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The sharing economy and sustainability – Assessing Airbnb’s direct, indirect and induced carbon footprint in Sydney
Abstract
A peer-to-peer sharing approach for the accommodation sector such as Airbnb has been suggested as a more environmental sustainable alternative to conventional forms of accommodation services. This study evaluates the carbon footprint of Airbnb hosts in Sydney. The Airbnb platform and its hosts, together generate direct and indirect carbon footprint 7.29-9.39kg CO2e per room night but the extra income of Airbnb hosts can lead to induced carbon footprint. By modelling four different scenarios, the induced carbon footprint of Airbnb hosts range from 3.84 to 602.41 kg CO2e/ room night. Findings challenge the prevalent notion provided by many previous studies that the sharing economy helps to use the under-utilized resources, thus decreasing environmental impacts. This study contributes to peer-to-peer accommodation literature and to the widening public debate on the environmental sustainability of the sharing economy.
... In the case of accommodation sharing, the potential benefits were considered to come mainly from reduced energy use, with small private homes often being more energy efficient than larger commercial buildings (Airbnb, 2017;Cheng et al., 2020;Skjelvik et al., 2017). According to Cheng et al. (2020), the carbon footprint (CF) of Airbnb accommodation and booking services ranges from 7.27kg to 9.39 kg CO 2 e per room per night in the Greater Sydney region. ...
... In the case of accommodation sharing, the potential benefits were considered to come mainly from reduced energy use, with small private homes often being more energy efficient than larger commercial buildings (Airbnb, 2017;Cheng et al., 2020;Skjelvik et al., 2017). According to Cheng et al. (2020), the carbon footprint (CF) of Airbnb accommodation and booking services ranges from 7.27kg to 9.39 kg CO 2 e per room per night in the Greater Sydney region. Whilst this CF is significantly lower than the emissions per room per night for traditional hotels which range between 23.17kg and 34.32 kg CO 2 e, it does not include the emissions related to the induced consumption of Airbnb hosts generated by the additional income (Cheng et al., 2020). ...
... According to Cheng et al. (2020), the carbon footprint (CF) of Airbnb accommodation and booking services ranges from 7.27kg to 9.39 kg CO 2 e per room per night in the Greater Sydney region. Whilst this CF is significantly lower than the emissions per room per night for traditional hotels which range between 23.17kg and 34.32 kg CO 2 e, it does not include the emissions related to the induced consumption of Airbnb hosts generated by the additional income (Cheng et al., 2020). Thus, whilst it is debatable whether P2P accommodation sharing overall leads to a significant reduction in CF, travellers still consider Airbnb as a sustainable alternative to traditional hotels (Airbnb, 2021). ...
The sustainability potential of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation sharing will not be fully achieved until sustainability is fully understood as a motivating force. This study examines the influence of perceived sustainability and familiarity on loyalty intentions with platform trust and satisfaction as mediators and age as a moderator. An online survey with 507 UK Airbnb users found that perceived sustainability and familiarity are effective drivers of consumers’ loyalty in relation to Airbnb, alongside the mediators of platform trust and satisfaction. In addition, the effect of perceived sustainability on platform trust is greater among younger users, which feeds further to satisfaction and consequently loyalty. This timely study adopts an integrative approach which recognises the interplay of sustainability, familiarity, trust and satisfaction in predicting loyalty intentions for P2P accommodation. This can, in turn, help to unlock the potential of P2P accommodation to deliver more sustainable outcomes for people, places and the planet.
... Under the triple bottom line analysis framework [42], numerous empirical studies address the specific impacts of particular departments or sharing activities from isolated economic, environmental, or social perspectives. For instance, examine the ecological benefits [22,43] of sharing mobility in reducing haze [44], carbon dioxide [45], and greenhouse gas [46]; evaluate the direct, indirect, and induced carbon footprint of Airbnb in Sydney [47]; or investigate the economic and social impact of the sharing accommodation on tourism, hospitality, and the residents [48][49][50][51]. These independent contributions provided remarkably in-depth conclusions and implications. ...
... Second, the top-down evaluation approach includes IO analysis [47], IO analysis with environmental extended accounts (EE-IO) [69], and the general equilibrium model (CGE). The establishment of production and consumption functions in econometric models represented by CGE heavily relies on assumptions about current and future behavior, expanding the uncertainty and systematic error. ...
... Additionally, the research framework grounded on the IO theory defines the linkages between sectors via the industrial aggregative statistics in national economic accounts [70,71]. Due to the complete and detailed description of the correlation between various departments, the IO analysis is generally cited in identifying key sectors and industrial structures in the economy [47,72]. It has also been applied to model how changes in inputs or outputs in some sectors trigger corresponding changes in the economic system and other sectors to assess systematic ripple effects and overall impacts [73]. ...
Emerging economies suffer more severe pressure to coordinate sustainable production and consumption, and new industry input–output (IO) solutions are urgent. An emerging service supply and consumption mode, the sharing economy (SE) penetrates various industries and rewrites the technological–economic links between sectors via integrating scattered and idle resources. The sustainable effects of such industrial linkages changes triggered by its specific activities remain unclear. The study aims to clarify the mechanism of SE in coordinating the relationship between production and consumption among industries and demonstrate its particular role in cleaner production and sustainable consumption to reveal its multistage and systematic impact on industrial development through input–output linkages. Grounded on the IO and complex systems theory, we establish an IO-DEMATEL industrial development evaluation model embedded in the IO table. The comparative analysis of IO cross-sectional data in 2007 and 2018 deduces the dynamic evolution of industrial interaction and structure under the penetration of SE, as well as its contributions to the national economy in China. The result reveals that sharing activities raise the industry prominence moderately and promote the cleanliness and resource-conservation of industrial connections. However, the prominence of the five sectors regarding input, output, or comprehensive influence currently ranks in the lower-middle levels among all industries. Industrial structure optimization has only been observed on the supply side. Our findings complement a deepened empirical evidence of SE and its sustainability, which is also of practical significance for policymakers to identify the critical industries that conduct cleaner production and sustainable consumption.
... Shared consumer services, such as home-sharing and car-sharing, for domestic use are already known and used by many people in the EU [10]. Collaborative consumption offers many new ICT based opportunities for citizens and innovative entrepreneurs [11][12][13][14]. A distinctive feature of cooperative consumption is that service providers are usually private individuals who offer their assets or services, sometimes based on cooperation [15]. ...
... Collaborative Lifestyles [8,32,34]: When people with similar needs or interests come together and share assets that are less tangible, such as time, space, skills, and money [35]. These include jobs (CitizenSpace), gardens (Landshare) or car parks (ParkatmyHouse), loans between individuals (Lending Club) and housing rentals (Airbnb and Couchsurfing) [6,11,[36][37][38]. ...
... Authors argue that sharing is a promising phenomenon due to many economic, social, and technological factors [46]. References [11,35] argue that sharing promotes efficiency, community, and sustainability by focusing on servicing untapped resources, and [47] argue that sustainability is a major business concern. ...
Sharing activities are receiving greater attention due to increasing popularity in recent years. This article focuses on how the use of digital sharing platforms by customers to share products and services helps to increase the saving of natural resources and support sustainable development. In the paper, the authors investigated the main elements affecting ICT based sharing. (1) Literature review: The theoretical part starts with the revision of definitions of sharing activities; descriptions of the links between sharing and sustainable development, policy recommendations, and relevant regulation in the field. Further on, the study emphasises key elements, including ICT ones, that are important for sharing. Finally, the authors investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic affected sharing activities in previously published studies. (2) Methods: During empirical research, the authors revised a list of 33 variables, among which are 16 indicators describing network infrastructure, internet literacy and online shopping. The study uses data for each of the 27 EU countries from 2011 to 2020. The authors investigated correlations between macroeconomics and other variables to determine key variables for the regression model. (3) Results: The authors constructed a dynamic regression model that can be applied to predict the number of participants visiting digital sharing platforms in the European Union (EU). (4) Conclusions: The study shows that, when seeking to forecast the number of visits to digital sharing platforms, it is necessary to use values of main macroeconomic and ICT variables. Among these variables, ICT based indicators are highly dominating.
... The credibility of various parties in SE sectors is difficult to measure from the information available on their websites. However, feedback from other guests plays an integral part in booking accommodation from SE platforms such as Airbnb [30]. According to one study, personal reputation (40%) is strongly connected with host popularity, followed by storytelling narratives in companies profiles (8%) [31]. ...
... As such, it is possible to avoid biases associated with the key informant sampling approach. Recent studies based on online comments on a newspaper article about SE vividly illustrate the value of such data in research [16,30]. ...
... Uber and Lyft are both facing lawsuits in California alleging that they improperly classified their drivers as independent contractors [43]. Airbnb charges guests 3% of the cost of hosting in addition to a variable service fee, whereas Uber charges drivers a 25% commission on trip costs [19,30,32]. This is widely regarded as outrageous, particularly in light of the COVID-19 crisis. ...
Activities related to Sharing economy (SE) are in a vulnerable position globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. SE businesses related to the transport and accommodation sectors are considered riskier than others, and the pandemic has only increased concerns. As such, assessing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the SE is crucial. This study aims to identify the influence of COVID-19 on SE activities. Journal and news articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, and printed and televised news have been considered as data sources for this study. Using content analysis, the study showcases how SE activities are adjusting to the pandemic-induced business landscape. The study examined SE status from four stakeholders' viewpoints service providers (SPs), service receivers (SRs), SE firms, and regulatory bodies (RBs). The study's findings suggest that the pandemic-induced lockdown significantly impacted job sectors, increased health risk, anxiety, reduced safety, and income for SE firms. SPs, and SRs worldwide are facing tremendous difficulties operating their activities, frequently changing guidelines to support SPs by financial assistance and SRs by standard services during the COVID-19. This study will help respective authorities and government organizations to determine the appropriate strategies for SE firms to advance their services during critical situations.
... Although consumer satisfaction is a recurrent topic (Lee and Kim, 2018;Thaichon et al., 2020), understanding this phenomenon in the peer-to-peer economy is still in demand. Consumer satisfaction is extensively used to indicate success (Cheng et al., 2020) and positively correlated with customers perceived value (Lee and Kim, 2018;Lin et al., 2020). Lee and Kim (2018) pointed out that consumer satisfaction is influenced by utilitarian and hedonic values, in which service involvement has a central role in the correlation between perceived value and customer satisfaction. ...
... Customer satisfaction is essential for any business to be competitive regarding value delivered to customers (Cheng et al., 2020;Lee and Kim, 2018;Lin et al., 2020). Unlike prior studies, this study found a mediate-positive impact of satisfaction on the relationship between (PSQ) and IAS supporting H2. ...
Purpose
This study aims to examine the direct impact of perceived service quality (PSQ) on satisfaction and the intention to use accommodation sharing (IAS). Additionally, it investigates the mediating role of satisfaction between PSQ and IAS. To extend the findings, the study also analyzes the moderating roles of behavioral change and family status in the relationship between satisfaction and IAS within a collective group.
Design/methodology/approach
This study includes 413 accommodation sharing (AS) users in the USA using data collected through MTurk. The authors analyzed the data using the ordinary least squared regressions path analytical framework and bootstrapping methods in PROCESS Macro to estimate the hypothesized mediated moderation models.
Findings
The findings underscore the significant impact of PSQ on satisfaction and IAS. Moreover, they reveal the crucial role of satisfaction as a mediator in this relationship and the moderating influence of family status and behavior change on the observed indirect relationship. These insights are invaluable for understanding and navigating the dynamics of the accommodation-sharing industry.
