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To promote the success of peer-to-peer accommodation, this study examines the effects of online host–guest interaction as well as the interaction's boundary conditions of listing price and reputation on listing popularity.

Using 330,686 data collected from Airbnb in the United States of America, the authors provide empirical evidence to answer whether social-oriented self-presentation and response rate influence listing popularity from the perspective of social exchange theory (SET). In addition, the authors investigate how these two kinds of online host–guest interactions work with listing price and reputation to influence listing popularity.

The results reveal the positive association between online host–guest interaction and listing popularity. Notably, the authors find that listing price strengthens but listing reputation weakens the positive effects of online host–guest interactions on listing popularity in peer-to-peer accommodation.

This study is the first attempt to adopt SET to explain the importance of online host–guest interactions in influencing listing popularity as well as examine the moderating role of listing price and reputation on the above relationship.

This paper aims to examine the social interactions between Filipino immigrant-hosts residing in New Zealand and their visiting relatives (VRs) or guests from the Philippines using social exchange theory to understand their experiences.

This qualitative, multi-sited study used in-depth interviews to examine social interactions between Filipino immigrant-host families in New Zealand and their respective visiting relatives from the Philippines.

Hosting VRs reflects aspects of social exchange theory, and the interdependence and familial obligations related to VR travel demonstrate mutual relations of care. Maintaining relations of care within the family is an ongoing process involving intergenerational relationships that bind together immigrant-host families and their VRs.

The conceptualization of the social interactions between immigrants-hosts and VRs is not generalizable owing to the small sample size and lack of representativeness. However, despite a small sample, this qualitative inquiry uncovered a series of personal meanings and understandings attached to the maintenance of familial bonds.

As immigrant-receiving countries become more culturally diverse through migration, research about other cultures will assist tourism planners in understanding the values and actions of a more varied array of residents. A better understanding of travel experiences and interactions between immigrants and their guests may provide marketers with insights into host-guest dynamics within a VR context, thus potentially enabling tourism marketers to create better marketing campaigns.

Future studies may be undertaken from non-Western and Western perspectives that examine the social interactions between hosts and guests in the context of VR travel. Very little research has been conducted that addresses the meanings and understandings attached to these interactions from the perspectives of both hosting and visiting groups. This research highlights the importance of families in tourism, a contrast with the relative blindness of tourism scholarship toward relations of domesticity and sociality.

What separates the social interactions between family members in the context of visiting friends and relatives travel from the traditional host-guest paradigm is that it does not involve strangers. This study uses social exchange theory to examine social interactions between hosts and guests who are familiar with each other.

The emerging situation of pandemic due to COVID-19 has not only influenced the daily life but also the society and travel activities around the world thereby depriving tourists (especially who are already on the move) of facilities and even making them to look for desperate alternatives. Such situation in fact may draw a long-term impact on guest–host relationship while residents’ behavior reflects hostility toward the tourists. Such kind of interactions contributes toward tourists’ perception and experience about the destination and its services thereby affecting their level of acceptance and tolerance for tour and travel activities (Armenski et al., 2011). Moreover, the guest–host relationship has mostly been studied with perspective of and focus on residents/host and not enough on tourists (Skipper, 2009; Vargas-Sánchez et al., 2014). Keeping this in view, this paper aims to analyze the impact of pandemic situation on guest–host relationship and its future impact on travel intentions among the tourists in India.

The study undertakes the help of in-depth interviews and extracting themes to understand the guest–host relationship and the perspective of tourists in challenging times like COVID-19 and its impact on the relationship. The secondary sources have been adopted to retrieve the data related to current status of travel industry in India. In-depth interviews were conducted online to gather data for the qualitative analysis regarding the research. Further, the data has been analyzed for retrieving a dimensional approach to subject area.

The data from participant observation showed that the hosts displayed panic, mistrust and irresponsible behavior toward the guests, and this clearly indicates that the pandemic situation has a highly negative impact on the image of the community and the destination. This ultimately affects the guest–hosts relationships in the long term. Most of the tourists showed that they were okay with following the rules and respect local culture but were expecting support from local community during distress. It was found that there were two female tourists who were asked to vacate the accommodation, which can be considered as an inappropriate and extreme behavior. Thus, COVID-19 is not only causing a threat to the tourism presently but will have a prolonged influence on guest–host relationship as negative interaction or experiences are supposed to be frequently radiated by the tourists (de Albuquerque and McElroy, 2001).

