The construction of home feeling by Airbnb guests in the sharing economy: A semantics perspective

• Published in: Annals of tourism research Vol. 75; pp. 308 - 321
• Main Authors: Zhu, Yunxia, Cheng, Mingming, Wang, Jie, Ma, Laikun, Jiang, Ruochen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Airbnb; Cities; Electronic commerce; Home feeling; Hotels & motels; Online reviews; Peer-to-peer accommodation; Semantics; Semantics perspective; Sharing economy; Tourism; Peer-to-peer accommodation; Home feeling; Airbnb; Semantics perspective; Sharing economy; Online reviews
• ISSN: 0160-7383; 1873-7722
• DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2018.12.013

•Reveal the construction process of home feeling by Airbnb guests.•Discover the “PASS_h” model with multiple dimensions of home feeling construction.•Identify possible outcomes of customer loyalty relating to the home feeling dimensions. Although the literature of peer-to-peer accommodation is increasingly recognizing the importance of home feeling, little has been done to theorize the construction of home feeling and its impacts on Airbnb guests’ future intention. To fill in this gap, this study systematically unpacked how Airbnb guests construct the feeling of home. A total of 42,085 review comments containing the feeling of home from three major cities in the USA were analyzed from a semantics perspective. Based on our findings we conceptualize home feeling as a PASS_h process, which contains multiple dimensions: physical and spatial, social, and affective, coupled with hospitality. Essentially, the home feeling with the interaction of these dimensions fulfills the daily hybrid needs of the guests. This article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Peer-to-peer accommodation networks, a special selection of research in this field.