What You See is What You G(u)e(s)t: How Profile Photos and Profile Information Drive Providers’ Expectations of Social Reward in Co-usage Sharing

ABSTRACT

Co-usage sharing involves social interactions between providers and consumers. Previous research established that individuals’ motivation to engage in such transactions are not only driven by economic factors but also by expectations about the social reward that can be gained from them. This research develops a theoretical model to understand providers’ expectations of social reward and considers how they draw on the consumer’s user representation (profile photo and information) being the only cues available to them.

KEYWORDS:

• Sharing economy
• platform economy
• trust
• co-usage
• social reward
• user representation

Notes

1. The terms self-description and profile information are used interchangeably throughout the document.

2. Throughout this paper, the term “user representation” (UR) refers to the online representation of the consumer.

3. In our study, the term “photo” refers to a frontal portrait photo of a human face, considering they are common profile images used in sharing platforms.

4. It is worth noting that the relationship between perceived social presence and trust is well validated in the literature (see for example, Cyr et al., 2009; Lu et al., 2016; Yadav et al., 2013; Ye et al., 2019). As such, this relationship is included in the model for statistical purposes only, but not hypothesized (as shown in Figure 1). This practice (i.e., including known relationships without hypothesizing them) has been established in previous information systems articles (see for example, Devaraj et al., 2008; Pavlou & Fygenson, 2006; Venkatesh et al., 2012).

5. Trust is conceptualized as a unidimensional construct, which is in line with prior research on initial trust (G. Kim, Shin, et al., 2009) and other studies on trust in online environments (Cyr et al., 2009).

6. We conducted an additional analysis of 6,736 randomly selected actual Airbnb user profiles, which revealed the following proportions: portrait-like photo with clearly visible face, only one person (69.5%), multiple people (12.8%), person/s visible but no face/s identifiable (8.7%), others such as buildings, landscapes, or objects (9.0%).

7. We also conducted an analysis of the profile information of 13,081 actual Airbnb users. Overall, 65.7% provide any form of textual profile information, 30.3% refer to their occupation and 50.2% refer to hobbies and interests (see also Ma et al., 2017).

8. The photo has been blurred for publication. Participants saw original (non-blurred) pictures.

9. In addition, about half of all participants indicated to have experience with accommodation sharing through Airbnb.

10. The CFA shows a good overall fit (Chi-square = 40.871; df = 24; TLI = .986; CFI = .991; RMSEA = .004).

11. We conducted additional analyses on the model using PLS, where the relationship between perceived social presence and expected social reward had a medium effect size (f² = 0.151) and the R² of expected social reward dropped from 0.47 to 0.39 when this link was removed from the model. This suggests that this mediating variable plays an important role in explaining expected social reward in our model.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonia Camacho

Prof. Dr. Timm Teubner is an Assistant Professor at the Einstein Center Digital Future at TU Berlin. He holds a Diploma degree in Industrial Engineering and Management and a doctoral degree in Information Systems from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. His research interests include online platforms and multi-sided markets, trust and reputation systems, online auctions, Internet user behavior and psychology, as well as crowdsourcing. His research has been published in international journals such as Business & Information Systems Engineering, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information & Management, Electronic Markets, Economics Letters, and others.

Prof. Dr. Marc Adam is an Associate Professor in Computing and Information Technology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. In his research, he investigates the interplay of cognitive and affective processes of human users in human-computer interaction. He received an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg, and a PhD in Business Information Systems from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. His research has been published in top international outlets such as Business & Information Systems Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and others.

Dr. Sonia Camacho is an Assistant Professor at the School of Management, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. Her research area falls under the area of human-computer interaction. Her research interests include the dark side of information technology usage, e-commerce, and technology adoption. Her research has been published in international journals such as Information & Management and Journal of Business Research. She received a Ph.D. in Business Administration from McMaster University, an MBA from Universidad de los Andes, and a bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Dr. Khaled Hassanein is a Professor of Information Systems, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies & Research), and Director of the McMaster Digital Transformation Research Centre at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University. His interdisciplinary research interests span the areas of digital transformation, data analytics, HCI, neuro-information systems, and DSS. He has published in leading journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems, among others. He received an MSc and a Ph.D. both in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo respectively, and an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University.