Humanize your business. The role of personal reputation in the sharing economy

Mauri, Arnaldo; Minazzi, Roberta; García, Marta Nieto; Viglia, Giampaolo

doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2018.01.017

Cited by 118 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 99 publications

(124 reference statements)

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“…Furthermore, these inferences can play a role in predicting real‐world decision making and yielding economic benefits. For example, Mauri, Minazzi, Nieto‐Garcia, and Viglia () found that Airbnb hosts with personal photos gain higher popularity than those with no photo. Ert et al () found that the more trustworthy Airbnb hosts are perceived to be in their personal photos, the higher the price they can charge and the higher the probability that their listing will be chosen.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do Airbnb hosts reveal by posting photographs online and how does it affect their perceived trustworthiness?

Ert

Fleischer

2019

Psychology and Marketing

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The use of sellers' personal photographs online is ubiquitous in sharing economy platforms such as Airbnb. This paper addresses two questions. First, what type of personal photos do hosts choose to post on Airbnb? Second, which of the characteristics of their photos affects their perceived trustworthiness? We answer these questions by building a structural equation model of the relation between the characteristics of the photos and the perceived trustworthiness of the hosts. The antecedents of trust in this model were defined based on insights from psychology regarding first impressions. We found that the hosts' visual characteristics (e.g., gender) as revealed in their online photographs affect their perceived trustworthiness both directly and indirectly via attractiveness. We also found that image characteristics, which are not related directly to the traits of the host in the picture (e.g., photograph quality), play a significant role in trust inference. Interestingly, the hosts' choices of their personal photos suggest that they may not be aware of these effects. K E Y W O R D SAirbnb profile, attractiveness, first impression, impression formation, peer-to-peer markets, sharing economy, trust inference

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do Airbnb hosts reveal by posting photographs online and how does it affect their perceived trustworthiness?

Ert

Fleischer

2019

Psychology and Marketing

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“…Personal reputation mechanisms, in turn, make it possible to perceive CS relationships with specific peers, even if at the level of the platform peer‐to‐peer relationships are not seen as governed much by CS. In line with this argument, research has shown that personal reputation outweighs product descriptions in explaining providers’ popularity (Mauri, Minazzi, Nieto‐García, & Viglia, ). To support consumers’ building personal reputations, it seems important that platforms implement rating systems and encourage the sharing of personal information such as full identification and personal photo (Abrate & Viglia, ; Wang & Nicolau, ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Consumers' choice among peer‐to‐peer sharing platforms: The other side of the coin

Stofberg

Bridoux

2019

Psychology and Marketing

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Many peer‐to‐peer sharing platforms are transforming their business model from sharing for free to renting with or without in‐person interactions. How will these changes affect consumers’ participation in peer‐to‐peer sharing of personal items? The work studies consumers’ choice among three business models that vary on two dimensions: “free versus renting” and “with or without in‐person interactions.” The novelty is to consider that consumers’ choice can be driven by their perceptions of relationships among peers, which are shaped by the business models of sharing platforms. Perceptions of communal sharing (CS) relationships among peers are found to differ across business models and to predict consumers’ choice among the platforms above and beyond the economic and social benefits that consumers seek. Interestingly, perceptions of CS are not only found to explain the choice of a sharing for the free business model over the two others, but also the choice of renting with in‐person interactions over renting without in‐person interactions. For managers of peer‐to‐peer sharing platforms, this means that renting does not make sharing completely similar to traditional market exchanges as long as in‐person interactions are involved. For scholars, this calls for more work on the factors that bring about perceptions of CS.

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“…To mitigate the situation of information asymmetry, trust is identified as one of the key ingredients for successful transactions in the sharing economy [28,29]; and research has shown that reputation is one of the most important mechanisms for facilitating trust in the sharing economy. Mauri et al [30], for instance, found that a provider's reputation was the core contributor to the popularity of an Airbnb listing, explaining almost 40% of its variation. Therefore, we use reputation to study how trust is formed between users in socially driven exchanges.…”

Section: Information Asymmetry In the Sharing Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reputation Effects in Socially Driven Sharing Economy Transactions

et al. 2018

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Reputation has often been proposed as the central mechanism that creates trust in the sharing economy. However, some sharing platforms that focus primarily on social rather than economically driven exchanges have managed to facilitate exchanges between users without the use of a reputation system. This could indicate that socially driven exchanges are in less need of reputation systems and that having sufficient trust is less problematic. We examine the effect of seller reputation on sales and price as proxies for trust, using a large dataset from a Dutch meal-sharing platform. This platform aims to stimulate social interactions between people via meal sharing. Multilevel regression analyses were used to test the association of reputation with trust. Our main empirical results are that reputation affects both sales and price positively, consistent with the existing reputation literature. We also found evidence of the presence of an information effect, i.e., the influence of reputation on sharing decreases when additional profile information is provided (e.g., a profile photo, a product description). Our results thus confirm the effectiveness of reputation in more socially driven exchanges also. Consequently, platform owners are advised to use reputation on their platform to increase sharing between its users.

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Humanize your business. The role of personal reputation in the sharing economy

Cited by 118 publications

References 99 publications

What do Airbnb hosts reveal by posting photographs online and how does it affect their perceived trustworthiness?

What do Airbnb hosts reveal by posting photographs online and how does it affect their perceived trustworthiness?

Consumers' choice among peer‐to‐peer sharing platforms: The other side of the coin

Reputation Effects in Socially Driven Sharing Economy Transactions

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