Originality/value
This paper is a pioneering work that sheds new light on the roles of change in behavior and family status in the context of AS. It makes significant contributions to the sharing economy and offers valuable managerial insights for companies operating in this market. The study s originality lies in its explanation of the mediator role of satisfaction in the sharing economy and the moderator mechanism of change in behavior and family status on IAS.
... Most authors agree that the shared accommodation business model has the potential to be more open, inclusive, and environmentally friendly than the traditional economy (Hong and Yoo, 2020). Shared accommodation creates communities Schor et al., 2016;Tussyadiah and Pesonen, 2016;Frenken and Schor, 2017;Palgan et al., 2017;Pouri and Hilty, 2018;Jaremen et al., 2019;Laurenti et al., 2019;Akande et al., 2020;Álvarez-Herranz and Macedo-Ruíz, 2021;Amore et al., 2022 Urban and community sustainability Gant, 2016;Gutiérrez et al., 2017;Nieuwland and van Melik, 2018;Griffiths et al., 2019;Ioannides et al., 2019;Zhang and Chen, 2019;Ayouba et al., 2020;Katsinas, 2021 Energy efficiency and carbon footprint Cheng et al., 2020;Gu, 2022;Vélez, 2023 Public sector regulation and sustainability Guttentag, 2015;Oskam and Boswijk, 2016;Miralles et al., 2017;O'Regan and Choe, 2017;Hofmann et al., 2019;Mi and Coffman, 2019;Mont et al., 2020;Mermet, 2022 Linkages between shared economy in the agri-food sector and sustainability Food sharing, exchanges, and networks Zurek, 2016;Micheels and Boecker, 2017;Richards and Hamilton, 2018;Asian et al., 2019;Baldi et al., 2019;Ketter, 2019;Dangi and Narula, 2021;Rodrigues et al., 2021;Stehrenberger and Schneider, 2023 Food wastereducing platforms Fine et al., 2015;Morone et al., 2018;Choi et al., 2019;Davies and Evans, 2019;Schanes and Stagl, 2019;Secondi et al., 2019;Cane and Parra, 2020;Harvey et al., 2020;Makov et al., 2020;Michelini et al., 2020;Diekmann and Germelmann, 2021;Mazzucchelli et al., 2021;Mullick et al., 2021;De Almeida Oroski and da Silva, 2023;Hua et al., 2023;Kirmani et al., 2023;Meshulam et al., 2023 Food-based services and applications Hashem et al., 2018;Mu et al., 2019;Puram and Gurumurthy, 2023 Source: Own elaboration. and partnerships between providers and users. ...
... The carbon footprint is related to agricultural production, food consumption, and the energy intensity of accommodation facilities. Except for a few case studies of comprehensive car-sharing research, there is still no empirical evidence on greenhouse gas emissions (Frenken and Schor, 2017;Jung and Koo, 2018;Cheng et al., 2020). ...
Introduction
This study aims to provide a systematic literature review on the sustainability of shared economy in the food, agricultural, and hospitality sectors. We assess relationships between the sharing economy and sustainability in the examined industries. Furthermore, we identify gaps in knowledge and recommend possible research directions for future studies.
Methods
This study provides a systematic literature review on sustainable sharing economy in the hospitality and agri-food sectors. We applied the Procedure for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Based on the mentioned methodological procedure, we conducted a literature search through scientific databases Scopus and Web of Science. The research period is 2014–2023.
Results
Using the Procedure for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), we extracted 2185 scientific articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases published between 2014 and 2023. A total of 117 studies met the eligibility criteria. Based on the review, we identified the following frequently researched areas in the literature: sustainable housing sharing, urban and community sustainability, energy efficiency and carbon footprint, public sector regulation and sustainability, food sharing, exchanges and networks, food waste-reducing platforms, and food-based applications.
Conclusion
The studies reviewed confirmed growing research interest in the sustainability of the shared economy in agri-food and hospitality. The number of studies in the Web of Science and Scopus databases has increased over the last decade. Our systematic review indicates that shared accommodation and food sharing are dominant topics in the literature. The sustainability of shared accommodation has been examined in previous studies, mainly concerning the impacts on cities and communities. In food sharing, we identified relevant linkages between food waste and sharing platforms.
... As the short-term rental trend has become increasingly popular in recent years, enormous numbers of people are jumping into the P2P accommodation business, with competition hosts dramatically increasing (Garau-Vadell et al., 2019). As a result, wealth distribution among hosts is often unequal, resulting in worsening social discrepancies between hosts from different socioeconomic classes (Cheng et al., 2020). Ironically, this contradicts the P2P accommodation philosophy of relieving inequality in the market economy (Cheng et al., 2020). ...
... As a result, wealth distribution among hosts is often unequal, resulting in worsening social discrepancies between hosts from different socioeconomic classes (Cheng et al., 2020). Ironically, this contradicts the P2P accommodation philosophy of relieving inequality in the market economy (Cheng et al., 2020). Furthermore, the rapid growth of P2P accommodation businesses causes housing issues and inflation of housing prices in areas heavily populated with P2P accommodation businesses (Barron et al., 2019;Dann et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
Drawing on the social exchange theory, stakeholder theory and extended theory of reasoned action, this study aims to investigate how consumers view the economic and sociocultural impacts (benefits/costs) of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations on the local community’s resilience and how consumers form behavioral intentions toward P2P accommodation as a part of sustainable tourism behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
With data from a survey of 300 consumers who have previously used P2P accommodation, the authors performed partial least squares-structural equation modeling to test the proposed model and hypotheses.
Findings
The current study reveals the significant impact of the sociocultural benefits of P2P accommodations on consumers’ perceived community resilience, while economic benefits have a non-significant impact on perceived community resilience. Moreover, neither the sociocultural nor economic costs of P2P accommodation significantly reduce consumers’ perceived community resilience. Furthermore, the authors found significant positive relationships among perceived community resilience, attitude, subjective norm, personal norm and behavioral intentions.
Practical implications
P2P accommodation platforms can leverage these research findings and contribute to the community resilience and help community residents by establishing strategic collaboration with various stakeholders (e.g. governments, destination marketing organizations and non-profit organizations) for the community’s sustainable development.
Originality/value
This study systematically investigates the role of P2P accommodation in achieving community resilience by categorizing the impacts of P2P accommodation into economic and sociocultural benefits/costs.
... For example, Amatuni et al. (2020), reveal that rebound could offset 5-55% of the expected benefits of car sharing in part because users switch from public transport to car-sharing. Cheng et al. (2020), suggest that emissions associated with sharing via Airbnb are five to seven times higher when including the impacts associated with host earnings. Similarly, Warmington-Lundström and Laurenti (2020), find that the 47% of carbon benefits attributed to boat sharing are eroded and lessors re-spend the money they earned by renting their boats. ...
... Since results are highly susceptible to assumptions on the percent of the marginal income re-spent and to re-spending modeling choices we constructed seven scenarios, presented in detail in Table 1 (Cheng et al. 2020;Druckman et al. 2011). Most rebound studies assume that marginal income due to efficiency gains is fully re-spent. ...
The digital sharing economy is commonly thought to promote sustainable consumption and improve material efficiency through better utilization of existing product stocks. However, the cost savings and convenience of using digital sharing platforms can ultimately stimulate additional demand for products and services. As a result, some or even all of the expected environmental benefits attributed to sharing could be offset, a phenomenon known as the rebound effect. Relying on a unique dataset covering over 750,000 food items shared in the United Kingdom through a free peer‐to‐peer food‐sharing platform, we use econometric modeling, geo‐spatial network analysis, and environmentally extended input–output analysis to quantify how much of the expected environmental benefits attributed to sharing are offset via rebound effects under seven re‐spending scenarios. We find that rebound effects can offset 59–94% of expected greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction, 20–81% of expected water depletion benefits, and 23–90% of land use benefit as platform users re‐spent the money saved from food sharing on other goods and services. Our results demonstrate that rebound effects could limit the potential to achieve meaningful reductions in environmental burdens through sharing, and highlight the importance of incorporating rebound effects in environmental assessments of the digital sharing economy.
... It has allowed tourists to organize their travel plans in a different way by booking rooms through Oyo, booking cabs through Ola and Uber, traveling around the city with Zoom cars or Vogo/ Bounce bikes, ordering local cuisines through Swiggy and Zomato while enjoying local attractions at a lower price (Heo, 2016;Zhou et al., 2020). Researchers posit this concept as a disruptive phenomenon, that focuses on serving underutilized resources while promoting efficiency, ensuring societal upliftment and implementing sustainable business practices (Cheng et al., 2020;Geissinger et al., 2019), with the latter being a key concern for businesses (Muduli et al., 2020). The ongoing pandemic has radically affected the SE market globally (Zenker and Kock, 2020) where every tourism stakeholder like the service providers, customers and society as a whole was impacted, whose aftermath is still unknown. ...
... Despite the SE concept is being considered a disruptive phenomenon, mainly in the accommodation and transport sectors, the Covid-19 has raised concerns about its survivability and challenged its existence (Hossain, 2021). The pandemic has not only stopped the tourist inflow but also resulted in loss of thousands of jobs people forcing the SE firms and many related service providers to stop working and shut their MEQ businesses (Cheng et al., 2020). Hence, understanding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the SE sector is therefore essential. ...
Purpose
Taking a retrospective view, the present study aims to investigate the resilience of shared facilities (accommodation) across India in the post-pandemic period. More specifically, it explores the issues and challenges in implementing sustainable practices in the long run taking a dual perspective of both consumers and service providers.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed-method study was pursued in exploring the future resilience of the shared facilities in the post-pandemic period. A multi-method triangulation approach was adopted involving both data collection and data analysis. Primary data was collected through focus group sessions and analysed through a grounded theory study. Whereas, secondary data was extracted from Twitter and processed through textual data mining using the NVivo (12 Pro) software. Critical themes and sentiments were explored through the dual study and a corroboration process was followed thereon to support the findings.
Findings
The dual study extracted major themes pertaining to the present pandemic scenario wherein recovery strategies are at the top priority for all tourism service providers. Among the major themes tourists 2019 passiveness towards the environment existing misconceptions with shared facilities and situational perspective emerged as critical issues worrying service providers in the post-pandemic period. Furthermore the sentiment analysis indicated a positive start to the recovery measures wherein both tourist and tour operators are confident to embrace and restore the shared facilities/business respectively with additional care and responsibilities.
Originality/value
The novelty of the study lies in the identification of critical themes and sentiments concerning the future resilience of the shared economy businesses post-pandemic period in Indian tourism which can have a generalized effect across the world. Moreover, the study corroborated the findings of the dual study where similarities among the themes were observed.
... However, platforms like Airbnb originated with a fundamental purpose: to foster the collaborative economy, enabling non-professional hosts to share their vacant or underutilised homes, promoting sustainability, and offering travellers authentic experiences at a more affordable price (Cheng et al., 2020). ...
This study examines ‘Airbnbisation’ in tourist destinations, where professionally-managed properties have surged, affecting housing availability, prices, and community well-being, along with concerns about tax evasion. Despite platforms like Airbnb intending to support the sharing economy, short-term rental regulations struggle to differentiate between collaborative and professional lodgings, complicating oversight. To address this issue, the study examines regulations in 37 cities and evaluates their effectiveness in differentiating between collaborative and professional accommodations. The research proposes new short-term rental legislation using the results of three quantitative techniques. Data on short-term rental regulations, property locations, features, and host profiles were analyzed. Results show that regulations limiting annual rental days and properties per host encourage collaborative accommodations. However, rules controlling guest numbers, requiring licenses (among others) are not adequate to reduce professionalized lodgings. Collaborative accommodations are often found over 5 km from the cathedral, suggesting they aren't primary contributors to city ‘Airbnbisation’. This research aids policymakers in balancing residents' needs and short-term rental interests.
