| Accommodation sharing platforms gradually becomes a popular trend in recent years,and it has brought some shocks to tranditional hotel industry.Compared with tranditonal hotel platform,online users can book different types of accommodations with lower prices through accomoodation sharing platform,and it provides extra choices for their traveling plans.Focusing on this emerging platform,although some studies tended to invesitgate the determinants of user behavior from different perspective,there are still lots of research gaps.For example,very few of studies paied attention to how Airbnb matches hosts and guests.In addition,lots of platforms applied different market strategy designs,but little is understood about the impact of different choices.To fill the above research gaps,this study summarized the different design choices for accommodation sharing platforms and other P2 P sharing platforms,and also intergated the liteatures and theories relating to the users’ online behavior.On the bias of the above liteatures and theories,this study took Airbnb,one of the most prominent accommodation sharing platforms as the rearch context,and then analyzef the impact of design choices on user’s online behavior in the platform.The main research content of this study includes:(1)To study the incentive effects of gamification design on hosts in accommodation sharing platform.Based on a gamfication design presented by Airbnb(a kind of badge system),this study constructed emprical models to investigate the effects of this badge system on the review and rating posting behavior of subsquent guests.The results showed that gamfication design for Airbnb hosts can significatly improve the their subquent review volume and ratings.In addition,this study also considered the moderating effect of the badge system on the relationship between price and outcome variables,and the results showed that Airbnb hosts can make up for the costs to obtain the badge through increasing the price.Thus,the badge system presented by Airbnb improve the activity of hosts from the perspective of both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.(2)To study the effect of matching mode on transaction efficiency in accommodation sharing platform.This study mainly introduced how accommodation sharing platform(e,g,Airbnb)and other similar two-sided platforms match buyers and sellers,and compared the above “matching” mode with the “buying” mode used by tradtional one-sided platforms(e,g,Expedia).Based on an online design preseted by Airbnb,this study empirically analyzed the effects of different choices of matching mode on hosts’ pricing strategy,demand and repuation.The results showed that selecting “buying” mode which were widely utlized by one-sided platforms significantly improve the demand of hosts in the short-term,but can also be negatively associated with hosts’ subsquent price and repuation.According to the resutls,this study presented several suggestions to platform to further improve the above matching design used by Airbnb.(3)To study the effect of guests’ repuation on their subsquent review posting behavior based on the repuation design used by accommodation sharing platform.Although prior studies attempted to investigate the determinants of guest satisafction based on the perspetive of guests,most of these studies used primary data since that Airbnb does not report the rating record in guest level.This study collected and combiend two parts of secondary datasets,including dataset in host and property level as well as dataset in guest level.The dataset in guest level mainly consisted of the guest’s historical review content generated by hosts,and this part of information was used to identify the guest repuation.Through combing these two parts of datasets,this study analyzed the effect of guests’ repuation accumulation on their review posting behavior.The final resutls showed that,the valence and various of prior reviews relating to guest reputation signifantly promote them to post more positve reviews: however,the effect of volume is insignifant.(4)To study the effect of hosts’ s reviewing bahavior on their subsquent platform usage decisions based on the repuation design used by accommodation sharing platform.Based on the two-way review system,this study analyzed the effects of hosts’ prior reviewing patterns on the subquent guests’ decisions then influencing the short-term demand and repuation of hosts.The results showed that,posting more postive reviews to prior guests is negatively associated with their subsquent demand and repuation,and thus increases the risk for hosts to exit the platform.This study considered this is mainly due to the postive bias in Airbnb and similar platforms,and based on the emprical results,this study also presented the practical implications to Airbnb hosts and the platform. |
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