The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major shock to the global tourism industry. Given its peculiarity, this paper analyzes one of the most intriguing questions in the Airbnb literature – the pricing of Airbnb listings – by taking advantage of a difference-in-differences methodology that largely draws on variations in country-level policy responses to the pandemic. Relying on a dataset containing weekly information from 130,999 continuously active listings across 27 European countries from 2019 to 2020, this study first investigates the exogenous impact of response policies (proxied by the COVID-19 Stringency Index) on demand. Secondly, accounting for the endogeneity of both demand and prices, this research analyzes pricing responses to demand variations. Results show that: i) increases in the COVID-19 Stringency Index cause significant declines in Airbnb demand; ii) increases in demand cause, on average, increases in Airbnb prices; and iii) pricing strategies between commercial and private hosts differ substantially.

COVID-19 大流行对全球旅游业造成了重大冲击。鉴于其特殊性，本文分析了 Airbnb 文献中最引人入胜的问题之一——Airbnb 房源的定价——利用了一种差异中的差异方法，该方法主要借鉴了国家层面对这一流行病的政策反应的差异。依靠包含 2019 年至 2020 年 27 个欧洲国家 130,999 个持续活跃房源的每周信息的数据集，本研究首先调查了响应政策（以 COVID-19 严格指数为代表）对需求的外生影响。其次，考虑到需求和价格的内生性，本研究分析了价格对需求变化的反应。结果表明：i) COVID-19 严格性指数的增加导致 Airbnb 需求显着下降；ii) 需求增加平均会导致 Airbnb 价格上涨；iii) 商业主机和私人主机之间的定价策略大不相同。