... Media articles have also highlighted that while 'sharing' behavior may initially appear sustainable, closer examination reveals that this is not consistently the case (Cheng & Edwards, 2019). For example, Cheng et al. (2020) found that the extra income earned by Airbnb hosts leads to additional induced carbon footprints. These findings challenge the prevailing notion that the sharing economy helps optimize under-utilized resources and reduce environmental impacts (Cheng & Edwards, 2019). ...
... This business model generates values for both hosts and guests, by the latter purchasing a house at a more reasonable price than rooms at hotels and in this way generating revenue for the first category who have spare spaces for rent. The most important benefit of sharing accommodations is related to sustainability by reducing energy usage, as small houses are preferred to the larger buildings (Airbnb, 2017;Cheng et al., 2020). As per the survey conducted by Airbnb in 2016, 72 % of the guests responded that they have chosen to rent an accommodation due to the benefits brought for the environment, reducing the consumption of water and energy and emitting fewer greenhouse gases. ...
This paper presents the importance of creating shared value and presenting methods of this concept in a digitalized business model adopted by companies in the sharing economy. Clients and other stakeholders should benefit from the products and services shared with them and companies need to focus on the social outcomes of their activities, not only on obtaining profit and have competitive advantage on the market. Sustainability is one of the main objectives on the UN 2030 Agenda as such, organizations’ efforts are directed into accomplish it. Digitalization has become a priority for most companies on the market in order for them to provide innovative solutions for the consumers and continuously adapt to the new challenges faced in the business environment and to the changing needs of their clients. By using different digital tools in the organizations’ communication with their clients, firms will be informed rapidly of the new advancements, and they will change their strategies in a short time. A great example in this direction is Airbnb, a shared accommodation company which work towards providing shared value for their clients focusing on the sustainability and corporate social responsibility aspects.
... Rifkin (2014) considers the sharing economy as a method of wealth redistribution that brings certain social benefits, and other authors see the sharing economy as an innovative system that decentralizes and disrupts existing socio-technical and economic regimes, but also a self-sustaining neoliberal challenge (Hati et al., 2021). Like most sectors where the sharing economy is gaining more and more significant percentages, tourism also has a number of negative aspects and externalities such as stimulating the excessive concentration of tourists and visitors in certain places, involving waste management problems, high carbon emissions, the deterioration of some natural sites or cultural heritage objectives, urban agglomeration, rising property costs, local animosity etc. (Cheng et al., 2020). Challenges for local and central authorities were also mentioned, through the disruption of the traditional tourism industry, taxation and discrimination, but also regulatory issues (Guttentag, 2015;Toca, 2013). ...
Globalization, the rise of the internet and the online market, as well as the expansion of mobility, have contributed to the exponential growth of tourism, and Europe can claim global supremacy when it comes to international tourism. The rate of growth in the number of tourists has accelerated over the last ten years thanks to the flexibility of travelling modalities, the openness to tourism of many countries and, last but not least, the emergence of collaborative tourism, which is a worthwhile alternative to classic tourism. The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which broke out in February 2020, has had a disastrous impact on the entire tourism industry. Due to this pandemic, domestic and international travel has been disrupted enough to have an immediate and fundamental impact on tourism and all related activities. The pandemic has changed the way people manifest themselves and paved the way for trends such as contactless technology, working from home, high standards of hygiene, domestic travel, and holidays with a small number of people. As a result, the trends already existing in the market before the outbreak of the pandemic, which were reshaping the idea of tourism, have been reinforced even more now. These include digitalization, durable and sustainable consumption, a growing demand for travel booked through platforms and, last but not least, the desire for personalized and original experiences. In this paper we aim to highlight the dimension of the Airbnb, one of the most successful sharing economy platforms, before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting in what manner the advances of the digital world have interacted with the challenges, restrictions and opportunities of the recent pandemic, economic and political crises.
... In light of the literature review, the comprehensive dependent variable total sales was computed based on the three variables listed above rather than using room price per night only (Cheng et al., 2020;Chen, Ren et al., 2022). Scholars measure rental policy based on rental conditions, as represented by the measure of minimum nights for each type of accommodation (Wang & Nicolau, 2017). ...
Although user-generated content is reported to improve Airbnb host's sales, the impact of Marketer-Generated Content (MGC) on the minimum sales generated from the reviewers who have reviewed the MGC is yet to be explored. This study examines MGC of title descriptions analysis from the City of Los Angeles listing data to understand their importance in predicting hosts' net sales. The analysis employs two complementary econometric approaches: parametric multiple regression and the non-parametric multivariate adaptive regression spline model across three neighbourhood groups and two price groups. The findings indicate hosts can employ MGC to optimize sales and should highlight feature words in the title that best reflect the property characteristics and appeal to a target group that may be location-specific, price-sensitive, or both. The title should be informative and detailed within a limit of 10 words. The novelty of the work is to identify the influence of total sales for respective feature words from the title description of Airbnb property and to analyze their uses in marketing communications. The practical implications indicate that host-generated feature words are crucial in maximizing net sales for the property. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Uber, in turn, highlighted the growing number of electric vehicles its drivers use and the reduction in emissions through shared rides and optimization of routes (Uber, 2023). Some of these claims were challenged by scholars (Cheng et al., 2020), while other academic researchers provided supporting evidence. Chen and Kockelman (2016) showed that Uber reduced single-occupancy vehicle use thus lowering CO2 emissions. ...
... Agoda) and transportation (e.g. Uber), which has helped in tourism development (Cheng et al., 2020). Travel companies like Airbnb have seen significant expansion in the current economic climate and may fundamentally alter the travel industry (Fang & Li, 2022). ...
... Ackermann et al. [20] examine consumer use of sharing economy platforms from a legitimacy perspective, exploring the impact of consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions towards the accommodation sector in the context of sharing economy. Cheng et al. [21] studied the carbon footprint of Airbnb hosts in Sydney using peer-to-peer sharing on the Airbnb platform and analyses the notion that sharing economy facilitates the utilization of underutilized resources. This study contributes to the sustainability of peer-to-peer accommodation and sharing economy more generally. ...
This work aims to provide a reliable and intelligent prediction model for future trends in sharing economy. Moreover, it presents valuable insights for decision-making and policy development by relevant governmental bodies. Furthermore, the study introduces a predictive system that incorporates an enhanced Harris Hawk Optimization (HHO) algorithm and a K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) forecasting framework. The method utilizes an improved simulated annealing mechanism and a Gaussian bare bone structure to improve the original HHO, termed SGHHO. To achieve optimal prediction performance and identify essential features, a refined simulated annealing mechanism is employed to mitigate the susceptibility of the original HHO algorithm to local optima. The algorithm employs a mechanism that boosts its global search ability by generating fresh solution sets at a specific likelihood. This mechanism dynamically adjusts the equilibrium between the exploration and exploitation phases, incorporating the Gaussian bare bone strategy. The best classification model (SGHHO-KNN) is developed to mine the key features with the improvement of both strategies. To assess the exceptional efficacy of the SGHHO algorithm, this investigation conducted a series of comparative trials employing the function set of IEEE CEC 2014. The outcomes of these experiments unequivocally demonstrate that the SGHHO algorithm outperforms the original HHO algorithm on 96.7% of the functions, substantiating its remarkable superiority. The algorithm can achieve the optimal value of the function on 67% of the tested functions and significantly outperforms other competing algorithms. In addition, the key features selected by the SGHHO-KNN model in the prediction experiment, including " Form of sharing economy in your region " and " Attitudes to the sharing economy ", are important for predicting the future trends of the sharing economy in this study. The results of the prediction demonstrate that the proposed model achieves an accuracy rate of 99.70% and a specificity rate of 99.38%. Consequently, the SGHHO-KNN model holds great potential as a reliable tool for forecasting the forthcoming trajectory of the sharing economy.
... For example, Chinese zero-COVID policy could change global GHG emissions by promoting shifts in global supply chains from China to its successors (Gao, 2022;Jiang and Green, 2017). Secondary effects are the ones that are not caused by the policies but are facilitated or induced by them (often as so-called induced impacts, Cheng et al., 2020;Raiter et al., 2014). For example, strict mask mandates require a larger quantity of input materials and energy to produce additional PPE, which in turn contributes to increased emissions from mask production (Luo et al., 2023). ...
Strict measures have curbed the spread of COVID-19, but waste generation and movement limitations have had an unintended impact on the environment over the past 3 years (2020‐–2022). Many studies have summarized the observed and potential environmental impacts associated with COVID-19, however, only a few have quantified and compared the effects of these unintended environmental impacts; moreover, whether COVID-19 policy stringency had the same effects on the main environmental topic (i.e., CO2 emissions) across the 3 years remains unclear. To answer these questions, we conducted a systematic review of the recent literature and analyzed the main findings. We found that the positive environmental effects of COVID-19 have received more attention than the negative ones (50.6 % versus 35.7 %), especially in emissions reduction (34 % of total literature). Medical waste (14.5 %) received the highest attention among the negative impacts. Although global emission reduction, especially in terms of CO2, has received significant attention, the positive impacts were temporary and only detected in 2020. Strict COVID-19 policies had a more profound and significant effect on CO2 emissions in the aviation sector than in the power and industry sectors. For example, compared with 2019, international aviation related CO2 emissions dropped by 59 %, 49 %, and 25 % in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively, while industry related ones dropped by only 3.16 % in 2020. According to our developed evaluation matrix, medical wastes and their associated effects, including the persistent pollution caused by antibiotic resistance genes, heavy metals and microplastics, are the main challenges post the pandemic, especially in China and India, which may counteract the temporary environmental benefits of COVID-19. Overall, the presented results demonstrate methods to quantify the environmental effects of COVID-19 and provide directions for policymakers to develop measures to address the associated environmental issues in the post-COVID-19 world.
... For example, Zhang et al. [18] succeeded in creating an application for determining the optimal selling price for retail products sold in E-Commerce by considering the payment model. Cheng et al. [19] also built a model for determining the selling price of Airbnb services by considering market conditions, quality, and risk sensitivity [20]. Another model developed by Allameh and Saidi-Mehrabad [21] relates to product pricing which develops the Stackelberg game for setting prices for biodiesel products that consider environmental element. ...
... However, the impacts of different categories could be different, in fact. For example, peer-to-peer online accommodation platforms appear to have low emissions [46]. Moreover, this study did not cover the energy consumption emissions related to sports facilities used for competitions and the facility where the accreditation procedure was conducted for almost the entire duration of the competitions. ...
In recent years, there has been an increase in the attention towards sustainability by the organizing committees of mega-sport events due to the potential impacts they can have. Less attention was given to small-sport events: the carbon footprint of this type of event was seldom investigated unless it had a clear impact on the environment. The purpose of this study is to provide a qualitative-quantitative assessment of the sustainability of a university sporting event held at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in 2022. Athletes, technicians, coaches, and companions from various Italian universities were interviewed with the scope being to obtain information on all of the activities associated with the sporting event (travelling, accommodation, etc.). In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with key members of the organizing committee with the goal of obtaining information relating to the actions undertaken by the Federation to safeguard the environment. The results on the sample indicate a carbon footprint of 40,551 kg of CO2e, of which 27,360 kg of CO2e are attributable to transport and 13,191 kg of CO2e are attributable to accommodations. Sporting event organizing committees should implement some strategies to encourage environmentally friendly behaviours to reduce the negative effects of their activities on the environment.
