讲座时间：4月28日9:00-11:30

讲座地点：科学园2H425

讲座主题：Resource Partitioning in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from Airbnb Service Provider Concentration and Local Income Inequality

讲座嘉宾简介

Angela Lu (卢清涟) is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems at the City University of Hong Kong. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University, specializing in computational social sciences and organizational research. Her current research focuses on two streams: one on platform-enabled phenomena, including the sharing economy and its societal implications through service concentration, market inequality, community resilience, and the spillover effects from minority-led social movements. The other stream examines IT career dynamics in volatile markets. Dr. Lu's prior research in sociology examined the impact of social movements, transnational recessions, and political networks, and some papers were published in top journals, including the American Journal of Sociology and American Sociological Review. Her research on the digital sharing economy appeared in Production and Operations Management (UTD). Her IS conference publications were featured as the Best Track Paper Award at ICIS 2022 and the Best Student Paper Award at ICIS 2023.

讲座摘要

Service providers are at the heart of sharing economy business models and their composition has significant consequences on the nature of products and services available, and the competitive dynamics on the platform. This paper examines two seemingly contradictory phenomena of increased professional service provider (PSP) concentration and rapid growth of non-professional service providers (NPSPs) on sharing economy platforms. PSPs, characterized by large amounts of excess assets and standardized business practices, have become a dominant force on sharing economy platforms recently. Despite the scale and other advantages that these service providers enjoy, NPSPs continue to join sharing economy platforms in large numbers, and thus the sizeable growth of these platforms is not attributed to PSPs alone. Using the resource partitioning theory (RPT) from the organizational literature, we explain how the two contradictory phenomena of PSP concentration and NPSP growth are inherently related. We further emphasize the role of income inequality which moderates the impacts of resource partitioning on the growth, exit, and performance of PSPs and NPSPs. The empirical analysis uses 1.4 million zip-code level Airbnb data from October 2014 to December 2019 at monthly intervals, with a Bartik-style instrument and Airbnb Plus entry employed for effect identification. Findings reveal that PSP concentration facilitates the growth of NPSPs but reduces their performance, and these effects are significantly moderated by income inequality. Theoretical, practical, and platform design implications are discussed in light of the findings.