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With the prevalence of the sharing economy phenomenon, there are an increasing number of hosts on Airbnb who manage more than one listing. Managing more listings likely makes hosts more seasoned in terms of serving guests, but it may undermine host quality due to hosts’ constrained capability. This paper aims to examine the effects of host quality attributes and the number of listings per host on the reservation performance of these listings.

Using a large-scale but granular data set of 5,805 active listings of 4,608 Airbnb hosts in Austin, Texas, this study estimates the effects of host attributes (host quality and listing quantity) on the performance of the hosts’ Airbnb listings through a blend of regression models.

This study evidences that host quality attributes significantly influence listing performance through cue-based trust. In addition, this study finds a “trade-off” between host quality and the quantity of their listings. As the number of listings managed by a host increases, the performance effects of host quality diminish.

The business implications of this study include the suggestion that sharing economy businesses such as Airbnb should sustain service quality through incentivizing hosts to improve host quality while balancing the quantity of listings managed.

This study contributes to the literature through its meaningful theoretical extension in the sharing economy context and unique data-driven insights enabled by an analytical approach. It addresses the critical but less researched topic of host quality and listing quantity and generates important practical business and policy implications.

Assesses how branded ingredients affect consumer product quality perceptions, confidence in product quality perceptions, product evaluations, taste perceptions, purchase likelihoods, and reservation prices of host brands of varying quality. In two experiments, we find that branded ingredients consistently and positively affected moderate‐quality host brands, but only occasionally positively affected higher‐quality host brands. Suggests that managers of both moderate and higher‐quality host brands consider implementing branded ingredient strategies, albeit for different reasons. While moderate‐quality host brands can improve their competitive position by using branded ingredients, higher‐quality host brands generally do not. However, higher‐quality host brands may benefit most by securing the most desirable branded ingredients for their own use, thereby blocking moderate‐quality host brands from using a branded ingredient strategy to improve their competitive position.

This study aims to explore the extent to which Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) rely on supranational institution – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – versus host country institutional quality to navigate their foreign location choice.

This study uses a conditional logit regression model using a sample of 1,302 greenfield investments by Chinese MNEs in 54 BRI participating countries during the period 2011–2018.

The results indicate that as a supranational institution, the BRI serves as a substitution mechanism to address the deficiencies in institutional quality in BRI participating countries, thereby attracting Chinese MNEs to invest in those countries. In addition, the BRI’s substitution effect on host country institutional quality is more pronounced for large MNEs, MNEs in the manufacturing industry and MNEs in inland regions.

This study expands the understanding of the BRI as a supranational institution for MNEs from emerging markets and reveals its substitution effect on the host country institutional quality. Furthermore, it highlights that MNEs with diverse characteristics gain varying degrees of benefits from the BRI.

This study aims to explore how attribute performance and hosts’ service quality attributes affect room sales on peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms from the cue congruence perspective.

More than 9.53 million reviews concerning 258,473 listings located in 35 major cities worldwide were collected from Airbnb. Data was collected from December 2019 to December 2020 and was analysed using a generalised linear model.

Results show that when attribute performance and hosts’ service quality attributes give positive signals, Airbnb room sales are significantly higher than when the two kinds of cues give inconsistent or negative signals; when attribute performance gives positive signals and hosts’ service quality attributes give negative signals, room sales are higher than when the former gives negative signals and the latter give positive signals; surprisingly, when both kinds of cues give negative signals, room sales are higher than when attribute performance gives positive signals and hosts’ service quality attributes give negative signals.

This paper adds useful insights on understanding of cue congruence (incongruence) effect on room sales of P2P accommodation platforms. This study has practical implications for hosts, online platform managers and guests regarding how to use online strategies and promotions on the Airbnb platform.

This study is an early attempt to explore how the combination of attribute performance and hosts’ service quality attributes affects Airbnb room sales under the conditions of consistency and inconsistency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of quality of market supporting institutions (institutional quality) in host country and the similarities and differences of institutional quality between the home and host country (institutional distance) on subsidiary performance.

Based on the conceptualization of new institutional economics, the authors divide quality of host country institutions into factor markets; product, capital, labor market and sociopolitical dimensions. The authors examine the impact of the quality these institutional dimensions in host countries and their difference between home and host country on the performance of 318 subsidiaries of 146 Korean listed manufacturing firms operating in 28 host countries from 2001 to 2006.

The empirical results based on 1,129 observations show that institutional distance explains a significant variance in the subsidiary performance. In particular, the difference in quality of institutions in product, capital and labor market has negative impact on subsidiary performance. However, except for quality of regulation in labor market, host country institutional qualities do not significantly explain the variation in subsidiary performance.

The evidence suggests that host country institutions matter substantially when considered with their relative similarity and difference with home country institutions. The impact of individual dimensions of institutions varies on subsidiary performance.

This study aims to distinguish between service arguments and communication arguments within a home-sharing review and to investigate their roles in consumer purchase decision-making.

Based on the setting of Airbnb, a 3 (service argument valence: positive, neutral, and negative) × 3 (communication argument valence: positive, neutral, and negative) online experiment was conducted. Data collected from 379 participants were used to test the hypotheses.