There is no dearth of studies focusing on travel behavior dimensions, whereas the linkage of residents’ behavior toward it still requires much consideration and analyzing simultaneously. The study looks into the area of guest–host relationship and tries to explore it from the perspective and significance of tourist (guest) rather than the much read and researched resident (host) perception at the center. The findings of the study could be helpful in drawing the strategic framework for the industry to handle and sustain the guest–host relation so as to safeguard the future of tourism and sustain potential travel market reiterating the significance of tourists/guests and their perspective about the hosts, in developing and growing the tourism of a destination.

This study aims to focus on peer-to-peer accommodation services in the sharing economy. Adopting construal level theory as the theoretical foundation, this study investigates the main and interaction effects of social and spatial distances on guest loyalty toward peer-to-peer accommodation.

This study uses a secondary source of online observational data archived on Xiaozhu, a leading peer-to-peer accommodation sharing platform in China. It consists of 2,612 observations of 1,304 unique travelers who stayed at 559 listings managed by 281 hosts in four major metropolitan areas of China over four years from August 2012 to August 2016. Non-linear binary choice panel models of probability regressions were used to estimate the effects of psychological distances (social and spatial) between hosts and guests on the likelihood of repeat purchase. The software used for the econometric analyses is STATA 14.

The results indicate that social distance negatively affects guest loyalty toward the listing hosts, while spatial distance has a positive influence on guest loyalty. The results also show significant interactions between the two psychological distance dimensions in influencing loyalty. The findings provide important insight into the influences of psychological distances on travelers’ repeat purchase behavior toward peer-to-peer accommodation providers.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence that supports the importance of psychological distances in forming a loyal relationship between hosts and guests in the peer-to-peer accommodation sector of the sharing economy.

The aim of this study is to explore the host–guest relationship at a macro level, investigating the sociopsychological relationship between a destination and its markets.

This study adopted netnography to fulfill the research purpose. Data were collected from Sina Microblog, the predominant social media platform in China, focused on bloggers responses to a fatal conflict between a tour participant and the guide during a shopping tour.

Bloggers' attributional discussions help to understand the nature of the host–guest relations. Responses from Chinese and Hong Kong bloggers showcased criticism toward the other community and criticism of one's own community. These were reflected in three themes: concerns with the place of conflict or the identities of the perpetrators, hospitableness or discrimination and the Chinese and Hong Kong cultures.

The major limitation is that the subject of this study (young bloggers) does not represent a complete cross section of the residents of China and Hong Kong. This study suggests a need for a broader theoretical perspective of the host–guest encounter. The study results have practical implications for destinations receiving Chinese group package tours.

The study results have practical implications for destinations receiving Chinese group package tours.

On-site interaction has been the focus of previous studies of the host–guest relationship, and off-site interactions were seldom explored. This study bridges the gap and extends the discourse on the host–guest relationship to a wider temporal (by taking a post event view) and spatial (by assessing the issue off-site) scale.

This study aims to explore the dimensions and sub-factors of Airbnb hosts’ affinity-seeking strategies. It also aims to build a conceptual framework of hosts’ affinity-seeking strategies and their impact on Airbnb guests’ feelings of affection toward their host and/or the homestay and their behavioral intentions.

Based on 150,161 Inside Airbnb online reviews in three major US cities, this study uses semantic analysis to explore processes through which hosts’ affinity-seeking strategies are constructed.

A conceptual framework is proposed to identify two dimensions (warmth and competency) and their sub-factors (“presenting friendly attitudes,” “showing personality traits,” “providing service and help” and “promoting social interaction and sharing”) of Airbnb homestay hosts’ affinity-seeking strategies. The framework shows a positive relationship between these strategies and guests’ affection and behavior in response.

The research findings provide valuable insights to hosts for improving their affinity and strengthening their competitive advantages. They also offer guidance to destination management organizations on how to build a positive destination image.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to conceptualize Airbnb homestay hosts’ affinity-seeking strategies. It contributes to the literature by incorporating social cognition theory and service theory in the analysis of these strategies.

This paper aims to address three research questions (1) Who is the main stakeholder that shapes Airbnb experience, (2) Does Airbnb offers an authentic travel experience? and (3) What should be the future research trends in Airbnb?

This paper uses the systematic literature review (SLR) with a well-defined protocol, research strategy and methods to answer the research questions.