... Παρ' όλα αυτά, ορισμένες από τις εξωτερικότητες που προκαλεί η υψηλή συγκέντρωση καταλυμάτων βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης σε πυκνοκατοικημένες τουριστικές περιοχές μπορεί να λειτουργούν επιβαρυντικά για το περιβάλλον (Caldicott et al., 2020). Επιπλέον, οι ενδείξεις που παρέχονται από την πρόσφατη βιβλιογραφία σχετικά με το περιβαλλοντικό αποτύπωμα των καταλυμάτων βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης, σε όρους εκπομπών διοξειδίου του άνθρακα, είναι ότι το Βιβλιογραφικό πλαίσιο αποτύπωμα αυτό είναι σημαντικό και κυμαίνεται σε επίπεδο παρόμοιο με εκείνο των ξενοδοχείων οικονομικής κατηγορίας (Cheng et al., 2020). ...
Short-term accommodation rentals offered via online platforms represent a new and rapidly growing economic activity that has attracted significant interest, raising several issues in relation to its economic effects and the need for institutional interventions to regulate its operation. The present report focuses on the case of Greece and provides an economic analysis of recent developments and characteristics of the country’s short-term accommodation sector. As a background, the report investigates the multi-dimensional economic effects of short-stay rentals, based on a review of the insights obtained from the extensive recent literature concerning this activity. Furthermore, the report examines in detail the legislative interventions for the regulation of short-stay rentals in Greece, while also providing an overview of the relevant institutional framework and the new regulatory initiatives pursued at the level of the EU. The report utilizes recent economic data on short-term accommodation rentals in Greece and the EU. The data, which originate from official sources and include new statistics that became available for the first time in the year 2021, are employed in an original analysis focusing on the case of Greece. The analysis examines the size and evolution of short-term rentals in Greece at the national, regional, and metropolitan level, while also capturing key factors related to the supply and demand for these accommodations in the country.
... Παρ' όλα αυτά, ορισμένες από τις εξωτερικότητες που προκαλεί η υψηλή συγκέντρωση καταλυμάτων βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης σε πυκνοκατοικημένες τουριστικές περιοχές μπορεί να λειτουργούν επιβαρυντικά για το περιβάλλον (Caldicott et al., 2020). Επιπλέον, οι ενδείξεις που παρέχονται από την πρόσφατη βιβλιογραφία σχετικά με το περιβαλλοντικό αποτύπωμα των καταλυμάτων βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης, σε όρους εκπομπών διοξειδίου του άνθρακα, είναι ότι το Βιβλιογραφικό πλαίσιο αποτύπωμα αυτό είναι σημαντικό και κυμαίνεται σε επίπεδο παρόμοιο με εκείνο των ξενοδοχείων οικονομικής κατηγορίας (Cheng et al., 2020). ...
Η βραχυχρόνια μίσθωση ακινήτων μέσω ψηφιακών πλατφορμών αποτέλεσε τα τελευταία χρόνια μία καινούρια και ταχέως αναπτυσσόμενη οικονομική δραστηριότητα, η οποία συγκέντρωσε αρκετό ενδιαφέρον, εγείροντας αρκετά ζητήματα σε σχέση με τις οικονομικές της επιπτώσεις και την ανάγκη θεσμικών παρεμβάσεων για τη ρύθμιση της λειτουργίας της.
Η παρούσα έκθεση περιλαμβάνει μία οικονομική ανάλυση της εξέλιξης και των χαρακτηριστικών της βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης ακινήτων στην Ελλάδα. Βασικό υπόβαθρο για την ανάλυση αποτελεί η επισκόπηση της υπάρχουσας σύγχρονης και εκτεταμένης βιβλιογραφίας που αφορά τις πολλαπλές διαστάσεις των οικονομικών επιπτώσεων της βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης. Παράλληλα, στην εργασία εξετάζονται αναλυτικά οι νομοθετικές παρεμβάσεις για τη ρύθμιση της δραστηριότητας αυτής στην Ελλάδα, καθώς και το αντίστοιχο θεσμικό πλαίσιο και οι νέες πρωτοβουλίες σε επίπεδο E.E. Η εργασία αξιοποιεί νέα οικονομικά στοιχεία για τη δραστηριότητα της βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης στην Ελλάδα και την Ε.Ε., τα οποία προέρχονται από επίσημες πηγές και δημοσιεύτηκαν για πρώτη φορά το έτος 2021. Στην πρωτότυπη ανάλυση που διενεργείται με βάση τα στοιχεία αυτά εξετάζονται το μέγεθος και η πορεία της βραχυχρόνιας μίσθωσης στην Ελλάδα σε εθνικό και περιφερειακό επίπεδο και σε επίπεδο μεγάλων πόλεων και αποτυπώνονται βασικοί παράγοντες που σχετίζονται με την προσφορά και τη ζήτηση για τα καταλύματα αυτά στη χώρα.
... Some research goes beyond the economic framework to investigate broader psychological concepts such as "moral licensing"-where consumers feel free to consume more energy services because they have done their bit for the environment by increasing the energy efficiency of their appliances or home-again putting the focus squarely on the individual consumer. Moral licensing has also been documented in field experiments investigating consumers' behavior in response to circular economy strategies such as recycling (Ma et al., 2019;Sun & Trudel, 2017) or sharing (Briceno et al., 2004;Cheng et al., 2020;Warmington-Lundström & Laurenti, 2020). ...
Rebound effects have been historically studied through narrow framings which may overlook the complexity of sustainability challenges, sometimes leading to badly informed conclusions and policy recommendations. Here we present a critical literature review of rebound effects in the context of sustainability science in order to (1) map existing rebound research which goes beyond mainstream approaches, (2) unveil and classify current knowledge gaps in relation to sustainability science, (3) outline a research agenda, and (4) provide a knowledge base to support the design of effective policies toward sustainable development. We analyzed the literature in accordance with seven criteria for sustainable assessment: boundary orientedness, comprehensiveness, integratedness, stakeholder involvement, scalability, strategicness, and transparency. Our review identified three main issues: (1) the failure to address the multidimensionality of rebound effects, whereby both negative and positive outcomes may arise simultaneously, (2) the shift toward absolute rebound metrics which enables the contextualization of its effect with respect to science and policy goals, and (3) a general lack of attention to behavioral effects. We conclude that addressing these issues will help rebound research gain explanatory power and relevance for key decision‐makers. We envision that with better alignment with sustainability science, future rebound research could help elucidate trade‐offs in policies, including why certain strategies such as those based on the circular economy might fall short of expectations, and why achieving key goals and targets such as the sustainable development goals is so challenging. This knowledge is crucial for promoting a prioritization of actions and a concrete transition toward sustainability.
... The total CF of a guest on the Spanish coast in the 4-star hotel was 12 kg CO 2 eq./overnight stay, where diesel and natural gas consumption were responsible for 48% of the hotel's total carbon emissions. Other trendy accommodation types, such as Airbnb (a digital platform through which hosts rent out accommodation space in their homes), presented a lower CF of 7.27 kg CO 2 eq./guest per room and per night (Cheng et al., 2020). The CF from the booking service on the digital platform was 3.08 kg CO 2 eq./FU. ...
From an economic point of view, the tourism sector is one of the most important in the world with religious tourism, such as pilgrimages, being a growth area. Tourism activities also make a significant contribution to CO2 emissions (roughly 8% of the world's carbon emissions). In this framework, the main objective of this research is to develop an integrated sustainable model by assessing the impact of pilgrimages to the Camino Lebaniego (Lebaniego Way) in the Cantabrian region, which is one of the most popular routes in northern Spain. To do this, it is necessary to quantify the environmental impacts of this activity since this is a key element in establishing appropriate and effective environmental management programmes. This study uses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, focused on the Carbon Footprint (CF) impact category, to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of this activity considering ‘a pilgrim who completes the route in three days’ as the selected functional unit (FU). In addition, the sub-sectors of accommodation, food and beverages, and waste management are taken into account. Following this route generated a total of 13.69 kg CO2 eq./FU, of which accommodation and the services offered there contributed almost 71.47%, food was 17.08%, and waste management 11.45%. The evening meal and propane consumption were the hotspots in the hostel, accounting for almost 74% of the total impact, so alternatives were proposed to reduce the impacts associated with these. In terms of transport, it was found that for the same destination, it was better to use a car rather than a plane, because the associated CO2 emissions were lower. Finally, these aspects are discussed and improvement measures for reducing GHG emissions are proposed, involving the introduction of good practices and environmental commitments from the pilgrims themselves, as well as enterprises and local communities. Ecolabels and environmental certifications should become a key tool for sending this signal to the market as should the use of public transport to the destination, among other actions. Ultimately, religious and nature tourism seems to be on the upturn, and it is likely that pilgrimage routes could be the next post-COVID travel trend.
... A c c e p t e d m a n u s c r i p t 8 Despite these important findings, very few studies address the environmental impact of Airbnb on destinations. Cheng et al. (2020a) assessed Airbnb's carbon footprint in Sydney and found that the growth of Airbnb had increased the carbon footprint. They argued that a significant amount of carbon emissions generated from induced consumption such as household energy has been ignored in the current environmental sustainability discourse around Airbnb. ...
This book contains 11 chapters demonstrating the incredible complexity characterizing the relationship between peer-to-peer (P2P) loding and commmunity resilience, by considering multiple stakeholder perspectives and examining a diverse array of destination communities. The research within this book clearly shows how P2P lodging can foster resilience by helping to make communities more economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. However, the research also clearly shows how P2P lodging can itself be the external force of undesirable change against which communities may struggle to be resilient, and how P2P lodging can destabilize communities in ways that leave the communities vulnerable and less resilient to future disrupting forces. This conflicting duality highlights the complexity of the P2P lodging phenomenon, and the nuance with which one therefore must understand it. This volume will prove to be so valuable for students, academics, policy makers and community leaders looking to better understand the intersection between P2P lodging and community resilience.
... Within this context, several observers have argued that the popularity of Airbnb challenges the sustainability effort of many destinations, contradicting the initial suggestions that the sharing economy model presents a favourable route towards sustainable development (Martin, 2016;Cheng et al., 2020). Indeed, past studies point towards the increasing professionalization of the Airbnb platform (Farmaki et al., 2020), with scholars questioning whether it may even be included under the sharing economy umbrella (e.g. ...
P2P accommodation’s rapid growth has challenged the sustainability efforts of destinations, due to the numerous negative impacts accrued from the influx of tourists in residential areas. Even so, scant attention has been paid to the perceptions of local residents with regard to associated impacts. This chapter aims to examine the perceptions of the residents of Koukaki (Athens) regarding the impacts of Airbnb at the neighbourhood level, using Social Exchange Theory. Findings reveal a dominance of negative perceptions of socio-economic and environmental impacts and identify attempts from residents to mitigate associated impacts. Drawing from the literature and empirical findings, the chapter offers a framework which acknowledges the mediating role of platforms and property owners in the social exchanges between residents and guests. The chapter concludes with a discussion of implications, contributing towards the adoption of an anthropocentric and inclusive approach on P2P accommodation.
... Also, building on previous work on STRs and their sustainability (see Midgett et al., 2018;Ceptureanu et al., 2020), EC (environmental care) was found to be perceived as one of the more positive impacts derived from STR platforms in our study. Despite some early evidence of the actual impact of STRs on the environment (Cheng et al., 2020), our findings suggest that at a local level, the perceived impact of STR platforms as collaborative consumption are aligned with the view that sharing resources is a main driver to improve environmental issues. Obviously, the more intensive use of certain accommodation places could increase the total amount of litter produced and water consumption and/or reduce the enjoyment of natural resources. ...
