Impression Management in the Sharing Economy: Understanding the Effect of Response Strategy to Negative Reviews

Abstract

Recognizing the harmful effect of negative reviews on the reputation of the hosts as well as a subjective nature of the travel experience judgements, accommodation sharing platforms, like Airbnb, have introduced the response option, empowering hosts with the voice to deny, present an excuse, or at least apologize for the subject of the criticism. However, the effects of different response strategies on the impression of guests regarding the host and, above all, guests' willingness to rent a specific accommodation in the sharing setting remain unclear. To fill this gap, this study focuses on understanding the impact of different response strategies utilizing experimental methods. Our investigation shows that when the subject of complaint is controllable by a host, only the "confession / apology" strategy can improve the impression of guests regarding the host and enhance guests' willingness to rent, compared to the absence of response. However, when the subject of criticism is beyond the control of the host, both "confession / apology" and "excuse" have positive influence on the impression and also guests' willingness to rent. At the same time, "denial" strategy appears ineffective in both controllable and uncontrollable contexts we tested. Als Folge der schädlichen Effekte negativer Berichte auf den Ruf ei-nes Gastgebers sowie der Subjektivität der Reiseberichte auf Peer-to-Peer Plattformen, wie Airbnb, wurde für die Gastgeber eine Ant-wortoption eingeführt und damit die Möglichkeit auf den Kritik-punkt zu reagieren (ablehnend, rechtfertigend oder entschuldigend). Dennoch bleiben die Auswirkungen verschiedener Antwortstrategi-en des Gastgebers auf die Wahrnehmung potenzieller Gäste und de-ren Bereitschaft eine bestimmte Unterkunft zu mieten unklar. Um diese Forschungslücke zu füllen betrachtet diese Studie den Einfluss verschiedener Antwortstrategien im Rahmen eines experimentellen 58