Author Identifier (ORCID)
Abstract
Digital platforms face a fundamental paradox: while expanding service variety is a dominant competitive strategy, it risks inducing a “paradox of choice” that confuses and deters users. This tension manifests with extreme clarity in the nascent, high-complexity market of cryptocurrency exchanges, creating a pressing empirical puzzle. To resolve this, we adopt the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) perspective in a three-stage mixed-method study to investigate how platforms can strategically manage this trade-off. Our qualitative exploration (Study 1) established a capital flow schema called “inflow, roll, and go” and identified key complexity-reduction mechanisms. A subsequent survey (n = 190, Study 2) validated that perceived innovativeness and scalability are critical stimuli for service variety, which in turn drives user continuance intention. A final survey (n = 140, Study 3) confirmed that users prioritise services that bridge to the traditional financial system, forming a minimal viable structure with a variety of functions. Our meta-inferences make several key contributions, including the resolution of the service variety paradox by introducing a theoretical distinction between value-adding “real-variety” and confusing “pseudo-variety” and the development of a strategic roadmap that guides exchanges in navigating the tension between service expansion and user confusion, offering actionable insights for platform strategy in any high-velocity digital market.
Keywords
crypto-exchanges, FinTech, paradox of choice, platform strategy, service variety, stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
12-1-2026
Article Number
103114
ISSN
02684012
Volume
91
Publication Title
International Journal of Information Management
Publisher
Elsevier
School
School of Business and Law
Funding Information
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Cheuk Hang Au reports financial support was provided by National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan, as a PI of a funded research project (ID: 110–2410-H−194–109 –). Po-Hsu Shieh and Vladimir Nurbaev were a salaried research assistant under this project.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Au, C. H., Shieh, P., Nurbaev, V., Law, K. M., & Ho, K. K. (2026). The service variety paradox in crypto-exchanges: A stimulus-organism-response (SOR) perspective. International Journal of Information Management, 91, 103114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2026.103114