User Roles on Peer-to-Peer Sharing Platforms: A Critical Review of the Literature and Recommended Remedies

The success of sharing platforms such as Airbnb and Uber sparked interests in research, practice, and legislation in equal measures. However, studies about user roles on sharing platforms are very heterogeneous and have yet not dived into the theoretical complexity of these roles. In order to prevent incomparability of results and scattered theory building, this study reviews existing literature and identifies flaws in terminology and conceptualization of user roles and in applied measurement approaches. We discuss why these flaws matter and how they can be resolved. Finally, we propose a research agenda and emphasize to study the role of the prosumer, why different user roles lead to differences in constructs, and how the transition of user roles takes place

Understanding the Platform Economy: Signals, Trust, and Social Interaction

Two-sided markets are gaining increasing importance. Examples include accommodation and car sharing, resale, shared mobility, crowd work, and many more. As these businesses rely on transactions among users, central aspects to virtually all platforms are the creation and maintenance of trust. While research has considered effects of trust-building on diverse platforms in isolation, the overall platform landscape has received much less attention. However, cross-platform comparison is important since platforms vary in their degree of social interaction, which, as we demonstrate in this paper, determines the adequacy and use of different trust mechanisms. Based on actual market data, we examine the mechanisms platforms employ and how frequent users rely on them. We contrast this view against survey data on users’ perceptions of the context-specific importance of these trust-building tools. Our findings provide robust evidence for our reasoning on the relation between platforms’ degree of social interaction and the associated expressive trust cues

Couchsurfing involvement in non-profit peer-to-peer accommodations and its impact on destination image, familiarity, and behavioral intentions

Accommodation is a fundamental part of tourism, and it plays an important role in the tourist experience. The emerging economy and especially the peer-to-peer accommodations (P2P) have shaken up the conventional accommodations sector. While most P2P accommodation studies have focused on the monetary platform, which includes Airbnb, there is little knowledge about the linkages of involvement and behavioral intentions on the non-profit accommodation users. This empirical study applied a multiple-methods approach to investigate the positive impacts of involvement on couchsurfing, such as P2P accommodations on the destination image, familiarity, and the behavioral intentions. The data was collected from 609 travelers who have used couchsurfing while traveling to Turkey from 2016 to 2017. The results revealed that involvement in couchsurfing improved the destination image, familiarity, the E-WoM, and the revisit intention of couchsurfers. This study also discusses the practical implications

VGLM proportional odds model to infer hosts’ Airbnb performance

We investigated aspects of host activities that influence and enhance host performance in an effort to achieve best results in terms of the occupancy rate and the overall rating. The occupancy rate measures the percentage of reserved days with respect to available days. The overall rating identifies the satisfaction level of guests that booked an Airbnb accommodation. We used the proportional odds model to estimate the impact of the managerial variables and the characteristics of the accommodation on host performance. Five different levels of the occupancy and the overall rating were investigated to understand which features impact them and support the effort to move from the lowest to the highest level. The analysis was carried out for Italy’s most visited cities: Rome, Milan, Venice, and Florence. We focused on the year 2016. Moreover, we investigated different impact levels in terms of the overall rating during the COVID-19 pandemic to evaluate possible differences. Our findings show the relevance of some variables, such as the number of reviews, services, and typology of the rented accommodation. Moreover, the results show differences among cities and in time for the relevant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

Opérationnaliser les compétences transversales en analyse bibliométrique et en visualisation des réseaux au thème de l’économie collaborative

Une analyse bibliométrique utilisant la visualisation de réseaux pour représenter le thème de l’Économie collaborative (ÉC) au sein de la recherche scientifique a été réalisée dans le cadre de ce mémoire. Pour ce faire, 729 documents ont été recensés sur deux bases de données (Scopus et Web of Science). Ces documents ont été désambiguïsés, nettoyés et standardisés pour être compilés et analysés avec BibExcel et VOSviewer. Différentes statistiques bibliométriques et analyses non évaluatives (cooccurence, cocitation, coauteur) ont pu être exécutées et visualisées afin de mieux comprendre le milieu de l’ÉC. Les résultats de cette recherche sont multiples. D’une part, l’importance des États-Unis est notoire, autant au niveau des auteurs, des organisations que des collaborations. Ensuite, différentes grappes thématiques ont pu être formées selon la variable étudiée. L’importance de la technologie, du tourisme, du développement durable, de l’aspect managérial et enfin de la théorie/conceptualisation de l’ÉC est récurrente. Plusieurs auteurs sont déterminants dans la littérature, mais les plus influents sont Russel Belk et Rachel Botsman. Le livre What’s yours is mine (Botsman et Rogers, 2010) est le document le plus cité, et ce malgré le fait qu’il soit écrit par des auteurs ne provenant pas du milieu académique. Les relations entre les publications étudiées démontrent une cohésion entre les différentes idées et thématiques véhiculées dans le domaine, et ce malgré le fait qu’il existe des problèmes définitionnels et conceptuels à propos de l’ÉC. Enfin, l’évolution chronologique des publications subit une croissance très importante depuis 2016 et témoigne d’un champ de recherche émergent : le développement durable. La somme des résultats analysés donne un nouveau regard sur l’ÉC. Elle permet pour les nouveaux chercheurs de les introduire aux caractéristiques du domaine et sert aux experts à cerner les thématiques, revues et auteurs à considérer lors de leurs propres analyses. La méthodologie et les résultats de cette recherche furent publiés dans le Journal of Cleaner Production (Ertz & Leblanc-Proulx, 2018), le Journal of Markteing Analytics (Ertz & Leblanc-Proulx, 2019a) et le livre Sage Research methods Cases (Ertz & Leblanc-Proulx, 2019b)