Micro-Foundations of Platform Ecosystems

Abstract

The popularity of digital platform ecosystems has soared due, at least in part, to how they empower individual complementors to interact and transact with each other. Many studies investigate their performance based on macro-platform and firm-level characteristics, but, little attention has been paid to the effects of complementors’ individual characteristics on their performance. Collecting a large-scale Airbnb hospitality dataset, we investigate the performance implications of host gender, social responsibility, and neighborhood racial diversity. We find that female gender is negatively associated, but complementor social responsibility and neighborhood racial diversity are positively associated with complementor performance. Our results also indicate that complementor social responsibility strengthens, while neighborhood racial diversity weakens, the negative effects of female gender on complementor performance.