Research PaperA pathway to consumer forgiveness in the sharing economy: The role of relationship norms
Introduction
Scholars have expressed growing interest in two types of consumer-provider relationships—communal vs. exchange (e.g., Aggarwal, 2004; Clark and Mills, 1993; Heyman and Ariely, 2004; Karremans and Smith, 2010)—suggesting that consumer responses depend on their perceptions and evaluations of the relationship partner (Clark and Mills, 1993, Goodwin, 1996, Karremans and Smith, 2010, Wan et al., 2011). In exchange relationships, people give benefits to the relationship partner in order to get back a comparable benefit (e.g., a relationship between business partners), whereas in communal relationships individuals take care of each other’s needs and have a genuine concern for the other party’s well-being (e.g., relationships with friends and family members) (Aggarwal and Law, 2005, p. 454). However, there is scant research on how relationship norms influence consumers’ post-failure forgiveness and perceptions of service recovery strategies (e.g., Aggarwal and Larrick, 2012). The present study addresses this knowledge gap in the context of peer-to-peer accommodations.
Despite the call for research on understanding consumer responses to service failures in collaborative consumption (Eckhardt et al., 2019), relatively little is known about factors that influence consumers’ post-failure forgiveness in such a context. We argue that communal norms provide a powerful theoretical perspective to explain the role of forgiveness in collaborative consumption. Our theorizing is guided by recent studies suggesting that interactions and relationships among peers (vs. exchange partners) are more communal (e.g., Costello and Reczek, 2020; Fitzmaurice et al., 2020; Schor and Attwood‐Charles, 2017; Perren and Kozinets, 2018; Shuqair et al., 2019). Thus, we postulate that consumers will react less negatively to a service failure if their relationship is communal than if it is based purely on an exchange.
Second, recent research suggests that different service recovery strategies can have distinct psychological impacts on consumers' reactions (You et al., 2019, Wei et al., 2020). For instance, expressing appreciation (e.g., "Thank you") is more effective than offering an apology (e.g., You et al., 2020), and emotional recovery is more effective than economic compensation (Wei et al., 2020). Drawing on prior findings, this work predicts that focusing on the social aspect of service recovery (e.g., signaling symbolic resources, such as apologies) is more beneficial than focusing on economic compensation (e.g., refund). Individuals in communal (vs. exchange) relationships tend to be more responsive to issues of interactional fairness (Aggarwal and Larrick, 2012). We posit that in peer-to-peer relationships the importance of social value in interactions is heightened (Yang and Aggarwal, 2019). Therefore, we expect that focusing on social service recovery can significantly influence consumer forgiveness in a peer-to-peer context.
Finally, several empirical studies have highlighted the need to explore consumers’ forgiveness in a broader theoretical context (Newton et al., 2018, Harrison-Walker, 2019, Wei et al., 2020). Recent research encourages scholars to identify effective recovery strategies that may buffer forgiveness related to tourism services (Harrison-Walker, 2019, Hur and Jang, 2019). Given the harmful consequences of service failures for hospitality providers, identifying effective recovery strategies that are simple and cost-effective is critical. This investigation contributes to the literature by exploring how relationship norms shape consumers’ post-failure forgiveness in the peer-to-peer context.
Section snippets
Communal versus exchange relationships in the hospitality
The triadic nature of peer-to-peer accommodations involves three key actors: the consumer, the peer service provider, and the mediating platform (Benoit et al., 2017). peer-to-peer context, defined as "two- or more-sided peer-to-peer online platform through which people collaboratively provide and use capacity-constrained assets and resources" (Wirtz et al., 2019, p. 458).
Transactions in collaborative consumption are typically facilitated by technology-mediated platforms (e.g., Hamari et al.,
Overview of experimental studies
To test our predictions, we report results from five studies. The objective of Study 1 is to examine whether the nature of the relationship (communal vs. exchange) influences forgiveness following a service failure (H1). Study 2 tests the mediating role of communal norms in explaining the impact of relationship type on forgiveness (H2). The goal of Study 3 A is to test the mediating effect of social recovery on forgiveness (H3). In Study 3B we rule out an alternative mediation path –
General Discussion
Given the importance of consumer forgiveness in the hospitality context (Hur and Jang, 2019; Lee et al., 2021), we sought to examine the effectiveness of service recovery strategies in the home-sharing segment based on consumer-provider relationship type (communal versus exchange) (Studies 1–3), and Airbnb host type (Study 4). In five studies, we demonstrate that consumers' post-recovery forgiveness is influenced by their evaluation of the service provider, whether communal or exchange. We
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2022, Tourism ManagementCitation Excerpt :As McCullough et al. (1998) suggested, people are often willing to show forgiveness and tolerance toward transgressions from their friends. Likewise, if a business-customer relationship relies on social factors (i.e., friendship) rather than purely economic ones (i.e., business exchange), customers will be less likely to show negative reactions when suffering from service failures (Shuqair et al., 2021; Wan et al., 2011). Cognitive reappraisal makes customers reconstruct and reevaluate a service failure encounter in a favorable manner (Balaji et al., 2017).
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ORCID ID:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6050-9958