The Cinderella moment:Exploring consumers’ motivations to engage with renting as collaborative luxury consumption mode

Past literature argued that the purchase of luxury goods is driven by people’s motivation to conform or fit into our economic and social system. In this study, the authors focus on a new aspect of consumption, i.e. renting instead of purchasing luxury goods, backed by the emerging opportunities of sharing economy platforms. Drawing upon the analysis of spontaneous consumers’ online communications (in the form of tweets), this research aims to investigate the motivations to engage with luxury garment renting within a collaborative consumption context. To this end, a series of automatic content analyses, via two studies, were conducted using the tweets posted with respect to the Run the Runway collaborative consumption platform. Results demonstrate consumers’ increased willingness to show their social status through renting rather than owning luxurious apparel based on five main motivators (need to wear new clothes for a special event, inspirations created by the products/brands, possibility to explore a new way of consuming luxury goods, need to make more sustainable choices, and to increase the life cycle of each luxury product). The implications of these findings are discussed, while they pave the way for future research in collaborative consumption of luxury retailing

Prosumer-to-customer exchange in the sharing economy:Evidence from the P2P accommodation context

Numerous prosumers who share their spare resources have contributed significantly to sharing economy development in recent years. Existing research on the sharing economy has primarily focused on the service demand side of consumers, thus neglecting the service supply side of individual prosumers. Understanding of the service exchange between prosumers and customers in the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing economy remains limited. Drawing on the motivation, opportunity, and ability (MOA) model and social exchange theory, we developed a conceptual framework to explore how prosumers' service attributes influence consumers in a P2P accommodation sharing context. Using 313 questionnaires and 112 paired objective data points from prosumers in one popular P2P accommodation platform (i.e., Xiaozhu.com), this research found that prosumers' economic motivation, service flexibility, and service knowledge level have distinct effects on consumers' transactional based and relational-based participation. We also found a moderating role of prosumers' shared property management on these effects

Sharing economy research in hospitality and tourism: a critical review using bibliometric analysis, content analysis and quantitative systematic literature review

Purpose – This study conducts a critical review of the research on the sharing economy to identify its key intellectual foundations and their evolution and offers thematic and methodological recommendations for future research to advance the domain. Design/methodology/approach – A tri-method approach using bibliometric (co-citation) analysis, thematic content analysis, and a quantitative systematic literature review was conducted on sharing economy research in hospitality and tourism journals, up to and including May 2020. Findings – The findings from the three methods were coherent and provide a clear picture of the fact that while research on the sharing economy in hospitality and tourism has achieved significant depth, the breadth of our understanding of this area remains somewhat limited. Each of the three periods of research on the sharing economy identified in the study were marked by a focus on specific thematic areas, with largely Western-situated researchers demonstrating limited theoretical engagement and employing a limited range of methods and perspectives (disciplinary, stakeholders, sectors) to examine these themes. Research limitations/implications – Recommendations for future thematic research opportunities are provided using a multi-level perspective (MLP). The present review does not include research that incorporates the impacts of COVID-19, which has significantly disrupted the hospitality and tourism industry and is the focus of current research in the field. However, the review represents the largest and most comprehensive assessment of the state of research on the sharing economy prior to COVID-19, and, as such, can serve as a valuable baseline for future reviews of sharing economy research during and after the pandemic. Originality/value – In contrast with previous literature reviews, the present review is comprehensive in its scope, methodology, and temporal coverage of sharing economy research. It also examines the evolution of research on the topic, enabling a more nuanced identification of gaps and future thematic and methodological research opportunities

Host–guest interaction and sustainable consumption behaviour on sharing-accommodation platforms: using a big data analytic approach

The rapid expansion of the sharing economy has ignited diverse perspectives regarding its sustainability implications. Nevertheless, a comprehensive study examining the influence of host–guest interactions on sustainable consumption behaviour is yet to be conducted. To fill the abovementioned gap, this research crawls online data and corresponding consumer reviews of 46,360 properties listed on Muniao Short Rent. Employing latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to model sustainable consumption reviews and conducting subsequent regression analysis using SPSS, this research empirically demonstrates that the host–guest interaction frequencies and positive emotions during interaction positively influence guests’ sustainable consumption behaviours within the sharing-accommodation context. This research proposes the significance of the host–guest relationship for green consumers and argues that factors such as price and house type negatively moderate the host–guest interactions and guests’ sustainable consumption initiatives

Effects of host incentives on multiple listings in accommodation sharing

Purpose : 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. Design/methodology/approach : 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. Findings : 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. Research limitations/implications : 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. Originality/value : 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