Abstract
The home-sharing business brings significant societal transformation through digitization and crowdsourcing business models. However, with the rising concern of the digital divide and inequality, it is uncertain whether areas with different Internet access and economic status encounter comparable impacts. We investigate the mixed effect of the home-sharing business on the industrial and social development of urban and rural areas with a unique dataset and staggered difference-in-differences estimations. Our empirical results suggest that the home-sharing business potentially alleviates the inequality between urban and rural areas regarding the tourism and real estate industries, with more favorable influences for the tourism revenue and housing affordability in rural areas. However, it temporarily increases the inequality in social benefits by increasing the household income of the urban population. These intricate findings provide managerial and policy insights for the home-sharing business's balanced impact and sustainable growth in urban and rural areas.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101152 |
| Journal | Electronic Commerce Research and Applications |
| Volume | 53 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2022 |
Keywords
- Difference-in-differences
- Digital divide
- Home-sharing platform
- Industrial development
- Inequality
- Sharing economy
- Social development