This study explores the perceived impacts of short-term rentals (STRs) in the United Kingdom through a quantitative analysis. A 57-item questionnaire covering socio-cultural, economic, political, environmental, and technological impacts of STRs was distributed online among guests, hosts, and aware non-users. Apart from descriptive statistics, the data analysis encompassed a principal component analysis to explore the dimensionality of the perceived impacts and an ANOVA to assess differences in the community-related dimensions among the included groups. The results reveal that: a) STRs are perceived relatively ambivalently but slightly more positively than negatively; b) Environmental Care, Urban Transformation, Social Capital and Lifestyle, Housing, Infrastructure and Events, and Antisocial Behaviour and Crime are the key dimensions of perceived impact; and c) more involved stakeholder groups perceived the impacts of STRs positively. We discuss the findings in light of community resilience literature.
... Research was conducted generally on corporate sustainability practices in tourism, finding social services, economic prosperity, nature conservation and eco-efficiency the main corporate sustainability practices [58]. Several studies examined Airbnb's corporate strategies on sustainability examining various aspects [59,60]. ...
Sustainability in tourism, hospitality, and leisure is a long-standing topic of growing interest. Research in the field of tourism has accelerated over the past decade. The goal of this meta-analysis is to categorize recent research in tourism sustainability to identify patterns and trends, which could help us understand where the field is currently conducting research and where more work may be needed. Over 800 relevant articles published in major tourism journals during a three-year period (2019–2021) were included in the analysis; however, despite the increase in volume of published tourism sustainability research, this quantity was less than 4% of all publications in the same journals. Four over-arching pillars of sustainability research themes emerged (social, economic, ecological, and institutional) with numerous sub-categories within each. The majority of tourism sustainability research occurred in the social and economic arenas. Much more research is needed in the other three categories. The greater part of the recent advances in tourism sustainability appears to be driven by small- and medium-sized tourism firms. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism sustainability is only beginning to be understood. Tourism business leaders have an opportunity to strengthen and integrate their use of sustainability as they work to rebuild consumer trust in travel services.
... Rebound effect in the SE is defined as stimulating excess consumption (Cheng et al., 2020) which can be divided into three different economic responses to technological change (Greening et al., 2000;Sorrell & Dimitropoulos, 2008). First is the direct rebound effect (increased consumption of goods is due to lower consumption costs). ...
Even though academics and practitioners extensively apply the notion of the sharing economy (SE), the conceptualization and the literature construction remained disjointed and dispersed due to the lack of a rigorous attempt to understand the core concept of the SE. This concept is multidimensional, which makes its investigation essential for practitioners and academics. Based on a 15-year data set collected from the Web of Science database, our paper seeks to provide a pervasive science plot of the intellectual structure of the SE field. A bibliometric review method was used by studying documents published from 2005 to 2020, using the VOSviewer, Bibexcel, SPSS, and GunnMap2 software. Providing an overview of articles, authors, the most influential journals, and themes of research, we contribute to the literature on the SE by identifying and proposing six research groups in MDS analysis, six research clusters in HCA analysis, and future study directions. Eventually, the research acknowledges the theoretical contribution, the limits of the present study, and recommends further study directions.
... The adoption of CC has been attributed to various factors (Hamari et al., 2016;Marimon et al., 2019;Wei et al., 2021). In particular, the promise of mitigating environmental damage due to burgeoning human needs has been at the core of CC as growing concerns about climate change and yearning for social embeddedness through communities have made the proposition of CC an appealing alternative for consumers (Albinsson & Yasanthi Perera, 2012;Eckhardt et al., 2010;Cheng et al., 2020;Hossain, 2021). ...
Extant studies in collaborative consumption have theorized service quality as the distinctive perception of customers. Improved service quality can enable customers to positively influence their perception of the service and lead to continued usage in the future. In this context, our study acknowledges that service quality in collaborative consumption deserves further research. We propose that service quality in collaborative consumption can manifest across different touchpoints. We employ the SERVQUAL framework and Expectation Confirmation Theory as theoretical lenses to explore the service quality-loyalty relationship of app-based ride-sharing services. We apply mixed methods in the form of (i) semi-structured interviews, (ii) text mining and topic-modelling of app reviews, and (iii) Partial-least Squares modelling of responses collected from ride-sharing passengers. The main findings from our study are as follows. First, service quality is manifested across three touchpoints: platform, vendor, and co-sharer. Second, customer satisfaction of collaborative consumption is positively influenced by platform reliability, platform responsiveness, vendor competence, vendor empathy, and co-sharer's empathy. Third, platform assurance has the least impact on customer satisfaction. Fourth, customer satisfaction positively influences the continuance of collaborative consumption in ride-sharing services. Findings from our study contribute to the theory, practice, and future research on collaborative consumption.
... In the sharing economy, peer-to-peer platforms such as Airbnb have often been presented as a more environmentally friendly than other conventional forms of accommodation. Recent studies, however, have evaluated and challenged these assumptions, revealing the need for a broader and more consistent study of the environmental sustainability of the sharing economy (Cheng et al., 2020 on the additional footprint induced by Airbnb hosts' extra income). ...
The Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea is a well-known tourist destination, visited annually by almost 2 million tourists. Among the different types of accommodation available to visitors, Bed and Breakfast (B&B) on the Airbnb platform have become very popular. This exploratory study discusses how the human capital of some B&B lifestyle entrepreneurs affects their plans and practices of sustainability. Human capital theory (Becker, G. (1964). Human Capital. The University of Chicago Press.) is discussed by intersecting it with a sociological perspective represented by the two main Bordieuan forms of capital, namely cultural and social capital (1986 and 1992). The research is based on data collected between June 2017 and October 2020 through semi-structured interviews and field observation of fourteen rural B&B lifestyle entrepreneurs listed on Airbnb. Results show that participants’ cultural capital is high and constantly developing through the acquisition of new knowledge on sustainable measures that can be applied to their businesses. Their current social capital in Gotland, on the other hand, is still quite underdeveloped.
The entrepreneurship of private households and incumbent companies operating as hosts on the Airbnb platform plays an important role in tourism development. Despite Airbnb’s gain in importance for tourism, the literature highlights its manifold negative externalities, which impair the achievement of sustainability goals. However, the platform also contributes to sustainable rural development through facilitating the micro-entrepreneurship of, and consumption and investment by, rural dwellers through income earned on the platform. This chapter explores this link for Nordic rural regions in a two-step approach: firstly, a literature review will elaborate three research gaps in the extant literature about Airbnb, Airbnb hosts, sustainability, and rural tourism. Subsequently, and based upon this review, an exploratory case study of Nordic Airbnb hosts in three rural case regions (North Iceland, Iceland; Northern Jutland, Denmark; and Nordland, Norway) will highlight the link between Airbnb-based entrepreneurship and local consumption and investment empirically. The case study utilises a sample of 64 Airbnb hosts, gathered through phone surveys in 2022 in the selected case regions. The chapter concludes by summarising the obvious, yet underresearched link between Airbnb hosts and sustainable development in rural tourist destinations that emphasises the entrepreneurial potential and redistributive effect of hosts on the digital platform.
From the guest's point of view, shared accommodation platforms are economically convenient and offer attractive solutions in terms of price and quality. From a market perspective, shared accommodation is an innovative form of green entrepreneurship or otherwise a sustainable business model. However, the social, non-profit imension of the sharing economy seems to be under-researched. There is currently a lack of focus on the role of the community in achieving sustainable development goals when sharing accommodation, vehicles or other forms of infrastructure. To address this gap, this study posed a series of research questions and reviewed the literature with the aim of bringing societal insights to what at first glance appears to be a purely economic activity with environmental implications. According to the extant body of knowledge, sharing economy activities have both positive and negative impacts on urban sustainability, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and land use. A research framework has been developed to link the sharing economy to key sustainable development goals. Eurostat data showed that, with the exception of the pandemic years, there has been a continuous increase in the number of guest nights spent in short-stay accommodation provided by collaborative economy platforms. Systemic and stakeholder perspectives highlighted the need for a more informed decision-making process in which educational institutions can play a key role by promoting interdisciplinary research and introducing SDG-oriented curricula to foster a culture of sustainability and educate responsible citizens. Micro-entrepreneurship was highlighted as a common type of venture in the sharing economy, while social entrepreneurship was identified as a potential risk mitigating factor for vulnerable hosts. The findings of this study are useful in sorting out the strengths and weaknesses of the collaborative hosting
paradigm. The findings also showcase the positive influence of higher education institutions in the strategic planning of sustainable collaborative hosting. Furthermore, the stakeholder perspective and the synergies highlighted can encourage joint efforts between hosts, guests, investors, regulators, governments and educational institutions to achieve the SDGs relevant to collaborative hosting. Future research may enrich these insights with global data and a more detailed analysis of the SDG targets and indicators.
Keywords: collaborative hosting, accommodation sharing, sharing economy, sustainable development goals, SDG, stakeholders
The peer‐to‐peer (P2P) sharing economy, as an attractive alternative to permanent ownership, creates a triadic relationship among three groups of participants: service enablers, providers, and consumers. One of its main features is the expansion of the user's role to the roles of consumer and provider, or “prosumer.” However, in their role as prosumers, individuals may have an aversion to participating in the P2P sharing economy market due to their sense of powerlessness and lack of control, suggesting that their vulnerability needs to be considered. Despite their importance, prosumers have not received commensurate attention in the sharing economy literature. To address this gap, we examined prosumer vulnerability's impact on risk perceptions in the role of prosumer and illuminated these risks' impact on intentions to participate. The results from a U.S. survey indicate that vulnerability is a significant driver of all risk types, for both consumers and providers. Furthermore, psychological risk and security risk are found to significantly decrease intention to participate. Unexpectedly, social risk increases intention to participate among consumers and providers, while privacy and health risks are insignificant.
The digital sharing economy is commonly seen as a promising circular consumption model that could potentially deliver environmental benefits through more efficient use of existing product stocks. Yet whether sharing is indeed more environmentally benign than prevalent consumption models and what features shape platforms’ sustainability remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we conduct a systematic literature review of empirical peer reviewed and conference proceeding publications. We screen over 2200 studies and compile a dataset of over 150 empirical studies, and consolidate reported results on the environmental impacts of the sharing economy. We find that sharing is not inherently more environmentally benign and that the type of resource shared, platforms’ size, logistic operations, as well as the ways in which sharing affects users’ consumption more broadly have an impact over the environmental outcomes. Sharing goods is generally associated with better environmental outcomes compared to shared accommodations or mobility, with shared scooters and ride-hailing emerging as particularly prone to negative environmental outcomes. Contrary to previous suggestions, resource ownership structure (centralized vs. peer-to-peer) does not seem to be a good proxy for environmental performance. As sharing becomes intertwined with urban spaces and more cities become interested in facilitating sharing, we argue that research and policy should examine how platform operations and changes in consumer behavior can be optimized for sustainability, steering the sharing economy towards more environmental paths.
Multiple social and ecological crises are currently unfolding, the tackling of which requires a thorough understanding of their interlinkages and root causes. More sharing of essential resources while increasing access to valuable goods and services, especially for the most vulnerable in society, has been proposed as an effective strategy to reduce environmental and social damage. However, a more reflective approach to sharing is needed to make sure that it does not worsen some of the issues that it aims to address. In this Personal View, we outline the principles of radical sharing, which highlight the salience of environmental limits, access to essential goods and services, and non-exploitative relationships. Furthermore, we discuss key enablers and barriers to radical sharing and a more successful integration into sharing practices that prioritise needs satisfaction for all within planetary boundaries. Critical perspectives on the sharing economy need to account for the role of power, politics, capitalism, and citizenship alongside the more widely discussed issues around exploitation, discrimination, and greenwashing.