The review revealed that while Airbnb plays a significant role as the platform provider, the stakeholders influencing the experiences are multifaceted. Hosts, guests, local communities and even regulatory bodies all contribute to shaping the overall Airbnb Experience ecosystem. Hosts, in particular, have a crucial role in curating and delivering unique experiences, which significantly impacts the quality and authenticity of the offerings. On the question of whether Airbnb offers an authentic travel experience, the review uncovered mixed findings. For examples, some studies emphasized the potential for Airbnb to provide authentic and local experiences, allowing travelers to engage with the community and cultural aspects of a destination. However, other studies raised concerns about the commodification and standardization of experiences, leading to a potential loss of authenticity.

This paper is different from previous SLR where previous research systematically reviewed; motivations to use and choose Airbnb, institutionalization of Airbnb, stakeholders of Airbnb. This paper addresses authentic experience as a factor that influences activity participation.

Despite the importance of hosts who contribute to the success of accommodation sharing through sharing underutilized space with guests, current literature sheds little light on what exactly incentivizes hosts to grow their properties. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of multifaceted motivations including financial benefits, online social interaction and membership seniority and their interplay on hosts’ multiple listing behavior.

The study is instantiated on real-world business data collected from an accommodation-sharing platform in China. The data set includes 3,199 observations of 252 multi-listing hosts in Beijing who managed 815 properties from September 2012 to October 2016.

The study discloses that financial benefits, online social interaction and membership seniority significantly incentivize hosts to list multiple properties on the accommodation-sharing platform. In particular, the social incentive is the most important driver among the three. With a 1 per cent increase in online social interactions, the number of properties operated by a host would increase by 13.5 per cent. While the financial benefits and online social interaction motivate hosts to engage in the multi-listing behavior, such effects are significantly mitigated as the membership seniority increases.

This study adds to the extant literature a unique yet less researched perspective of supply expansion driven by hosts. It also provides important practical implications for managing multiple properties for a healthy and viable accommodation-sharing community.

While a majority of the extant research on the sharing economy primarily takes a consumer-related perspective, this study addresses a different and original topic about hosts’ multiple-listing behavior that drives the supply of accommodation sharing. It is a first empirical investigation of the increase of accommodation sharing supply with host motivations explained.

From the perspective of two-sided review systems, this study aims to investigate how guests’ prior reputation influences their subsequent satisfaction on Airbnb.

This study applied a conceptual framework based on social capital theory to explain the effect of guests’ reputation decided by hosts’ prior evaluations on their subsequent satisfaction. The authors collected 96,204 guest reviews posted for 17,325 properties on Airbnb and used the review polarity to measure guest satisfaction. All historical evaluations generated by hosts for each guest were collected and treated as a proxy of guest reputation. Ordinary least squares regressions were conducted to estimate the effect of guests’ reputation on their subsequent satisfaction.

Results show that guests whose historical evaluations have higher valences or larger variations tend to be more satisfied in their subsequent bookings. However, the number of reviews that guests received from hosts in the past does not influence their subsequent satisfaction.

This study provides new insights into the hospitality literature by identifying the influencing factors of guest satisfaction on peer-to-peer rental platforms from the perspective of two-sided review systems. Results also present practical implications to property owners and website designers to gain a deeper understanding of the determinants of guest satisfaction and the consequences of social interactions between hosts and guests.

This study is a novel attempt that analyzes the effect of guests’ reputation on their satisfaction with subsequent bookings based on two-sided review systems on peer-to-peer rental platforms. Thus, this study provides a starting point for investigating how two-sided review systems affect use behavior on peer-to-peer rental platforms.

This paper aims to examine the role of technology in shaping the interplay between intimate and economic relations in collaborative consumer networks (CCNs).

This research is based on a three-year participatory netnographic and ethnographic field study of hosts, guests and community members within the Airbnb home-sharing network in New Zealand. The data consist of interviews, online and offline participant observations and brief discussions onsite (large-scale Airbnb events, host meetups and during Airbnb stays).

The findings reveal how technologies shape the relational work of home-sharing between intimate and economic institutions through grooming, bundling, brokerage, buffering and social edgework. This paper proposes a framework of triadic relational work enacted by network actors, involving complex exchange structures.

This study focusses on a single context – a market-mediated home-sharing platform. The findings may not apply to other contexts of economic and social exchanges.

The study reveals that the construction of specific relational packages by Airbnb hosts using their digital technologies pave a path for home-sharing to skirt the norms of the home as a place of intimacy and the market as a place for economics. This allows these two spheres to flourish with little controversy.

By augmenting Zelizer’s relational work, this study produces theoretical insights into the agentic role of technology in creating and stabilising a CCN.