Toward Sustainable Couchsurfing: A Comparative Study on Hosting Motives and Behaviors between the USA and China

Dequn Shi () and Takkee Hui
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Dequn Shi: Department of Event Plannning & Management, Finance and Business School, Guangdong Vocational Institute of Public Administration, Guangzhou 510545, China
Takkee Hui: Department of Analytics & Operations, Business School, National University of Singapore, 15 Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore 119245, Singapore

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-14

Abstract: Couchsurfing has become a global phenomenon, and its sustainable development highly depends on hosts and their behavioral choice. However, there was seldom discussion on hosts’ motives and behaviors. This study aimed to identify the dimensions of motives and behaviors among CS hosts and explored the cultural differences between the US and Chinese hosts from the perspective of altruism. A total of 462 questionnaires (246 Americans and 216 Chinese) were collected from multiple sources. The findings reveal that CS hosts have definite altruistic motivations, namely relaxation and pleasure, socialization, knowledge enhancement, and escape, which are reflected in behaviors through hospitality, close interaction, daily life involvement, and trust establishment. CS should be a win-win situation both to the hosts and surfers in a nonmonetary way. Hosts are heterogeneous groups with significant cross-cultural differences between the US and Chinese samples.

Keywords: couchsurfing (CS); host; reciprocal altruism; cross-cultural difference; motive; behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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