To see and then to believe: how image affect tenant decision-making and satisfaction on short-term rental platform

Abstract

Home sharing is a new industry that was born with the development of sharing economy. The online short-term rental platform is an important carrier for home sharing. On the short-term rental platform, house images are an essential way to display the overall situation of the house, and one of the main channels for tenants to obtain house information. This paper studies the relationship between house images' colors and contents and tenant booking decision-making and satisfaction. By utilizing image mining techniques on the data obtained from a popular short-term rental platform in China, this research reveals that the color richness of house images has a significant negative relationship with both tenant booking decision-making and tenant satisfaction. What's more, both household and leisure content displayed in house images has significant positive relationships with tenant booking decision-making. Our work supplements the research on the impact of house images on home sharing and provides meaningful guidance for both the short-term rental platforms and the landlords.