The three main determinants of purchase intention: perceived host service quality, perceived facility service quality, and perceived social value, are affected by both service arguments and communication arguments. Service arguments positively influence perceived host service quality and perceived facility service quality, while communication arguments contribute significantly to perceived host service quality and perceived social value. However, perceived facility service quality is affected by the combination of service arguments and communication arguments rather than by the service arguments only, because service argument trustworthiness, a factor influencing the effect of service arguments, varies across the combination of two types of arguments.

This research helps home-sharing platform managers to understand how to facilitate transaction success through displaying different review arguments needed by consumers. Additionally, the dual role of communication arguments emphasizes a necessity for hosts to encourage positive communication arguments and provide additional cues on the facility service quality.

The service arguments and communication arguments in home-sharing reviews are distinguished, and their distinct roles in consumers' purchase intention have been uncovered.

State-owned firms play important roles in Chinese cross-border acquisition (CBA) activities. However, compared with private firms, state-owned firms have a lower likelihood of acquisition completion and take longer to complete a deal. This paper aims to determine why this phenomenon exists and how state-owned firms can overcome the constraints of their identity.

By integrating organizational learning theory with institutional theory, this paper attempts to answer the research questions from a legitimacy perspective. Employing Chinese CBA data from 1982 to 2014, the authors use a logit model and a random effects model to test the hypothesis.

The results show that a state-owned identity easily causes legitimacy concerns among host country regulatory agencies; thus, it may result in longer and more uncertain evaluation behaviors, which lead to a lower likelihood of CBA completion and a longer deal duration. Only experience with failed acquisitions can increase CBA completion probability. Furthermore, in very complex decision-making environments, such as that surrounding deal duration, only specific types of experience (i.e. experience of failed international acquisitions) can trigger learning behavior, whereas general experience (i.e. failed acquisition experience) has little influence. Favorable bilateral relationships may not improve the completion rate and efficiency of state-owned firms, but high-quality host country institutions lead to a higher likelihood of CBA completion among state-owned firms; however, this may be not conducive to decreasing the time needed to complete an acquisition deal.

First, by discussing the completion rate and duration of CBAs conducted by state-owned firms and analyzing the factors that influence them, this paper enriches and develops the theory of organizational overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Second, by adopting a legitimacy perspective and integrating institutional theory, the authors theorize how state-owned status influences firms’ M&A completion rate and time and test the hypotheses empirically; thus, this paper improves and deepens institutional theory. Third, by discussing how different types of experience (i.e. successful experience vs failed acquisition experience) influence the acquisition completion rate and duration and how general experience and specific types of experience affect these two dependent variables differently, this paper explains how state-owned firms can learn effectively from experience, contributing to organizational learning theory.

This paper seeks to explain the serial persistence as well as the substantial number of zeros characterizing global bilateral investment holdings. We explore the different sources of serial persistence in the data (unobserved country pair effects, genuine state dependence, and transitory shocks) and examine the crucial factors affecting the decision to invest in a host country.

Based on a gravity setup, we consider investment behavior at the extensive (participation) margin and employ dynamic first-order Markov probit models, controlling for unobserved cross-sectional heterogeneity and serial correlation in the transitory error component, in order to explore the sources of persistence. Within this modeling framework we explore the importance of institutional quality of the host country in attracting foreign investment.

The data support that the strong persistence is driven by true state dependence, implying that past investment experiences strongly impact on the trajectory of future investment holdings. Institutional quality appears to play a significant role to attract foreign investment.

The empirical findings suggest that due to the existence of genuine state dependence, inward-investment stimulating policy measures could have a more pronounced effect since they are likely to induce a permanent change to the future trajectory of inward investment.

Both the substantial number of zeros and the salient persistence characterizing bilateral investment holdings decision have been previously overlooked in the literature. A study modeling jointly the levels and the selection mechanism could prove a fruitful direction for future research.

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.

In this chapter, we aim to shed more light on the role of formal institutional distance in firms’ foreign entry mode choices by accounting for the direction of that distance. Specifically, we distinguish between foreign entries where the host country is institutionally less developed than the investing firm’s home country (negative institutional distance) and those where the host country’s institutions are comparatively more developed (positive institutional distance), and explore whether these different types of entries are implemented through different equity-based modes. We take an information economics perspective to develop hypotheses on the effects of positive and negative formal institutional distance on firms’ choices between greenfields and acquisitions, and between full and partial ownership of greenfield and acquired subsidiaries. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 1,070 foreign entries made by 796 emerging market multinationals originating from 14 countries. Controlling for the host country’s formal institutional quality and other factors, we find that negative institutional distance increases the likelihood that a foreign entry takes the form of a greenfield investment rather than an acquisition and that positive institutional distance decreases that likelihood. We also find that negative institutional distance increases the chances that firms choose greenfield joint ventures over wholly owned greenfields and full over partial acquisitions. Finally, we find that positive institutional distance does not affect firms’ ownership stake choices, neither for greenfields nor for acquisitions. Overall, these findings argue for a nuanced, contingency view of the role of formal institutional distance in foreign entry mode choices. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to use information economics to construct a holistic picture of firms’ equity-based entry mode choices, taking into account both establishment and ownership modes.