Other proposed variables related to Airbnb choice
Beyond the motivations directly influencing Airbnb choice, in order to achieve a more holistic view of Airbnb choice it is useful to examine some additional relevant topics – brand personality, communication channels, trip characteristics and travel decisions, and satisfaction and loyalty.
Brand personality
Brand personality refers to the collection of human characteristics associated with a brand (Biel, 1993; Aaker, 1997). Brand personality influences consumer purchases through its association with both a brand’s emotional and self-expressive benefits (Aaker, 1995). Tourism research on brand personality has generally focused on destinations, and has found that destinations are indeed perceived with different personality characteristics that in turn impact travel intentions (Ekinci & Hosany, 2006; Murphy, Moscardo, & Benckendorff, 2007c; Usakil & Baloglu, 2011). The importance of brand personality also has been recognized with regards to hotels (O’Neill & Mattila, 2010), as influencing perceived brand value and loyalty (Tran, Dauchez, & Szemik, 2013), in addition to repurchase intentions (Lee & Back, 2010).
Trip characteristics and travel decisions
Regardless of what an individual has heard about Airbnb, his or her various trip characteristics may directly influence his or her motivations to choose Airbnb. This acknowledged significance of trip characteristics is essentially a recognition of situational importance, which has long been highlighted in the study of behaviour (e.g., Ajzen, 1991; Darley & Batson, 1973). A single individual may take an assortment of trips within a relatively short period of time (e.g., an urban business trip, a brief romantic getaway to the countryside, and a weeklong beach trip with one’s children), and each one will invoke different preferences that will impact decisions made both prior to and during the trip. Moreover, as each decision is made, it will have an influence upon subsequent decisions.
These ideas serve as the foundation for the theory of tourism consumption systems, as established by Woodside and King (2001) and Woodside and Dubelaar (2002). Woodside and Dubelaar summarized, “The central proposition of a theory of [tourism consumption systems] is that the thoughts, decisions, and behaviors regarding one activity influence the thoughts, decisions, and behaviors for a number of other activities” (p. 120). The authors offered a useful perspective on how a range of variables, including trip motivations, information search, travel party characteristics, destination choice, length of stay, accommodation choice, transportation choice, and activity choice are all closely integrated. Also, the two papers provided empirical support for this notion, with Woodside and Dubelaar (2002) showing correlations between key variables among tourists to Prince Edward Island, and Woodside and King (2001) segmenting tourists to Hawaii according to similar variables. The interrelationships between different trip characteristics have been recognized in numerous other studies as well. For example, Yavas and Babakus (2005) found trip purpose (business versus leisure) impacted the value travellers placed on different hotel attributes, and Barros, Butler, and Correia (2009) and Martinez-Garcia and Raya (2008) both found length of stay to be influenced by accommodation type and destination attributes.
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Tourism segmentation studies also often profile their segments to identify how different motivations or benefits are associated with other trip characteristics. This literature, however, generally presents such trip characteristics in descriptive terms, rather than considering potential causal relationships between motivations and trip characteristics. When considering Airbnb, such causality seems important to consider; for example, travelling with children may influence one’s motivation to seek certain functional attributes Airbnb accommodations can offer. It is also important to acknowledge that in some cases there may be dual causality; for example, using Airbnb may encourage a tourist to take a longer trip, as Tussyadiah and Pesonen (2015) found, or being on a relatively long trip may encourage a tourist to use Airbnb, as the company has suggested (Conley, 2014).
When thinking about how Airbnb can impact travel decisions, such as length of stay, one of the most important questions is whether the decision to use Airbnb is counterbalanced by a decision to not use an existing form of accommodation. It is possible that Airbnb cannibalizes guests from existing accommodations, yet it is also possible that Airbnb attracts new visitors or visitors who would not have otherwise paid for accommodation (such as by staying with friends or family). As was discussed earlier, this substitution question is critically important for many stakeholders. Moreover, the notion of substitution is the foundation for the concept of disruptive innovation, which always involves disruption of an incumbent product.
