Sexism and Ageism in a P2P Lending Market: Evidence from Korea

Abstract

This study attempts to identify gender and age discrimination by individual lenders in P2P lending markets by analyzing empirical transaction data from multiple platforms including Moneyauction, Popfunding, and 8percent. To do this, the study investigates the effects and importance of a borrower's gender and age on individual lenders' preferences and a borrower's actual repayment performance using multiple linear regression and relative weight analyses. As a result, no gender discrimination is found in the three Korean P2P lending markets, and such indiscrimination is rational, on the grounds that the borrower's gender does not have a statistically significant impact on the lenders' preferences as well as his/her actual repayment performance, and its relative importance is minimal. While, there marginally exists age discrimination against a borrower in the markets, and such ageism is likely to be irrational, on the grounds that the borrower's age has a partly significant and minimally important impact on the lenders' preferences, but has no significant and important impact on his/her repayment performance. For the first time, these findings help to clarify gender and age discrimination issues in the P2P lending market by identifying the rationality of individual lenders' preferences to the borrower's gender and age in the Korea.