Is the Sharing Economy About Sharing at All? A Linguistic Analysis of Airbnb Reviews.

The sharing economy manifesto emphasises sharing underusedresources as a means to build stronger communities.This manifesto has however received strong critiques thatclaim these markets are all about access as opposed to sharing,and that consumers are after utilitarian, as opposed tosocial, value. Being able to assess whether an economy isabout access or sharing has important implications for howcompanies operate, and compete, in this space. To help shedlight onto this, we perform a linguistic analysis of the reviewsthat peers in sharing economy markets leave to one another.We take the case of Airbnb as an example, and U.S. in particular,and identify the main themes that peers discuss intheir reviews. Our findings reveal that utilitarian values (e.g.,properties’ facilities, convenience of location, business conduct)are discussed much more frequently than social values(e.g., guest/host interactions) and that this gap substantiallyincreases over time.