Racial Discrimination on Airbnb: The Role of Platform Design

Synopsis

The case emphasizes the vital role played by trust among guests and hosts in the platform's success. Airbnb's co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky is quoted explaining, "Access is built on trust, and trust is built on transparency. When you remove anonymity, it brings out the best in people. We believe anonymity has no place in the future of Airbnb or the sharing economy." However, in the spring of 2016, growing evidence of widespread racial discrimination on the platform put Airbnb at risk of losing users' trust. Chesky was faced with the challenge of reducing discrimination on the Airbnb platform while maintaining an environment of trust. Students are presented with background and historical information about Airbnb that emphasizes the company's platform design choices and focus on designing for trust. Students are then presented with experimental research results providing initial evidence of systematic racial discrimination on the platform and showing that guests with distinctively African-American names are accepted roughly 16% less often than those with distinctively white names (from a base acceptance rate of about 50%). The case study goes on to detail responses to the publication of this research, which included media scrutiny, anger expressed on social media and elsewhere, and pressure from The Congressional Black Caucus of the United States Congress. Students are then given the opportunity to explore the experimental approach employed by Airbnb managers, as well as how experimental data helped determine that discrimination was present on the platform. The case presents students an opportunity to think about whether and how experimental data can be used to help Chesky and Airbnb address discrimination and maintain trust on the platform. Students also explore how platform design choices can result in unintended consequences, how experimental design choices can create blind spots, and the importance of mapping to management decisions when designing experiments.

Copyright:

2020

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Publisher:

Harvard Business Publishing

Date of Addition:

06/01/21

Copyrighted By:

HBS

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Business and Finance

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.