Nordic home-sharing utopia: a critical analysis of Airbnb in Helsinki

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of Airbnb listings has been studied in major tourist cities, but much less is known about the phenomenon in Nordic cities. In this paper we have examined the situation in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, which has been largely unexplored in the research literature. Using our situated knowledge as an entry point, this study is based on geostatistical analysis, qualitative analysis of Airbnb listings, thematic conversations with experts and analysis of public discourses through media, to illustrate how Airbnb listings are distributed within the city and what perceptions and responses this phenomenon is generating. In the study, we challenge the public narrative that portrays short-term renting of homes in Helsinki as a form of sharing economy, as opposed to more destructive developments in major European tourist cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Airbnb
• short term rentals
• digital platforms
• spatial analysis
• Helsinki

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Research Assistant Jasmiina Myllys for helping us with the analysis of the AirDNA data and Pekka Mustonen, Jukka Punamäki and Elina Eskelä for their valuable insights on the research topic. We are also grateful for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki and Academy of Finland (RELATE Centre of Excellence 2017–2019, grant number 307348) for supporting this research. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments helped us to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki and RELATE Centre of Excellence 2017–2019, grant number 307348 of the Academy of Finland.