Online commerce, increasingly running on digital platforms, is subject to higher uncertainty and risk in transactions (e.g., fraud, opportunism) than offline commerce. To cope with this challenge, online commerce companies often use information systems to promote interactive communication between sellers and buyers. This study examines how such seller-buyer interactivity affects buyers’ purchase intention in an online commerce context of accommodation sharing. In particular, we use text mining techniques to analyze guest reviews and host responses on Airbnb. Our analysis suggests that not only the quantity but also the quality of the response messages matter: potential guests’ purchase intention increases with the relevance and richness of the host’s responses as well as their volume. Further, we find a notable nonlinearity in the quantity effect that the volume of host responses significantly affects guest purchase intention only when it is large enough. Making sufficient responses, the hosts could enjoy complementarity between the quantity and quality effects of their responses; otherwise, the relative richness of their responses becomes more important.

在线商务越来越多地在数字平台上运行，与线下商务相比，它在交易中面临更高的不确定性和风险（例如欺诈、机会主义）。为了应对这一挑战，电子商务公司经常使用信息系统来促进卖家和买家之间的互动交流。本研究探讨了在住宿共享的在线商务环境中，这种买卖双方的互动如何影响买家的购买意愿。特别是，我们使用文本挖掘技术来分析 Airbnb 上的客人评论和房东回复。我们的分析表明，不仅回复信息的数量而且质量也很重要：潜在客人的购买意愿随着主人回复的相关性和丰富性以及他们的兴趣而增加。体积。此外，我们发现数量效应存在显着的非线性，即只有当主人响应量足够大时，才会显着影响客人的购买意愿。做出足够的回应，主办方可以享受回应的数量和质量效果的互补性；否则，他们反应的相对丰富性就变得更加重要。