Strict measures have curbed the spread of COVID-19, but waste generation and movement limitations have had an unintended impact on the environment over the past 3 years (2020-2022). Many studies have summarized the observed and potential environmental impacts associated with COVID-19, however, only a few have quantified and compared the effects of these unintended environmental impacts; moreover, whether COVID-19 policy stringency had the same effects on the main environmental topic (i.e., CO2 emissions) across the 3 years remains unclear. To answer these questions, we conducted a systematic review of the recent literature and analyzed the main findings. We found that the positive environmental effects of COVID-19 have received more attention than the negative ones (50.6 % versus 35.7 %), especially in emissions reduction (34 % of total literature). Medical waste (14.5 %) received the highest attention among the negative impacts. Although global emission reduction, especially in terms of CO2, has received significant attention, the positive impacts were temporary and only detected in 2020. Strict COVID-19 policies had a more profound and significant effect on CO2 emissions in the aviation sector than in the power and industry sectors. For example, compared with 2019, international aviation related CO2 emissions dropped by 59 %, 49 %, and 25 % in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively, while industry related ones dropped by only 3.16 % in 2020. According to our developed evaluation matrix, medical wastes and their associated effects, including the persistent pollution caused by antibiotic resistance genes, heavy metals and microplastics, are the main challenges post the pandemic, especially in China and India, which may counteract the temporary environmental benefits of COVID-19. Overall, the presented results demonstrate methods to quantify the environmental effects of COVID-19 and provide directions for policymakers to develop measures to address the associated environmental issues in the post-COVID-19 world.
Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are both a guide for growing more sustainably and a useful tool for engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) that can boost sustainable economic models. Hence, in this paper, we shed light on how companies’ application of SDG practices affects perceived quality (PQ) and consumer loyalty based on the resource-advantage theory of competition (RAT). Exploratory analysis was used to create a scale of SDG practices, which was confirmed through confirmatory analysis. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the mediation between the constructs. Our findings indicate that PQ mediates the relationship between SDG practices and loyalty, confirming a previous result on CSR. Hence, PQ retains paramount importance; only through PQ can SDG practices affect loyalty. We also propose the theoretical foundations for conceptualizing SDG practices among ride-hailing companies and empirically demonstrate the mediation effect of PQ.
Purpose
This study aims to testify the effects of green marketing on peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation consumers’ repurchase intention and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) towards P2P accommodation platforms through the mediation of trust and consumer identification.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire survey was applied to collect data from a sample of 488 consumers in China who had used P2P accommodation platforms in the past six months. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.
Findings
The study found that consumers’ perception of green marketing orientation of P2P accommodation platforms significantly increased consumer trust in the platform and consumer identification with the platform, which in turn each positively influenced repurchase intention and positive WOM to the platform. Furthermore, consumer trust had a positive effect on consumer identification and both trust and identification mediated the relationship between green marketing and repurchase intention and that between green marketing and positive WOM.
Practical implications
The findings of this study provide P2P accommodation platform operators with important insights to apply green marketing and focus on consumer trust and identification in sustaining their business and coping with the intense market competition.
Originality/value
This study contributes to better understanding of the impact of green business practices on consumers in sharing economy and offers practical implications on sustainable P2P accommodation practices.
Peer-to-peer accommodation has recently emerged as a central focus of research intourism and hospitality. However, research on socio-cultural impacts of peer-to-peeraccommodation is fragmented. This study reviews the relevant literature on the socio-cultural impacts of peer-to-peer accommodation on host communities and proposes anintegrative framework and a working definition for goal socio-cultural impacts of peer-to-peer accommodation. This literature review contributes to knowledge of how thisbusiness paradigm affects and frames host communities and integrates the factors thatshould be explored by researchers, policymakers, and organizations to manage theimpacts of peer-to-peer accommodation on host communities.
Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humankind. The purpose of this report is to provide the first baseline carbon footprint for tourism in the Republic of Ireland - which is based on a consumption-based view and does not include outbound Irish tourists. Thus, providing Ireland's tourism policymakers, planners and stakeholders with an evidence-based approach to develop appropriate tourism decarbonisation policies and strategies. Furthermore, this report will contribute to the ongoing international discussion of the importance of tourism decarbonisation, which is imperative to achieving sustainable tourism development. Climate action must play a leading role in national tourism plans, with tourism decarbonisation being the most critical element to ensure sustainable tourism development. The next stage of this research project is to encourage further collaboration amongst tourism policymakers, planners, stakeholders, and academics to develop a stakeholder-based decarbonisation toolkit for sustainable destination management in the Republic of Ireland.
Decarbonising tourism is an immeasurable challenge but increasingly recognised as inevitable. This has prompted vast developments in theoretical models by academics and indicators by peak bodies to explore the pathways. One limitation to the pathways is the lack of emission data. This research presents a framework integrating the principles of TSA with the National Greenhouse Accounts. Tourism emissions are estimated and examined by destinations, producing industries and visitor types. The framework is applied to destinations in the State of Queensland, Australia, to illustrate the types of results and insights that can be produced for decision-makers. Mitigation policies can then be tailored to the specific context of each destination, increasing effectiveness and ability to balance economic benefits with reducing emissions.
The anthropogenic activities developed in the manufacturing and distribution of products that are carried out at greater intensity to meet the growing demand and consumption worldwide produce a more significant amount of greenhouse gases (GHG), which impacts global warming. In the same way, the problem of the scarcity of natural resources, increasingly growing, creates the need to seek better alternatives with a sustainable approach to protect the state of the planet in which we live. For this, the support of governments, companies, and even consumers is required. This chapter takes the perspective of the circular economy (CE) as an opportunity to implement sustainable methods based on the management and reduction of waste, giving them a new function. Adding the use of the carbon footprint (CF) as a tool that allows knowing the impact of anthropogenic activities on the environment is added. In addition, confirmed cases aim to reduce GHG emissions by implementing a more efficient system that originates based on the CE principles. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the scientific research related to sustainability in hospitality and tourism from 1994 to 2020 by conducting bibliometric and science mapping analyses and to discuss the implications for prospective research opportunities.
Design/methodology/approach
Keyword co-occurrences with 2,980 published papers collected from the Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index and Emerging Sources Citation Index) were used for the bibliometric-based analysis. The authors use SciMAT software which offers relevant outputs, such as research themes and graphical outputs (strategic diagrams, cluster networks and science mapping representing the temporal evolution of the themes).
Findings
The findings show that biodiversity conservation, sustainable attitudes, climate change, protected areas, satisfaction and environmental management were the focal motor-themes in the studied periods. Additionally, four areas for future investigation are identified and discussed: sustainable behavior and environmental sustainability; consumption, demand and economic growth; tourism development and strategies; and rural tourism, poverty, ethics and education.
Research limitations/implications
This analysis shows insightful results processing a high number of published documents. However, the authors recommend further research focused on qualitative literature review for each critical topic.
Originality/value
The authors are unaware of analogous, completed and recent work about sustainability in hospitality and tourism. The authors believe this article is of great value to academics and practitioners because it synthesizes and disseminates the research topic while providing an outstanding basis for identifying research opportunities.
Digital platforms promote the shared consumption of a variety of material and immaterial goods. As they grow and appeal to more consumers, the new practices and patterns of sharing can have both desirable and undesirable impacts from a sustainability point of view. The present paper takes a closer look at the various impacts of shared consumption practiced in the Digital Sharing Economy (DSE) with the aim to propose a guideline for assessing the DSE’s sustainability impacts. The guideline builds on a typology of shareable goods and a classification of different positive and negative environmental impacts of sharing. By considering different consumption scenarios (based on consumers’ behavioral responses, where applicable), the study develops a conceptual framework for the DSE’s impacts on the environment. This is also an extension of the general impact categories of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which already exist in the literature. In addition to the impact of consumption, the concepts of the impact of provision, impact of access, and impact of maintenance are introduced as the four main evaluations comprising the sustainability assessment of sharing platforms. The considerations addressed can be helpful in delineating further evaluations of the sustainability of various instances of digital sharing systems.
The environmental externalities of tourist accommodation are substantial, but their scientific appraisals have been far from holistic. Existing environmental impact assessment studies focus on hotel operations and exclude indirect material inputs and outputs due to data (un)availability. Important environmental ‘hotspots’ can be ignored in the result as these are often concealed in the diversity and complexity of a hotel's products and services. This study employs the method of environmental life cycle impact assessment to appraise the environmental externalities occurring through the life cycle of four popular comfort categories of hotels (hostel, budget, upmarket and luxury) in two countries of South America (Brazil and Peru). The appraisal is facilitated by the ecoinvent database (version 3.6, Allocation cut-off by classification) and the SimaPro software (version 9.1.1). The intra-sectoral and cross-country analysis reveals correlation of the environmental and carbon footprint with hotel comfort categories. The study finds that (1) treatment of solid waste generated in hotel operations; (2) construction of the hotel building; and (3) operational energy use; generate the largest footprints across all major impact categories. The contribution of (4) consumer goods, such as furniture, electric and electronic equipment, bathroom/sanitary fixtures and carpets, is also significant. The study advocates that these operational and non-operational material inputs and outputs should be accounted for in future environmental and carbon impact assessments of hotels. The study provides the first benchmarks of major embodied, indirect environmental and carbon impacts of hotels that can be used, with appropriate adjustments, in future research.
Airbnb, which launched its business in 2009, has experienced explosive growth by creating value through the sharing economy business model. The Airbnb business model helps property owners exploit underutilized assets. However, along with its rapid growth, controversies have arisen among many stakeholders, especially the traditional hotel industry, communities, and policymakers. This study reviews academic articles to pinpoint the factors involved in the relationships among Airbnb and its multiple stakeholders. The aim is to identify the benefits, drawbacks, and issues surrounding Airbnb. The analysis is based on the perspectives of six Airbnb stakeholders: guests, hosts, employees, communities, competitors, and policymakers. A variety of scholarly journals indexed in the Scopus database were reviewed, with 282 included in the final analysis. The analysis will be useful for academics, practitioners, and policymakers alike, as it summarizes the Airbnb relevant actors, identifies key factors that influence stakeholder behavior, and assesses the power and level of influence of each stakeholder. Ultimately, the study points to potential directions for future research on Airbnb.
Negative relationships between urban density and greenhouse gas emissions from daily travel are well established in the literature. However, recent research suggests that higher urban density is associated with higher emissions from long-distance leisure travel, such as car weekend trips and international flights. This article presents the first systematic review of empirical evidence on these associations and discusses potential explanations. A two-step article selection process yielded 27 empirical articles, complemented by one article published during the review process. When international travel is included in the analysis, the results suggest that residents of the largest cities, and particularly those from centrally located and densely built areas, travel more to cover long distances than do others, after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables. When only domestic travel is included, residents of larger settlements and areas of higher density engage in less long-distance travel for leisure purposes than those living in smaller settlements and sparsely built areas. The results of the review are indicative and warrant more research. Generalization is currently limited because of the wide variety of travel behavior measures used, consideration of different travel modes and trip purposes, and geographic scope. There is a strong need for replication of the results using consistent methodology, using data from longer and more recent time spans, and expanding to more diverse geographical settings, especially outside Europe. The systematic review is followed by a narrative review of theoretical explanations of the associations. The most common explanations include: rebound effects, the compensation hypothesis, access to transport infrastructure, urban lifestyles, sociopsychological characteristics, and social networks. Socioeconomic variables are controlled in a majority of the reviewed studies, and business travel is excluded from the review, so the concentration of wealth and business in cities may explain the findings only to some extent. Nonetheless, there is not enough empirical evidence on the causal character of the associations and therefore further qualitative and multidisciplinary work is needed. Compact city and urban densification policies are not strongly challenged by current evidence, and most common policy recommendations point to including air travel into carbon taxing or quota schemes.
