Is the sharing economy about sharing at all? A linguistic analysis of Airbnb reviews

Abstract

The sharing economy manifesto emphasises sharing underused resources as a means to build stronger communities. This manifesto has however received strong critiques that claim these markets are all about access as opposed to sharing, and that consumers are after utilitarian, as opposed to social, value. Being able to assess whether an economy is about access or sharing has important implications for how companies operate, and compete, in this space. To help shed light onto this, we perform a linguistic analysis of the reviews that peers in a sharing economy platform leave to one another. We take Airbnb in U.S. as a use case, and identify the main themes that peers discuss in their reviews from 2012 to 2016. We find that, as one expects, utilitarian values (e.g., properties' facilities, convenience of location, business conduct) have been discussed much more frequently than social values (e.g., guest/host interactions), and, more interestingly, this gap has substantially increased over the years.