How does constraining description affect guest booking decisions and satisfaction?

Abstract

The importance of hosts' information disclosure on influencing guest behavior and matching efficiency has been proven by many studies. Most peer-to-peer rental platforms allow hosts to disclose constraining descriptions (such as house rules) to regulate guest behaviors. However, the effects of this specific type of information disclosure on subsequent guest behaviors and host performance remain unclear. Thus, based on a unique longitudinal dataset collected from Airbnb, this study investigates how constraining descriptions influence the booking decisions and satisfaction of subsequent guests. Results show that constraining descriptions related to topics, including civilization-related, living conditions, personal activities, and host management boost the review volume but decrease guest satisfaction and cause rating loss. Degree of competition, hosts' prior reputation, and price moderate the relationship between constraining descriptions and subsequent guest behaviors. As an early attempt to focus on the consequence of hosts’ constraining descriptions, this study contributes to tourism literature and property hosts in practice.

Introduction

Peer-to-peer rental platforms (e.g., Airbnb and Xiaozhu platforms) have become a popular trend in recent years because of their strong social and economic attractiveness (Pizam, 2014; Tussyadiah, 2016). However, some studies have indicated that the main barrier to sustainable development for such platforms is the lack of trust (Scerri & Presbury, 2020; Xie & Mao, 2017). Compared with traditional accommodation platforms, such as hotel booking platforms and peer-to-peer rental platforms offer products and services with high heterogeneity, which requires guests to search for more information to differentiate host quality (Liang, Schuckert, Law, & Chen, 2017). Although user-generated content, such as online reviews, has been proven to be an effective information source on hotel booking platforms, prior studies have noted its limitations on peer-to-peer rental platforms. For example, the limited capacity of properties in peer-to-peer rental platforms has resulted in a relatively scant number of reviews compared with hotel booking platforms (Liang, Schuckert, Law, & Chen, 2020). Some studies have also indicated the existence of review or rating bias on peer-to-peer rental platforms, such as Airbnb (Holtz & Fradkin, 2020; Pera, Viglia, Grazzini, & Dalli, 2019). Zervas, Proserpio, and Byers (2021) compared the rating distribution between Airbnb properties and TripAdvisor hotels and found that the ratings in Airbnb are relatively much higher and have lower variations than those in TripAdvisor. Thus, the high demand for information search and the limited supply of user-generated content lead to more prominent information asymmetry on peer-to-peer rental platforms (Gong, Liu, Liu, & Ren, 2020; Yan & Zhao, 2011; Yao, Qiu, Fan, Liu, & Buhalis, 2019).

Most peer-to-peer rental platforms require and encourage their users (mostly hosts) to disclose information on their properties and themselves to provide more credible information sources that can help guests differentiate between the quality of their properties and the hosts themselves. The disclosed information includes two parts. One part requires hosts and guests to upload their identification information, such as government-issued ID, email address, and phone number, to the platforms. Such information is private, and platforms will assign badges after users have uploaded the corresponding information. Liang, Li, Liu, and Schuckert (2019) investigated the motivations behind the information disclosure behaviors of hosts in Airbnb and found that high volume, valence, and quality of guest reviews can significantly motivate hosts to disclose more information subsequently. The other part of disclosed information is the textual and graphic descriptions of properties and hosts that have attracted relatively more academic attention. Liang et al. (2020) found that providing detailed textual descriptions of the properties and hosts can boost subsequent review quantity and ratings. Zhang, Lee, Singh, and Srinivasan (2021) noted that Airbnb properties with verified photos have 17.51% more demand and can generate additional revenues of $2521 per year compared with properties without photos. Recent studies have also observed the effects of hosts’ selfies on guest behavior. For example, Peng, Cui, Chung, and Zheng (2020) found that hosts with beautiful and ugly profile pictures generate more revenues than plain-looking hosts.

In summary, many prior studies have begun to verify the importance of hosts' information disclosure. However, very few have looked further into the mechanisms behind the effects of hosts' information disclosure on the booking intentions of guests and how property hosts disclose information more effectively. Concerning the textual descriptions of properties, traditional textual descriptions of products and services include two parts: introduction of objective attributes and promotion information (Chandrasekaran, Annamalai, & De, 2019). As a two-sided platform, peer-to-peer rental platforms allow hosts to present or disclose another type of information, namely, constraining description (such as house rules on Airbnb). This information can help guests understand the preferences and personalities of property hosts while enabling the latter to regulate guest behavior by announcing the house rules in advance (Scerri & Presbury, 2020). On Airbnb and similar platforms, property hosts can present their house rules, and all guests will be informed if they try to book the corresponding properties. As a new type of information, the consequences of providing constraining descriptions have not been explored in prior studies. First, if hosts present strict house rules, some leisure guests may perceive that their freedom will be restricted, and thus, divert their attention to other properties. Second, according to the persuasion knowledge model, consumers or guests are more likely to identify positive statements from sellers as persuasive information and perceive high deception (Scerri & Presbury, 2020). From this perspective, property descriptions, including house rules (a statement of prohibited items) are easier to perceive as credible. In summary, how the constraining description disclosed by hosts influences the booking decisions and satisfaction of subsequent guests and in turn affects host performance is still unclear. To this end, this study intends to investigate the effects of the constraining description disclosed by hosts on subsequent guest booking decisions and satisfaction by constructing a conceptual framework and collecting a unique longitudinal dataset from Airbnb. The detailed research purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to analyze the detailed topics of constraining descriptions based on text mining approaches, (2) to explore the effects of constraining descriptions on subsequent guest booking decisions and satisfaction on peer-to-peer rental platforms, and (3) to observe whether the above relationship is moderated by the competitive intensity and host's prior reputation.