信任构建机制对共享民宿预订量的影响——基于Airbnb的实证研究

The Effects of Trust-building Mechanisms on Peer-to-Peer Accommodation Booking: An Empirical Study on Airbnb

P2P共享经济作为新兴商业模式,对于提高社会资源利用效率具有重要意义。顾客在共享经济平台交易时,信任是影响顾客购买意愿的关键因素。文章利用在线信任构建理论,建立基于认知、情感和制度的3种信任构建机制相关因素对共享民宿预订量的影响模型,从共享民宿平台Airbnb上收集了我国香港地区数据进行实证分析。研究结果表明:从认知视角来看,民宿描述长度和经营年限正向影响预订量,房东经营的共享民宿数量负向影响预订量;从情感视角来看,在线评论的数量和效价正向影响共享民宿预订量;此外,共享民宿平台建立的第三方标记和身份认证制度有助于提升预订量。研究在理论上将信任构建机制的应用情境拓展到P2P共享经济,使用实证研究方法从信任视角验证了民宿服务质量信息对预订量的影响。研究也为平台管理方和民宿房东如何构建在线信任方面提供了实践指导,平台管理方应合理控制房东经营规模以确保服务质量。

As an emerging business model, P2 P(peer-to-peer) sharing economy plays an important role in improving the efficient use of social resources. The hospitality sector is one of the industries most influenced by sharing economy. Despite the proliferation of the P2 P sharing accommodation, the survey shows that hotel occupancy was significantly higher than P2 P accommodation occupancy. A continuous lack of online trust among consumers increases concerns about uncertainty and risk, which inhibits their P2 P participation. Trust has been widely recognized as the crucial factor of consumer purchase intention on P2 P sharing platforms. Thus, sharing economy platforms face a major challenge in how to best alleviate the worries of consumers and service providers in regard to online risk. Therefore, it is of great value to find trust antecedents of sharing economy platforms that affect customers ’ decision making process. This study aims to examine the effects of online trust-building mechanisms on the P2 P reservations made on Airbnb, one of the world’s leading short-term rental platforms.Based on the trust-building theory in the online market, this paper developed a series of hypotheses and built a conceptual model to explore the effects of trust antecedents originated from cognition-based,affect-based and institution-based trust-building mechanisms on the P2 P accommodation reservations.Using a large data set of 2968 active listings hosted in Hong Kong obtained from Airbnb.com, this study estimates the effects of cognition-based, affect-based and institution-based trust-building mechanisms on the sales performance of the hosts’ Airbnb listings through a Poisson regression model. A series of robustness checks were also performed to verify the consistency of the estimated effects. The results of regression revealed that cognition-based trust antecedents such as depth of listing description and length of operating experience positively affect reservations, whereas the number of listings owned by a host offers negative influence. In the context of online market, potential consumers depend on online review systems to perceive others’ shopping experience as trust antecedents, the volume and valence of online reviews positively are associated with P2 P accommodation reservations;Airbnb also provides effective institutional mechanisms to strengthen perceived trust of consumers;the superhost badge of the host as a third-party seal can increase the reservations of the listing. Furthermore, identity verification methods provided by Airbnb also increase the purchase behaviors.This paper theoretically extends the context of trust building mechanism to the P2 P sharing economy. The results provide strong empirical evidence that the signals such as specific host attributes,online reviews and institutional assurances provided by Airbnb effectively establish online trust and affect short-term reservations. Some managerial implications for platform management and hosts to understand how to gain online trust from customers, and help platform management to reasonably control the quantity of listings operated by a host to ensure service quality and promote the prosperity and development of the sharing economy.