Gender Discrimination on Airbnb: the Effect of Host Ethnicity

Abstract

Although discrimination is prohibited on the housing market, it was found that Airbnb’s current design choices facilitate discrimination against renters. This research aimed to find out to what extent gender and ethnicity of guests influence the extent to which they are trusted and thus accepted by hosts. Using data by Edelman, Luca & Svirsky (2017), multiple analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. We theorised that female guests get approved more often than males, due to the fact that they have more favourable stereotypes ascribed to them. The results showed that there is indeed proof for gender discrimination on Airbnb. Moreover we theorised that this gender preference would be bigger when the host and potential guest do not share the same ethnicity, however this hypothesis was not supported.