Preventing bypass on sharing economy platforms: The impact of message framing on users’ bypass intention

Bypass happens when sharing economy users intentionally circumvent platforms’ payment process to transact directly with each other. For sharing platforms, it is a form of dark behavior that could represent a threat. This study focuses on the mitigation of bypass and whether message framing can reduce bypass, examining the impact of a negatively-framed message (highlighting risks and disadvantages associated with bypass) and a positively-framed message (highlighting benefits associated with finalizing the payment on the platform). Based on an experiment (N = 600), results show that both messages impact bypass intention significantly, especially the negatively-framed message. Moreover, our model unravels insights into some of the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of different message frames: both messages impact directly bypass intention, however, while the negative message reduces bypass indirectly via reduced perceived economic benefit and increased perceived risk, the corresponding indirect effects of the positive message are non significant.