Customer misbehavior and service providers’ risk perception in the sharing economy

Abstract

Sharing economy (SE) service providers (e.g., home-sharing hosts) are regularly faced with customer misbehavior, either directly via their own experiences or indirectly via the experiences of other providers. In our study, we demonstrate that this increases providers’ perceived risk and, ultimately, their intention to quit sharing. Based on a comprehensive framework, we identify several boundary conditions for providers’ risk processing. We tested our model utilizing a sample of 1,312 owners of European holiday homes. Regarding sharing platforms’ management, our results offer insights for reducing provider turnover by selectively encouraging providers to share experiences with each other and by increasing service providers’ enjoyment in sharing. We performed an additional multigroup analysis to examine the role of providers’ places of residence, which reveals important differences. For example, it appears that risk-related information acquired in face-to-face interactions has a greater impact on perceived risk than information from indirect exchanges (e.g., online forums).