Attracted to or Locked In? Explaining Consumer Loyalty toward Airbnb

Byoungsoo Kim and Daekil Kim
Additional contact information
Byoungsoo Kim: School of Business, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehakro, Gyeongsansi 38541, Korea
Daekil Kim: School of Communications and Media, Seoul Women’s University, 621 Hwarangro, Nowon-Gu, Seoul 01797, Korea

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: In an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, understanding the fundamental mechanisms of customer loyalty toward Airbnb has become very appealing to both researchers and providers in recent years. Most prior studies on Airbnb have focused mainly on dedication-based mechanisms, such as consumer satisfaction or attitude. However, little is currently known about how the theoretical view for adapting dedication-based and constraint-based mechanisms establishes Airbnb consumer loyalty and affects by attributes, such as authentic experience, trust in Airbnb, and social benefits—that is, the vital predictors of affective commitment. It explores social benefits, relative attractiveness, and price fairness as the key antecedents of calculative commitment. This study identifies the relationship using a structural equation modeling method and empirical data collected from 156 Airbnb consumers who use it more than twice. The analysis results show that consumer loyalty toward Airbnb is shaped by dedication- and constraint-based mechanisms. The findings indicate that both affective and calculative commitments significantly affect customer loyalty in the context of Airbnb. Authentic experience, trust in Airbnb, and social benefits significantly affect affective commitment to Airbnb. While both social benefits and relative attractiveness play an important role in enhancing calculative commitment to Airbnb, price fairness is not significantly related to it. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are subsequently discussed.

Keywords: airbnb; dedication-based mechanism; calculative-based mechanism; affective commitment; calculative commitment; authentic experience; social benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/7/2814/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/7/2814/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:7:p:2814-:d:340337

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().