THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF ONLINE DISPUTE RESOLUTION

The evolution of online dispute resolution (ODR) has witnessed both success and more prominently failure in the last two decades. Academia, however, has not fully reflected from a theoretical perspective the most appropriate ODR for the online environment. This article attempts to offer its views based on the theory of social embeddedness. It first clarifies the definition of ODR, and then differentiates two types of ODR, exogenous and endogenous. The success and failure of the two types of ODR are examined under the theory of social embeddedness with a case study of online arbitration and China's largest online marketplace Taobao. In particular, exogenous ODR, due to the embeddedness problems in transplantation, finds difficulties in confrontation with the double competition of traditional dispute resolution and endogenous ODR. In comparison, endogenous ODR, as a spontaneous order, is more suitable for the online community. The article concludes that dispute resolution in the e-era must be composed of traditional dispute resolution, exogenous and endogenous ODR. Two future trends are also observed, ie, endogenised exogenous ODR and specialised endogenous ODR.China's National Social Science Fund from Shanghai Jiao Tong University [12CFX050, 12JCY01]SSCIARTICLE445-4744