In the version of this Article originally published, in the penultimate paragraph of the section “Gas species and supply chains”, in the sentence “In this assessment, the contribution of air travel emissions amounts to 20% (0.9 GtCO2e) of tourism’s global carbon footprint...” the values should have read “12% (0.55 GtCO2e)”; this error has now been corrected, and Supplementary Table 9 has been amended to clarify this change.
Not in our wildest dreams would we have imagined, a decade ago, that providers of short-term accommodation would regularly refuse to sell rooms to tourists despite having a vacancy; that thousands of tourists and residents displaced due to a cyclone or an earthquake would be offered emergency accommodation in people’s homes at no cost, with one click of a button; that tourist accommodation would compete with residential rental properties to the point of pushing residents out of their own cities; or that facilitators of online trading platforms would use their direct access to millions of people around the globe to push for societal changes, such as marriage equality. The effects of peer-to-peer accommodation networks entering the hospitality sector have surpassed our wildest dreams. Peer-to-peer accommodation networks are pushing boundaries we did not even know existed.
We develop a conceptual framework that allows us to define the sharing economy and its close cousins and we understand its sudden rise from an economic-historic perspective. We then assess the sharing economy platforms in terms of the economic, social and environmental impacts. We end with reflections on current regulations and future alternatives, and suggest a number of future research questions.
The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by tourism have been studied from several perspectives, but few studies exist that include all direct and indirect emissions, particularly those from aviation. In this study, an input/output-based hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) method is developed to assess the consumption-based carbon footprint of the average tourist including direct and indirect emissions. The total inbound tourism-related GHG emissions are also calculated within a certain region. As a demonstration of the method, the full carbon footprint of an average tourist is assessed as well as the total GHG emissions induced by tourism to Iceland over the period of 2010-2015, with the presented approach applicable in other contexts as well. Iceland provides an interesting case due to three features: (1) the tourism sector in Iceland is the fastest-growing industry in the country with an annual growth rate of over 20% over the past five years; (2) almost all tourists arrive by air; and (3) the country has an almost emissions-free energy industry and an import-dominated economy, which emphasise the role of the indirect emissions. According to the assessment, the carbon footprint for the average tourist is 1.35 tons of CO2-eq, but ranges from 1.1 to 3.2 tons of CO2-eq depending on the distance travelled by air. Furthermore, this footprint is increasing due to the rise in average flight distances travelled to reach the country. The total GHG emissions caused by tourism in Iceland have tripled from approximately 600,000 tons of CO2-eq in 2010 to 1,800,000 tons in 2015. Aviation accounts for 50%-82% of this impact (depending on the flight distance) underlining the importance of air travel, especially as tourism-related aviation is forecasted to grow significantly in the near future. From a method perspective, the carbon footprinting application presented in the study would seem to provide an efficient way to study both the direct and indirect emissions and to provide new insights and information to enable the development of appropriate GHG mitigation policies in the tourism sector..
In recent years, what has become known as collaborative consumption has undergone rapid expansion through peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms. In the field of tourism, a particularly notable example is that of Airbnb. This article analyses the spatial patterns of Airbnb in Barcelona and compares them with hotels and sightseeing spots. New sources of data, such as Airbnb listings and geolocated photographs are used. Analysis of bivariate spatial autocorrelation reveals a close spatial relationship between Airbnb and hotels, with a marked centre-periphery pattern, although Airbnb predominates around the main hotel axis and hotels predominate in some peripheral areas of the city. Another interesting finding is that Airbnb capitalises more on the advantages of proximity to the main tourist attractions of the city than does the hotel sector. Finally, it was possible to detect those parts of the city that have seen the greatest increase in pressure from tourism related to Airbnb's recent expansion.
There is growing interest in the roles of the sharing economy and grassroots innovation in the transition to sustainable societies. Grassroots innovation research has tended to assume a sharp distinction between grassroots organisations and businesses within niches of socio-technical innovation. However, the non-profit sector literature identifies a tendency for non-profit organisations to actually become more commercially-oriented over time. Seeking to account for this tendency, we develop a conceptual model of the dynamics of grassroots organisations within socio-technical niches. Using a case study of Freegle, a grassroots organisation within the sharing economy niche, we apply the conceptual model to illustrate the causes, processes and outcomes of grassroots niche organisations becoming more commercially-oriented. We show that a grassroots organisation may be subject to coercive and indirect (isomorphic) pressures to become more commercially-oriented and highlight the ambiguities of this dynamic. Furthermore, we highlight that global niche actors may exert coercive pressures that limit the enactment and propagation of the practices and values of grassroots organisations. We conclude by highlighting the need for further research exploring the desirability and feasibility of protecting grassroots organisations from pressures to become more commercially-oriented.
This paper examines the carbon footprint associated with tourism spending in a regional economy. Using an input–output framework, the method adopted permits an analysis of the carbon embodied in both domestically produced and imported goods and services consequent on tourism consumption in the region. In this way the analysis comprises a statement of environmental externalities which can be set beside a developing Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) framework and which also provides useful information on selected externalities associated with tourism consumption.
A recent paper (1) states that a cultural shift and a transformative change is needed that changes consumption patterns to reduce human pressure on the environment (the environmental footprint of humanity), keeping it within planetary boundaries. The excellent paper of Santi et al. (2) addresses one of the new forms of consumption that could help in reaching this goal. Santi et al.’s report shows the feasibility of a shareable taxi service in New York City and its benefits: reduction in cost of service, total travel time, trips, vehicular traffic congestion, and air pollution.
The public perception of shared goods has changed substantially in the past few years. While co-owning properties has been widely accepted for a while (e.g., timeshares), the notion of sharing bikes, cars, or even rides on an on-demand basis is just now starting to gain widespread popularity. The emerging "sharing economy" is particularly interesting in the context of cities that struggle with population growth and increasing density. While sharing vehicles promises to reduce inner-city traffic, congestion, and pollution problems, the associated business models are not without problems themselves. Using agency theory, in this article we discuss existing shared mobility business models in an effort to unveil the optimal relationship between service providers (agents) and the local governments (principals) to achieve the common objective of sustainable mobility. Our findings show private or public models are fraught with conflicts, and point to a merit model as the most promising alignment of the strengths of agents and principals.
SLRG and SPRG aim to document and analyse the complex links between lifestyles, consumption, everyday practices, values and the transition to sustainable ways of life. While SPRG focuses on particular consumption practices and technologies, SLRG's projects examine the lifestyles of households and communities and model the implications of consumption choices and values.
This study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement and behavioural change by UK households and explores how these effects vary with total expenditure. The methodology is based upon estimates of the expenditure elasticity and GHG intensity of 16 categories of goods and services, and allows for the capital cost and embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves. The study finds that rebound effects, in GHG terms, are modest (0–32%) for measures affecting domestic energy use, larger (25–65%) for measures affecting vehicle fuel use and very large (66–106%) for measures that reduce food waste. Furthermore, measures undertaken by low income households are associated with the largest rebound effects, with direct emissions forming a larger proportion of the total rebound effect for those households. Measures that are subsidised or affect highly taxed energy commodities may be less effective in reducing aggregate emissions. These findings highlight the importance of allowing for rebound effects within policy appraisals, as well as reinforcing the case for economy-wide carbon pricing.
Purpose
Worldwide, many carbon audit guidelines have been developed, but comparative reviews of these guidelines and empirical findings of carbon emissions from hotels remain limited. The aim of the study reported here was to bridge these knowledge gaps.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparative review of the legislations and guidelines for carbon audits in Australia, the UK and Hong Kong was made. An empirical audit, which entailed a series of site visits and interviews for collecting the record data of a typical hotel in Hong Kong, was conducted to identify the sources and amounts of carbon emissions from the hotel.
Findings
Conducting carbon audits for buildings in Hong Kong is entirely voluntary. Reporting of certain scopes of carbon emissions is at the sole discretion of the reporting party. Purchased electricity for the hotel is the dominant source of carbon emissions.
Research implications
Audits in future may follow the reported audit process to identify carbon emissions from other hotels to enlarge the pool of empirical findings, which is a prerequisite to developing carbon emission benchmarks and carbon footprint analyses.
Practical implications
The suggestions made for overcoming the obstacles found from the audit are crucial for performing smoother and more complete audits in future.
Originality/value
The review findings and the practical problems identified are useful information for the stakeholders of carbon audits, including policy makers and facilities management practitioners.
A growing body of literature discusses the CO2 emissions of cities. Still, little is known about emission patterns across density gradients from remote rural places to highly urbanized areas, the drivers behind those emission patterns and the global emissions triggered by consumption in human settlements—referred to here as the carbon footprint. In this letter we use a hybrid method for estimating the carbon footprints of cities and other human settlements in the UK explicitly linking global supply chains to local consumption activities and associated lifestyles. This analysis comprises all areas in the UK, whether rural or urban. We compare our consumption-based results with extended territorial CO2 emission estimates and analyse the driving forces that determine the carbon footprint of human settlements in the UK. Our results show that 90% of the human settlements in the UK are net importers of CO2 emissions. Consumption-based CO2 emissions are much more homogeneous than extended territorial emissions. Both the highest and lowest carbon footprints can be found in urban areas, but the carbon footprint is consistently higher relative to extended territorial CO2 emissions in urban as opposed to rural settlement types. The impact of high or low density living remains limited; instead, carbon footprints can be comparatively high or low across density gradients depending on the location-specific socio-demographic, infrastructural and geographic characteristics of the area under consideration. We show that the carbon footprint of cities and other human settlements in the UK is mainly determined by socio-economic rather than geographic and infrastructural drivers at the spatial aggregation of our analysis. It increases with growing income, education and car ownership as well as decreasing household size. Income is not more important than most other socio-economic determinants of the carbon footprint. Possibly, the relationship between lifestyles and infrastructure only impacts carbon footprints significantly at higher spatial granularity.
This study discusses the potential for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to be utilized for the environmental assessment of tourism accommodation facilities, and their contribution to global carbon footprint. To demonstrate the viability of employing LCA in the hotel sector, its simplified derivative, Life Cycle Energy Analysis (LCEA), is applied to two tourism accommodation facilities in Poole, Dorset (UK) to quantify their CO2 emissions. The results indicate that the reviewed hotels are less energy and carbon-intense than the tourism accommodation establishments reported in the literature. This may indirectly imply the continuous progress of hotel’s energy efficiency over time. The implications of the current energy use practices in the reviewed hotels are discussed and suggestions are made on how to further improve the energy performance and therefore cut the carbon footprint. Recommendations for hotel management and policy-making are developed to reduce the energy and carbon intensity of the hotel industry. A method for energy and carbon footprint analysis of outsourced laundries and breakfast services is also proposed.
This paper explores the issues in estimating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the tourism industry and related activity in Australia. The scope of tourism consists of the economic activities defined as “tourism characteristic” and “tourism connected” as defined in the Australian Tourism Satellite Account (TSA). Two approaches are employed and contrasted – a “production approach” and an “expenditure approach”. Depending on the approach, tourism contributes between 3.9% and 5.3% of total industry GHG in Australia. The rationale for each approach is explained. The GHG emissions have been estimated for 2003–2004, the latest year for which detailed industry GHG emissions data are available in a form suitable for this type of analysis. Tourism's GHG emissions are compared with other industries in the Australian economy. The policy implications of the results are discussed. It should be possible to adopt a broadly similar method for any destination with TSA – enabling tourism stakeholders to play an informed role in assessing appropriate and effective climate change mitigation strategies for their destination.
