Digitalization and the hybridization of markets and circuits in Airbnb

ABSTRACT

Digitalization, combined with the proliferation of online review and payment systems, has been integral to the creation of the sharing economy. While the sharing economy has opened industries to additional workers, it also shift risks to users and leads to a hybridization of previously pure economic concepts such as markets and circuits of commerce. Due to this risk shift, how do sharing economy users, specifically Airbnb hosts, protect themselves from the risks inherent in a marketplace that is both formal and informal, and regularly crosses the boundaries between legal and illegal? Using qualitative interviews with 23 Airbnb hosts in New York City, I argue that Airbnb's shifting of risk to workers leads to a hybridized form of institutional work as hosts create a social circuitry in order to protect themselves. This research contributes to the larger literature on digitalized and informal markets and circuits, risk, and societal impact of digitalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Buyer-seller relationships
• sharing economy
• Airbnb
• informal markets
• digitalization
• markets

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. Her research focuses on the lived experiences of gig economy workers including their experience of risk; the impact of gig work on worker career trajectories and life chances; the interaction between high status gig work and entrepreneurship; and the implications of sudden platform closures on workers, both professionally and personally.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded in part by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of the author.