Next time you're browsing Airbnb listings, you could find that there's more to contemplate than simply amenities and price.
Stand out from the competitionSome Airbnb hosts tout their personal values—reminiscent of integrity, empathy, and conscientiousness—of their listings. This style of display is named “virtue signaling.” Although the term can sound derisive, we'll use it here as a neutral description of a business tactic: Virtue signaling occurs when an organization communicates to an audience that it has a purpose beyond providing a for-profit service.
Virtue signaling is just not a brand new phenomenon, nevertheless it's still a challenge for entrepreneurs to navigate. After all, there may be a skinny line between a meaningful dialogue about values and telling the shopper what they need to hear. Previous research about business and virtuous signaling is basically mixedand scientists have mainly focused on this how investors – not consumers – respond.
As professors who study EntrepreneurshipWe wanted to higher understand how consumers reply to virtue language – specifically, whether it makes them willing to pay more within the sharing economy. That's why we examined the language utilized in greater than 80,000 Airbnb listings. We found that virtue signaling causes people to pay a premium—but only to a certain extent.
Virtue signaling within the sharing economy
Airbnb is the biggest accommodation provider within the sharing economy, with greater than 2 million lively listings within the US. Host – or Airbnb tourism entrepreneuras the corporate likes to explain them – list their private rooms, apartments or entire houses with descriptions of the property that guests can rent out.
Airbnb provides hosts with a sensible pricing tool that calculates a nightly rental price based on aspects reminiscent of a property's location and amenities. However, hosts can charge greater than the Airbnb pricing tool recommends. To persuade guests to pay extra for his or her rentalHosts often include additional, more personal information concerning the property of their pitch.
To discover whether this pays off, we analyzed 81,799 Airbnb listing descriptions in 12 cities across the United States. We calculated the proportion of virtue language using word lists that capture six dimensions of virtue: Conscientiousness, courage, empathy, integrity, warmth and zeal. For example, hosts can describe their property as “friendly” or “neighborly” to emphasise warmth, or comment on their “supportive” or “compassionate” nature to point out empathy to potential guests.
Our results, published in certainly one of the leading entrepreneurship journals, show that the worth hosts can charge for his or her Airbnb is influenced by the extent of virtue signaling of their listing.
We found that lower levels of virtue signaling in Airbnb listings help hosts secure more bookings at the next price, while an excessive amount of hurts business. Specifically, a bunch who uses a bit virtue language earns a mean of $1,098 more annually than the common host in our sample. At the identical time, excessive virtue language resulted in a lack of greater than $4,964.
Why are people less willing to pay a premium to the Airbnb hosts who most champion their virtues?
We consider that trust matters. Consumers view a bit virtue language as reasonable and trustworthy. However, higher levels of virtue signaling can appear dishonest. We found support for this concept in a follow-up survey experiment with almost 500 participants. In this experiment, we found that Airbnb listings with plenty of virtuous language usually tend to appear perceived as dishonest of study participants.
As entrepreneurs grapple with the best way to communicate their values and beliefs to consumers, our research shows that communicating a modest dose of virtue can enhance performance with consumers.
What about Airbnb Superhosts?
Perhaps an important status symbol on Airbnb is the Superhost badge, which hosts earn over time based on their overall rating, response rate, and other quality metrics. The badge attests to a bunch's good fame and is prominently displayed in real estate advertisements.
Our results show that the effect of virtue signaling is stronger for Airbnb superhosts. In other words, a bit virtue signaling paid off more for superhosts, but excessive virtue signaling did them more harm.
These results show that customers respond significantly in another way to virtue signaling from Airbnb Superhosts and illustrate that these hosts needs to be particularly careful with such language of their listings.
Navigating the political minefield
Airbnb hosts, like other business owners, should consider the political context during which they operate. Do your research Political psychology showed that Conservatives and liberals are different in value-based decisions.
Our results show that hosts with accommodations in conservative counties respond more strongly to virtue signaling from consumers. We suspect it’s because conservatives consider it’s dishonest to overstate one's ethical nature, while liberals view it as a function of the business environment during which Airbnb hosts compete. These results illustrate that entrepreneurs in additional conservative countries needs to be particularly careful when using virtue language.
Particularly within the sharing economy, it is vital to know how consumers reply to expressions of values. Our research shows that on the subject of public displays of virtue, a bit can go a great distance.
image credit : theconversation.com