A pathway to consumer forgiveness in the sharing economy: The role of relationship norms

Highlights

• Relationship norms influence customers’ forgiveness in sharing economy.

• Customers are more likely to forgive service failures in sharing economy.

• Focusing on social service recovery is particularly effective for Airbnb host.

• Social recovery is more beneficial compared to economic compensation.

Abstract

The emergence of peer-to-peer accommodations has revolutionized the hospitality industry. Yet, research on peer-to-peer service failures and consumer forgiveness remains scant. This paper shows that relationship type—whether communal ("Airbnb host") or exchange ("hotel")—influences consumer forgiveness in a post-recovery context. Across five studies, this research demonstrates how peer providers (focusing on communal norms) versus conventional providers (focusing on exchange norms) influence consumer forgiveness and their responses to service recovery efforts. Our findings indicate that focusing on social service recovery is particularly effective for Airbnb hosts. These findings have important implications for crafting effective service recovery strategies based on the type of accommodation provider-customer relationship. Finally, our findings can also help peer-to-peer and conventional hospitality providers alleviate consumers’ negative responses to service failures.

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.