Abstract
Using data from 16,144 peer-to-peer properties in London, we study the impact of the two components of user-generated content – rating and sentiment – on occupancy rate. Our methodology is innovative because, firstly, we control for price variation when estimating these review-occupancy effects and secondly, we estimate interaction and curvilinear effects. We find that sentiment and rating have significant positive effects on occupancy rate; there is some evidence that sentiment and rating interact, one reinforcing the other; for a typical property among those analysed, an outstanding review increases occupancy by a fifth in relative terms. Thus, we interpret these associations as evidence that rating and sentiment signal value, and we estimate the strength of the signal in the peer-to-peer accommodation sector.
| Original language | English |
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| Journal | Journal of Vacation Marketing |
| Early online date | 28 Sept 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 28 Sept 2023 |
Bibliographical note
© The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Request permissions for this article.
Keywords
- Accommodation
- occupancy rate
- peer-to-peer
- rating
- sentiment
- signalling theory