Formation Path of Unfair Competition of Platform Enterprises Based on the Perspective of Configuration

Competition among platform enterprises is a contest of value creation behaviors by multiple groups and is one of the important manifestations of the crowd science in the field of platform economy. However,the frequent unfair competition among platform enterprises has hindered the healthy and rapid development of the platform economy. Clarifying the source of unfair competition is an important prerequisite to regulate this behavior, and the unfair competition behavior between platform enterprises has a complex generation path. In order to clarify this path, this paper explores the source of unfair competition in the platform economy from the perspective of configuration by qualitative comparative analysis. The results of this paper show that unfair competition among platform enterprises is the result of five factors, such as business difference, enterprise scale difference, innovation ability difference, profitability difference, and regulatory environment. These factors combine with each other to form four configuration paths of unfair competition among platform enterprises. Finally, from the perspective of reducing unfair competition in the industry, this paper puts forward specific ideas to standardize the development of platform economy, including respecting the law of platform development, reducing excessive market intervention, and trying to construct the proactive regulatory model with expected nature.