QING KE, Indiana University, Bloomington
Many “sharing economy” platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb,
have become increasingly popular, providing consumers with more choices and
suppliers a chance to make profit. They, however, have also brought about
emerging issues regarding regulation, tax obligation, and impact on urban
environment, and have generated heated debates from various interest groups.
Empirical studies regarding these issues are limited, partly due to the
unavailability of relevant data. Here we aim to understand service providers of
the sharing economy, investigating who joins and who benefits, using the Airbnb
market in the United States as a case study. We link more than 211 thousand
Airbnb listings owned by 188 thousand hosts with demographic, socio-economic
status (SES), housing, and tourism characteristics. We show that income and
education are consistently the two most influential factors that are linked to
the joining of Airbnb, regardless of the form of participation or year. Areas
with lower median household income, or higher fraction of residents who have
Bachelor’s and higher degrees, tend to have more hosts. However, when
considering the performance of listings, as measured by number of newly
received reviews, we find that income has a positive effect for entire-home
listings; listings located in areas with higher median household income tend to
have more new reviews. Our findings demonstrate empirically that the
disadvantage of SES-disadvantaged areas and the advantage of SES-advantaged
areas may be present in the sharing economy.
See more at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.07580.pdf
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