Details of Research Outputs

Introduction

The online peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing accommodation market, including Airbnb, encourages accommodation hosts to post profile photos to enhance interpersonal contact and social relations (Tussyadiah & Pesonen, 2016). As hosts are increasingly uploading profile photos, appearance-based discrimination has followed, resulting in the "beauty premium" phenomenon (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994). Prior studies (Barnes & Kirshner,2021; Jaeger et al., 2019) have demonstrated that hosts with highly attractive profile photos tend to charge higher rates, leading to higher-priced Airbnb listings. However, does the beauty premium actually boost customers' intentions to make a reservation or their willingness to pay? This question remains to be addressed. It will also be interesting to identify the mechanisms behind these relationships. According to evolutionary psychology, prospect theory, and consumption vision theory, this study sought to (1) examine if beauty premium effects exist in the online sharing accommodation context in terms of customers' booking intention and willingness to pay; (2) explore internal mechanisms of the above impacts from the perspective of customers' affective reactions (i.e., perceived enjoyment and perceived threat); and (3) test the moderating factors (i.e., hosts' reputation and host self-disclosure) of the above effects.

Methods

To achieve the above mentioned objectives, three experiments were designed. Study 1 was designed to test whether consumers' booking intentions were affected by the facial attractiveness of host profile photos through a 2-group (host facial attractiveness: high vs. low) between-subjects design. Study 2 was designed to test the moderating effect of host reputation on the effects of host facial attractiveness on customers' booking intention and willingness to pay via a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Similarly, study 3 was designed to examine the moderating role of hosts' text-based self-disclosure. The mediating effects of perceived enjoyment and threat were tested in all these three experiments.

Results/Discussion/Implications

Our results revealed that customers were more willing to book and to pay more for accommodations operated by hosts with high facial attractiveness Hosts' facial attractiveness could increase customers' booking intentions and willingness to pay through enhanced anticipated enjoyment and lowered perceived threat. Additionally, the host reputation and self-disclosure could moderate the effects of host facial attractiveness. This research contributes to the literature on beauty premium in the context of shared accommodation and provides valuable insight for stakeholders.