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- August 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Supplement
Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (B)
By: Michael Luca and Stacy Straaberg
The (B) case picks up following the events of the (A) case, and outlines the steps Airbnb took to address racial discrimination on its platform.
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Scapegoating and Discrimination in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Airbnb
By: Michael Luca, Elizaveta Pronkina and Michelangelo Rossi
We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the
start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian
names experienced a 20 percent decline in guests relative to hosts...
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- August 2022
- Article
What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh and Kannan Srinivasan
We study how Airbnb property demand changed after the acquisition of verified images (taken by Airbnb’s photographers) and explore what makes a good image for an Airbnb property. Using deep learning and difference-in-difference analyses on an Airbnb panel dataset...
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- June 2022
- Article
The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb and the Accommodation Industry
By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin
We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers—peer hosts and hotels—who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from major...
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- April 2022
- Article
Demand Interactions in Sharing Economies: Evidence from a Natural Experiment Involving Airbnb and Uber/Lyft
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Dokyun Lee, Param Singh and Tridas Mukhopadhyay
We examine whether and how ride-sharing services influence the demand for home-sharing services. Our identification strategy hinges on a natural experiment in which Uber/Lyft exited Austin, Texas, in May 2016 due to local regulation. Using a 12-month longitudinal...
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- September–October 2021
- Article
Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh and Kannan Srinivasan
We study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Our empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm and its voluntary adoption by hosts as a quasi-natural experiment. Among...
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- September 17, 2021
- Article
AI Can Help Address Inequity—If Companies Earn Users' Trust
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan, Param Singh and Nitin Mehta
While companies may spend a lot of time testing models before launch, many spend too little time considering how they will work in the wild. In particular, they fail to fully consider how rates of adoption can warp developers’ intent. For instance, Airbnb launched a...
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- July 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Supplement
Airbnb Emerges from the Pandemic: Lessons for Stakeholder Governance (B)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison M. Ciechanover
As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden...
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Keywords:
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Corporate Governance;
Crisis Management;
Leadership;
Two-Sided Platforms;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Value Creation;
Decision Making;
Goals and Objectives;
Travel Industry;
Tourism Industry;
Service Industry;
United States
- May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Airbnb During the Pandemic: Stakeholder Capitalism Faces a Critical Test
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Allison Ciechanover
As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden...
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Keywords:
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Corporate Governance;
Crisis Management;
Leadership;
Digital Platforms;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Value Creation;
Decision Making;
Goals and Objectives;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Travel Industry;
Tourism Industry;
Service Industry;
United States
- March 2020
- Teaching Note
onefinestay: Building a Luxury Experience in the Sharing Economy
By: Jill Avery and Anat Keinan
onefinestay was a two-sided marketplace that offered high-end home rentals to travelers who sought a more authentic and local experience than a typical upscale hotel might provide. After five years of rapid growth, it was time to do a comprehensive analysis of the...
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Keywords:
Two-sided Marketplace;
Two-sided Market;
Hospitality Industry;
Hotels;
Luxury Brand;
Sharing Economy;
Startup;
Scaling;
Growth;
Customer Segmentation;
Brand Positioning;
Marketing;
Marketing Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Luxury;
Entrepreneurship;
Business Startups;
Business Model;
Venture Capital;
Customers;
Segmentation;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Travel Industry;
Tourism Industry;
Accommodations Industry;
United Kingdom;
London;
Europe
- March 2020 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)
By: Michael Luca, Scott Stern, Devin Cook and Hyunjin Kim
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...
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- March 2020 (Revised February 2023)
- Teaching Note
Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A) and (B)
By: Michael Luca
Teaching Note for HBS No. 920-051.
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- 2020
- Book
The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data-Driven World
By: Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman
Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of changes to an...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
By: Roberto Verganti, Luca Vendraminelli and Marco Iansiti
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is affecting the scenario in which innovation takes place. What are the implications for our understanding of design? Is AI just another digital technology that, akin to many others, will not significantly question what we know about...
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- 2020
- Book
Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World
By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of work. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very...
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- 2019
- Chapter
Agent Pricing in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from Airbnb
By: Jun Li, Antonio Moreno and Dennis Zhang
- 2018
- Working Paper
The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb
By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin
We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers - peer hosts and hotels - who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from...
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- September 2017 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Marriott International: The Next 90 Years
By: Chiara Farronato and Gary Pisano
The case examines how Marriott should respond to the potential threats from new home-sharing platforms and the rise of online travel agencies. In 2017 Marriott was the largest hotel chain, with more than one million rooms and 7% of worldwide room supply. In the...
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Keywords:
Airbnb;
Competitiveness;
Threats;
Disruption;
Lodging Industry;
Long-term Growth;
Loyalty Program;
Marriot;
Online Platforms;
Online Travel Agencies;
Digital Platforms;
Disruptive Innovation;
Competitive Strategy;
Competition;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Customer Satisfaction;
Internet and the Web;
Tourism Industry;
Travel Industry;
Accommodations Industry
- April 2017
- Article
Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca and Daniel Svirsky
In an experiment on Airbnb, we find that applications from guests with distinctively African-American names are 16% less likely to be accepted relative to identical guests with distinctively White names. Discrimination occurs among landlords of all sizes, including...
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Keywords:
Discrimination;
Field Experiment;
Bias;
Airbnb;
Prejudice and Bias;
Race;
Accommodations Industry