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  • March 2020 (Revised August 2022)
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Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)

By: Michael Luca, Scott Stern, Devin Cook and Hyunjin Kim
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:20
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Abstract

Facing mounting criticism and evidence of widespread racial discrimination on the platform, apartment rental platform Airbnb needed to decide a path forward. For years, Airbnb had given hosts extensive discretion about whether to reject a guest after seeing little more than a name and a picture, believing this was the best way for the company to build trust. While Airbnb ran thousands of experiments per year looking at ways to grow the user base and short-run profit, they failed to track or account for the possibility of discrimination. Should they become more proactive about identifying discrimination on the platform? Should they change the design of the platform to reduce discrimination? If so, how would they decide whether the changes were successful?

Keywords

Platform Design; Digital Platforms; Design; Prejudice and Bias; Trust; Problems and Challenges

Citation

Luca, Michael, Scott Stern, Devin Cook, and Hyunjin Kim. "Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)." Harvard Business School Case 920-051, March 2020. (Revised August 2022.)
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Related Work

    • March 2020 (Revised February 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A) and (B)

    By: Michael Luca
    • August 2022 (Revised January 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (B)

    By: Michael Luca and Stacy Straaberg
    • March 2020 (Revised August 2022)
    • Faculty Research

    Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)

    By: Michael Luca, Scott Stern, Devin Cook and Hyunjin Kim
Related Work
  • Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A) and (B) By: Michael Luca
  • Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (B) By: Michael Luca and Stacy Straaberg
  • Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A) By: Michael Luca, Scott Stern, Devin Cook and Hyunjin Kim
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