A big data analysis of COVID-19 impacts on Airbnbs’ bookings behavior applying construal level and signaling theories

authors

  • Filieri Raffaele
  • Milone Francesco Luigi
  • Paolucci Emilio
  • Raguseo Elisabetta

keywords

  • COVID-19
  • Airbnb host
  • Occupancy
  • Price premium
  • Construal theory
  • Signaling theory

document type

ART

abstract

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer booking behavior in the peer-to-peer accommodation sector. This study used a dataset composed of 2041,966 raws containing 69,727 properties located in all 21 Italian regions in the pre-and post-COVID-191. Results show that after the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers preferred P2P accommodations with price premiums and located in rural (versus urban) areas. Although the findings reveal a preference for entire apartments over shared accommodation (i.e., room, apartment), this preference did not change significantly after COVID-19 lockdowns. The contribution of this study lies in combining psychological distance theory and signaling theory to assess P2P performance in the pre-and post-COVID-19 periods.

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