The term 'carbon footprint' has become tremendously popular over the last few years and is now in widespread use across the media – at least in the United Kingdom. With climate change high up on the political and corporate agenda, carbon footprint calculations are in demand. Numerous approaches have been proposed to provide estimates, ranging from basic online calculators to sophisticated life-cycle-analysis or input-output based methods and tools. Despite its ubiquitous use however, there is an apparent lack of academic definitions of what exactly a 'carbon footprint' is meant to be. The scientific literature is surprisingly void of clarifications, despite the fact that countless studies in energy and ecological economics that could have claimed to measure a 'carbon footprint' have been published over decades. This commentary explores the apparent discrepancy between public and academic use of the term 'carbon footprint' and suggests a scientific definition based on commonly accepted accounting principles and modelling approaches. It addresses methodological questions such as system boundaries, completeness, comprehensiveness, units, and robustness of the indicator.
Carsharing has grown considerably in North America during the past decade and has flourished in metropolitan regions across the United States and Canada. The new transportation landscape offers urban residents an alternative to automobility, one without car ownership. As carsharing has expanded, there has been a growing demand to understand its environmental effects. This paper presents the results of a North American carsharing member survey (N = 6,281). A before-and-after analytical design is established with a focus on carsharing's effects on household vehicle holdings and the aggregate vehicle population. The results show that carsharing members reduce their vehicle holdings to a degree that is statistically significant. The average number of vehicles per household of the sample drops from 0.47 to 0.24. Most of this shift constitutes onecar households becoming carless. The average fuel economy of carsharing vehicles used most often by respondents is 10 mi/gal more efficient than the average vehicle shed by respondents. The median age of vehicles shed by carsharing households is 11 years, but the distribution covers a considerable range. An aggregate analysis suggests that carsharing has taken between 90,000 and 130,000 vehicles off the road. This equates to 9 to 13 vehicles (including shed autos and postponed auto purchases) taken off the road for each carsharing vehicle.
This review article (1) creates a knowledge map reflecting key areas of academic insight into the phenomenon of paid online peer-to-peer accommodation, (2) synthesizes these insights, and (3) points to regions on the knowledge map which require our attention in the future. This article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on peer-to-peer accommodation networks, which contains past and hot off the press work on the topic and will continue to grow as new articles on the topic appear in Annals
Environmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) supports environmental policy by quantifying how demand for goods and services leads to resource use and emissions across the economy. However, some types of resource use and emissions require spatially-explicit impact assessment for meaningful interpretation, which is not possible in conventional EEIOA. For example, water use in locations of scarcity and abundance is not environmentally equivalent. Opportunities for spatially-explicit impact assessment in conventional EEIOA are limited because official input-output tables tend to be produced at the scale of political units which are not usually well aligned with environmentally relevant spatial units. In this study, spatially-explicit water scarcity factors and a spatially disaggregated Australian water use account were used to develop water scarcity extensions that were coupled with a multi-regional input-output model (MRIO). The results link demand for agricultural commodities to the problem of water scarcity in Australia and globally. Important differences were observed between the water use and water scarcity footprint results, as well as the relative importance of direct and indirect water use, with significant implications for sustainable production and consumption-related policies. The approach presented here is suggested as a feasible general approach for incorporating spatially-explicit impact assessment in EEIOA.
This study investigates the attributes that influence Airbnb users’ experiences by analysing a “big data” set of online review comments through the process of text mining and sentiment analysis. Findings reveal that Airbnb users tend to evaluate their experience based on a frame of reference derived from past hotel stays. Three key attributes identified in the data include ‘location’, ‘amenities’ and ‘host’. Surprisingly, ‘price’ is not identified as
a key influencer. The analysis suggests a positivity bias in Airbnb users’ comments while negative sentiments are mostly caused by ‘noise’. This research offers an alternative approach and more coherent understanding of the Airbnb experience. Methodologically, it contributes by illustrating how big data can be used and visually interpreted
in tourism and hospitality studies.
City carbon footprints have become an important tool for monitoring the progress of cities towards lowering their greenhouse gas emissions and contribution to climate change. Cities usually source a major part of their natural resource demand from their local, national and global hinterland, and cause emissions across the whole global supply chain of a city's final demand. It is important that the data underlying carbon footprint assessments of cities capture these supply chains adequately and comprehensively. In this research, we determine the carbon footprints of four Chinese cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin based on different levels of data availability. Using these case studies, we show conclusively that city carbon footprint analyses must include input-output databases and associated calculus in order to avoid severe errors that arise from unacceptable scope limitations caused by the truncation of the footprint assessment boundary. We also show that city input-output databases must fulfil a number of requirements for city comparisons and for informed decision-making to be feasible. Our findings suggest that investment into multi-layered national input-output tables and datasets will be necessary to monitor progress of cities reducing their greenhouse emissions across the whole supply chain and to inform evidence based policy making that guides greenhouse abatement.
Suburbs have naturally become a focal point of carbon mitigation for cities undergoing rapid suburbanization. This has created a debate over which urban form can more effectively lead to lower household carbon footprints (CF). Previous suburban-scale studies using economic input-output life cycle assessment with national average carbon intensities have demonstrated the mitigation potentials in households via urban planning. However, there is a need for suburban-scale multiregional input-output (MRIO) tables to model suburb-specific carbon intensities and thus to account for the heterogeneity of both production and consumption in different suburbs. This study explores the case of Sydney, Australia, and its many suburbs. The CF of households is broken down into 111 sectors and 248 spatial divisions of Greater Sydney by employing a suburban-scale MRIO model. The impact of domestic and overseas migration on household CFs is modelled during 2009–2010, and the CFs are allocated to different ethnic groups. The results suggest that residents in the densely populated city core have a comparable CF to residents living in outer city suburbs, thus contradicting previous studies supporting the notion that densely populated inner-city areas yield relatively lower CFs. The rapid growth of population increases household CFs in inner western suburbs. According to the study findings, the ongoing Sydney metropolitan development plan may therefore not be sufficient to provide a sustainable carbon emissions reduction strategy, if suburb density is increased without any constraints on resident consumption patterns. Urban planners need to consider policies to direct the investment brought by immigration towards a lower-carbon economy and infrastructure and also may take advantage of the sharing economy to change consumption behaviour.
Using the sharing economy (SE) as the context, this article provides a coherent and nuanced methodological understanding of automated content analysis (ACA) in tourism and hospitality (TH) field. By adopting a comparative automated content analysis approach, the paper compares the current TH Western academic literature of the SE with news media discourse in tourism and hospitality from the period 2011-2016 (August) (inclusive). The emerging issues from the news media discourse, such as mobility, SE companies and the role of government are absent in current tourism academic research. Findings reveal that ACA can facilitate a more systematic comparison between different sources of data. This paper offers a starting point for tourism scholars to methodologically engage with ACA that can draw useful insights on a particular context.
For social analysts, what has come to be called the “sharing economy” raises important questions. After a discussion of history and definitions, we focus on 3 areas of research in the for-profit segment, also called the platform economy: social connection, conditions for laborers, and inequalities. Although we find that some parts of the platform economy, particularly Airbnb, do foster social connection, there are also ways in which even shared hospitality is becoming more like conventional exchange. With respect to labor conditions, we find they vary across platforms and the degree to which workers are dependent on the platform to meet their basic needs. On inequality, there is mounting evidence that platforms are facilitating person-to-person discrimination by race. In addition, platforms are advantaging those who already have human capital or physical assets, in contrast to claims that they provide widespread opportunity or even advantage less privileged individuals.
The Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab) is a collaborative cloud-computing platform for compiling large-scale, high-resolution, enviro-socio-economic accounts based on multi-region input–output tables and for conducting integrated sustainability assessment projects. These include, for example, assessments of biofuels and low-carbon construction materials or high-resolution waste modelling. This contribution provides a structured review of IELab applications that were published in either peer-reviewed journal papers or in the form of conference proceedings. The main research question posed is ‘What are the specific features of IELab that were used in the research and could the research have happened without them?’ It is investigated whether the IELab has actually and truly enabled new research. A detailed analysis of IELab characteristics and their usage is presented. The results can help with the design of new research projects and inform existing and prospective users of the IELab about the options for academic research and practical applications.
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The online accommodation platform Airbnb has expanded globally, raising substantial planning and regulatory concerns. We ask whether Airbnb rentals generate significant neighborhood impacts like noise, congestion, and competition for parking; reduce the permanent rental housing supply and increase rental prices; or provide income opportunities that help “hosts” afford their own housing. We focus on Sydney, the largest region in Australia with 4.4 million people in 28 individual municipalities, which has experienced both rapidly rising housing costs and exponential growth in Airbnb listings since 2011. Airbnb’s growth has raised concerns serious enough to result in a formal Parliamentary Inquiry by the state of New South Wales. We analyze stakeholder submissions to this inquiry and review local planning regulations, Airbnb listings data, and housing market and census statistics. We find that online homesharing platforms for visitor accommodations blur traditional boundaries between residential and tourist areas so Airbnb listings may fall outside of existing land use regulations or evade detection until neighbors complain. Our findings are constrained by the difficulties of monitoring online operations and the rapid changes in the industry.
Takeaway for practice: Planners and policymakers in cities with increasing numbers of Airbnb rentals need to review how well local planning controls manage the neighborhood nuisances, traffic, and parking problems that may be associated with them while acting to protect the permanent rental housing supply. Local planners need to ensure that zoning and residential development controls distinguish between different forms of short-term Airbnb accommodation listings and their potential impacts on neighborhoods and housing markets.
Households’ carbon footprints are unequally distributed among the rich and poor due to differences in the scale and patterns of consumption. We present distributional focused carbon footprints for Chinese households and use a carbon-footprint-Gini coeffcient to quantify inequalities. We find that in 2012 the urban very rich, comprising 5% of population, induced 19% of the total carbon footprint from household onsumption in China, with 6.4 tCO2/cap. The average Chinese household footprint remains comparatively low (1.7 tCO2/cap), while those of the rural population and urban poor, comprising 58% of population, are 0.5–1.6 tCO2/cap. Between 2007 and 2012 the total footprint from households increased by 19%, with 75% of the increase due to growing consumption of the urban middle class and the rich. This suggests that a transformation of Chinese lifestyles away from the current trajectory of carbon-intensive consumption patterns requires policy interventions to improve living standards and encourage sustainable consumption.
The sharing economy, a rising pattern in consumption behavior that is based on accessing and reusing products to utilize idle capacity, presents both tremendous possibilities and significant threats for emerging as well as incumbent businesses. As of today, it is unclear whether this economy is merely another ephemeral trend in consumption or whether we are experiencing a real shift in how goods are accessed, distributed, and used. Furthermore, little is known about how existing business models are affected by the sharing economy. These two issues represent the central motivation for the development of this article. Consequently, an examination of why the sharing economy has the potential to produce a long-term transformation in consumption behavior is followed by a consideration of how this change might affect companies’ business models. Based on a renowned business model framework and a variety of current illustrative examples, we propose central questions managers must ask themselves in order to be prepared to respond to changes brought about by this new economic trend.
If you would like a copy of the article for your personal use, please email me: mingming.cheng@otago.ac.nz
This paper provides an objective, systematic and holistic review of the sharing economy (SE) academic literature to uncover the theoretical foundations and key themes underlying the field by using co-citation analysis and content analysis. Sixty-six publications on sharing economy with ten papers related to tourism and hospitality from 2010 to 2015 (inclusive) have been identified. This paper revealed three broad areas of foci with sharing economy research in general: (1) SE's business models and its impacts, (2) nature of SE, and (3) SE's sustainability development as well as two areas of foci in tourism and hospitality specifically: (1) SE's impacts on destinations and tourism services (2) SE's impacts on tourists. The sharing economy has a strong intellectual tradition from lifestyle and social movement field, consumption practice and sharing paradigm. This paper presents a more robust framework and holistic understanding of the sharing economy field and calls for a new theory-informed research agenda on sharing economy to coalesce multi-level perspectives.
