataset from a Chinese online labor market, our results confirm that politeness, response frequency, and reply speed positively influence contract decision. Regarding the moderating effects, business familiarity undermines the impact of politeness and enhances that of reply speed on contract decisions. The implications are as follows: first, this paper is among the early studies to empirically explore the live chat mechanism in online labor platforms. Second, this paper integrates the differential roles of live chat signals and business familiarity into a comprehensive model to specify the intricacies involved in the signal-behavior linkages. Third, our study illustrates how live chat works and prescribes how to effectively use this tool to bring benefits to vendors and platform managers, thus further extending the literature regarding live chat.
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