Exploring the language of the sharing economy: Building trust and reducing privacy concern on Airbnb in German and English

Abstract

Several countries' economies have been disrupted by the sharing economy. Global champions like Airbnb and Uber use similar models and platforms across many countries. However, each country and its consumers have different characteristics including the language used. The text in the profile of those offering their properties in England in English and in Germany in German, are compared to explore whether trust is built, and privacy concerns are reduced in the same way. Six methods of building trust are used by the landlords: (1) the level of formality, (2) distance and proximity, (3) emotiveness and humor, (4) being assertive and passive aggressive, (5) conformity to the platform language style and terminology and (6) setting boundaries. Privacy concerns are not usually reduced directly as this is left to the platform. The findings indicate that language has a limited influence and the

Trust in peers or in the institution? A decomposition analysis of Airbnb listings’ pricing

“…Guests, for example, have reported instances of property loss, or personal attack, assault and sexual harassment (Kamal & Chen, 2016;Lieber, 2015aLieber, , 2015b, as did hosts, citing cases of property damage or removal, even listing squattering (Shinners, 2016). So, trust towards the peers and the overall social network upon which Airbnb is built (known also as interpersonal trust) as well as towards the robustness of the system and the reliability of the Airbnb as an institution (known also as institutional trust), constitute essential parameters for the viability and the success of the service (Cheng et al, 2019;Mittendorf, 2016;Wang et al, 2020;Zafiris et al, 2019).…”

A decade of systematic literature review on Airbnb: the sharing economy from a multiple stakeholder perspective

“…(2019) ; Nieto García et al. (2019) Host race Listing description Törnberg and Chiappini (2020) Host self-presentation Guest response to self-presentation strategy Trust Tussyadiah and Park (2018) Zarifis et al. (2019) Host language style in listing profile Guest segmentation and targeting Number of guest reviews Lutz and Newlands (2018) Fierro and Aranburu (2018) Host linguistic and semantic features in self-description Trust Zhang et al.…”

“…The fourth theme revolves around how hosts market their listings. The literature offers insights about the way hosts market their listings on Airbnb using their profiles and listing descriptions ( Fierro and Aranburu, 2018 ; Han et al., 2019 ; Lutz and Newlands, 2018 ; Nieto García et al., 2019 ; Törnberg and Chiappini, 2020 ; Tussyadiah and Park, 2018 ; Zarifis et al., 2019 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). The literature reveals that hosts are encouraged to use social words in their listing descriptions to achieve higher revenue ( Han et al., 2019 ; Nieto García et al., 2019 ).…”

“…Specifically, hosts are advised to adjust their language style to reflect the market segment they wish to target ( Lutz and Newlands, 2018 ). This approach is expected to have a positive effect on trust ( Zarifis et al., 2019 ) and the number of reviews ( Fierro and Aranburu, 2018 ). Similarly, the way in which hosts describe themselves in their profiles can affect guests’ reactions to their profiles ( Tussyadiah and Park, 2018 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ).…”

Regional Differences in Information Privacy Concerns After the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal

“…Language Relatedly, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that the structure of anyone's native language influences the world-views they will acquire (Kay and Kempton, 1984). Depending on the language, a message is coded and decoded differently based on standardized language norms and culture (Zarifis et al, 2019). Thus, individuals who speak different native languages could think, perceive reality and organize the world around them in different ways (Hussein, 2012).…”