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Satisfaction and loyalty
When a consumer uses a product, such as Airbnb, he or she will experience some degree of satisfaction, which has been defined in numerous ways, but is generally conceptualized as relating to a product’s perceived performance, often in comparison with prior expectations (Cohen, Prayag, & Moital, 2014; Neal & Gursoy, 2008; Pizam & Ellis, 1999). Satisfaction then foments trust and loyalty, thereby encouraging repurchase behaviours (Cohen et al., 2014). Loyalty involves both behavioural and attitudinal components, as repeat purchase behaviour alone may simply indicate, for example, a lack of other convenient options (Day, 1969; Dick & 74 Basu, 1994; Oppermann, 2000). Also, the attitudinal component of loyalty has been conceptualized as a separate and antecedent “psychological commitment” indicating a resistance to change (Pritchard, Havitz, & Howard, 1999), but for the purposes of this study the behavioural and attitudinal facets are viewed as a single loyalty construct. The relationship between satisfaction and loyalty has been firmly established in tourism research on both destinations (e.g., Chi & Qu, 2008; Correia Loureiro & Miranda González, 2008; Yoon & Uysal, 2005) and hotels (e.g., Bowen & Chen, 2001; Kandampully & Suhartanto, 2000; Kim, Kim, & Kim, 2009).
Díaz Armas et al. (2015) suggested that the exceptionally positive reviews that characterize Airbnb indicate a particularly high level of satisfaction, although it must be noted that indirect incentives may be artificially inflating guests’ reviews (Streitfeld, 2015; Zervas et al., 2015a). Nonetheless, as was described earlier, studies by Morgan Stanley and the Cowen Group both found very high levels of satisfaction among Airbnb users (Nowak et al., 2015; Verhage, 2016b). Also described previously, with regards to loyalty, a Goldman Sachs study found that, of people who had used PSRs, nearly as many preferred PSRs as still preferred traditional hotels (Verhage, 2016a).
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Summary
This review of the literature has introduced Airbnb and described a range of concepts that are useful towards understanding why tourists use the service. Questions regarding Airbnb choice are quite salient given the rapid growth of the company and the limited research that has so far been conducted. While the accommodation choice literature offers some useful insight into Airbnb choice, concepts related to disruptive innovation and the diffusion of innovations also appear useful for understanding demand for such an innovative service. Based on this 75 combination of literature, various motivations regarding Airbnb choice have been proposed. Moreover, additional concepts related to brand personality, communication channels, travel decisions, and satisfaction and loyalty have been described in order to provide for a more comprehensive look at Airbnb choice.
DISCUSSION
This study provides some of the first insights into the consumer-side of Airbnb. The study involved surveying recent users of Airbnb to better understand why they chose to use Airbnb over traditional accommodation options. The results show that numerous motivations attract guests to Airbnb, with the practical advantages of Airbnb comparatively more important than the experiential aspects. A post-hoc cluster analysis based on these motivations produced five distinct segments – Money savers, Home seekers, Collaborative consumers, Pragmatic novelty seekers, and Interactive novelty seekers. Subsequent profiling identified numerous noteworthy differences between the segments with regards to variables like demographic and trip characteristics. The research also examined additional variables to better explain Airbnb choice, showing (1) Airbnb users tend to see the brand as much cooler than hotels, (2) WOM and eWOM are the primary communication channels influencing Airbnb awareness and initial use, (3) Airbnb guests tend to use the service as a substitute for hotels, and (4) satisfaction with and loyalty towards Airbnb is quite high. Moreover, the study compared Airbnb’s expected performance with that of different hotel classes along various attributes, demonstrating relatively strong performance expectations regarding Airbnb. Such results somewhat limit the degree to which Airbnb should be perceived as a disruptive innovation relative to hotels. The findings have numerous direct implications for tourism academics, industry professionals, and government policymakers, and the findings also highlight numerous important avenues for future research.
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