The development of emerging online platforms relies on attracting merchants with market operation experiences and capabilities. Taking the emerging online discount platform as an example, this study uses small and medium-sized merchants in a specific industry (e. g. , consumer electronics industry) as the observation sample, and employs an individual panel fixed effects model combined with Dynamic Capability Theory to explore the wilingness of merchants with high customer operating capability who mainly attract free traffic, and the willingness of merchants with low customer operating capability who mainly attract paid traffic to adopt the emerging online discount platform, and analyses the boundary conditions that affect the willingness for adoption. The findings suggest that maintaining a competitive advantage and reducing traffic dependency are the main motivations influencing the adoption of emerging online discount platforms by both types of merchants. However, under the moderating effects of brand strength and user viscosity, the adoption of emerging online discount platforms varies among merchants with different traffic sources. This study enriches the research related to emerging online platforms' adoption and sheds new light on merchants' traffic attraction strategies.