Social biases in the sharing economy

An online experiment involving almost 9,000 Airbnb users suggests that users tend to trust profiles with high average star ratings and high numbers of reviews over profiles of individuals demographically similar to themselves but without high online ratings and reviews, and trust in highly rated profiles decreases with increasing risk aversion; consistent with these results, average similarity between host and guest decreased with increasing host reputation in an analysis of 1 million requests to stay via Airbnb.

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Article #16-04234: "Reputation offsets trust judgments based on social biases among Airbnb users," by Bruno Abrahao, Paolo Parigi, Alok Gupta, and Karen S. Cook.

MEDIA CONTACT: Bruno Abrahao, Stanford University, CA; tel: 607-229-4828; e-mail: <abrahao@cs.stanford.edu>