How online social network affects information passing effectiveness in Airbnb travel stories

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on new social media feature Travel Stories in Airbnb and detects the ‘following and being followed’ online social network (OSN) behind this new feature. We present empirical evidence that the OSN characteristics can contribute to higher information passing effectiveness of user’s travel stories. We also realize the mediating effect of the OSN characteristics on the information passing process, which gives an insight into the information passing mechanism of Airbnb Travel Stories.

KEYWORDS:

• Short-term rental platform
• information passing
• online social network
• mediation analysis
• social recommendation

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 71771041 and 71501034. This work was also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant N182410001 and National Training Program of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Undergraduates under Grant 191217.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under [grant number 71771041], [grant number 71501034].