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Chinese face refers to reputation, others’ respect or compliance which is gained through self-representation and role-playing. The purpose of this paper is to identify and distinguish the four dimensions of face construct: personal identity-face, family identity-face, friend identity-face and occupational identity-face. Based on this, the authors discuss and investigate the influence of four different face dimensions on a consumer’s need for uniqueness (CNFU).

This research uses a questionnaire survey method and convenience samples. Subjects are students from a university in Wuhan operated directly under the Ministry of Education. A total of 730 questionnaires were distributed mainly in libraries and study rooms. After eliminating invalid questionnaires, 690 questionnaires were obtained. In sum, 44.1 percent research subjects are males, and 59 percent of them are undergraduate samples; 92.5 percent subjects’ monthly disposable consumption was less than 2,000 yuan.

The result shows that the influence paths and directions are different. Specifically, personal identity-face and family identity-face restrain CNFU through promoting interdependent self-construal, and friend identity-face and occupational identity-face facilitate CNFU through enhancing the consumer’s susceptibility to normative influence.

These findings are useful for clarify contemporary Chinese individuality-seeking consumption and conformity consumption behavior, and will shed light on form strategic practices, such as brand positioning and product communication.

This paper aims to examine the effects of providing more information (e.g. product and price) and enhancing the interactivity of a website on consumers' willingness to pay price premiums.

An experiment tests the proposed framework and corresponding hypotheses. The test features eight versions of an experimental website, with varying combinations of online information (e.g. price information, product information, and interactivity).

Providing more information, whether about the product or price, leads to increased trust among consumers, which has the capacity to reduce consumer price consciousness and thereby enhance price premiums. E-tailers can earn price premiums by enhancing the interactivity on their websites.

Previous studies are ambivalent about the impacts of providing information online. This study examines two paths by which information provision influences price premiums: trusting beliefs and price consciousness. The results demonstrate that providing rich information, together with enhanced interactivity, increases the perceived trustworthiness of the e-tailer, which reduces consumers' price consciousness and increases the price premiums.

How to free the potential power of the capital market while simultaneously protecting the investors is critical in equity-based crowdfunding. To realize these goals, the purpose of this study was to investigate the value of information disclosure and leader-follower mechanism which have been widely adopted by crowdfunding platforms.

Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), a research framework was developed. Then, the authors conducted an in-depth exploratory empirical study of Dajiatou (www.dajiatou.com) which is a typical equity-based crowdfunding service provider in China. Independent-samples t-test and linear regression were used to uncover the value of project information disclosure and the lead investor in terms of fundraising performance improvement.

First, the quality of entrepreneurial team information, especially the ratio of full-time staff, staff number and enterprise business age, significantly improve fundraising performance. Second, entrepreneurs’ behaviors, including project updates and project video, play important roles in crowdfunding. Third, whether or not the project has a lead investor, leader’s credibility information and his/her advocacy behaviors – percentage of their investment, identity certification, investment experience and comments for projects – are important factors affecting fundraising performance.

The authors are one of the firsts to apply ELM to investigate the effects of diverse information on fundraising performance in equity-based crowdfunding. The value of lead investor which has been ignored in prior research was studied through second-hand data.

First, an equity-based crowdfunding platform should request the entrepreneur to disclose project quality-related information with more details. Second, crowdfunding platforms should set a high qualifications level for lead investor, and limit the lead investor’s committed percentage in a specific project.

This paper extended the research in crowdfunding by uncovering the value of information disclosure and lead investor based on ELM theory.