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1. Introduction
The sharing economy plays a significant role in the hospitality and tourism industry. It has the characteristics of platformization, being widely distributed, openness and high efficiency, which significantly improve resource allocation efficiency in hospitality and tourism. Peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation bookings have been booming in recent years. The rise of the sharing economy reshaped the traditional business model and consumer behavior (Ye et al., 2020).
However, the rapid spread of COVID-19 caused severe social, psychological and economic losses worldwide (Xu et al., 2021), especially in hospitality and tourism. COVID-19 triggered perceptions of infection risk, which generated negative emotions such as fear and anxiety and directly affected travel intentions and decision-making (Hu, 2021). COVID-19 influenced the P2P accommodation industry particularly negatively (Zhang et al., 2021).
During the pandemic, decision-making was influenced by complex and multiple factors, such as destination environments and people’s preferences (Jang et al., 2021). COVID-19 influenced people’s choices of where to visit during trips. For example, choices of accommodation types were influenced by physical distance (Bresciani et al., 2021), which significantly impacted P2P accommodation services. The pandemic also had a considerable impact on psychological perceptions and behavioral activities. Perceptions of risk and safety increased compared to pre-COVID-19 levels, influencing preferences and destination selection (Jang et al., 2021). Therefore, this research explored the distinctions in guest perceptions of P2P accommodation experiences before and after COVID-19.
The research addressed the following questions:
After the outbreak of COVID-19, did tourist perceptions of P2P accommodation experiences change? If yes, in what ways?
What were the perceived differences before and after the pandemic?
2. Literature review and theory development
2.1 Impact of COVID-19 on peer-to-peer accommodations
The sharing economy is increasingly attracting the attention of scholars and industry practitioners (Bresciani et al., 2021). As an important growth point of the sharing economy, P2P accommodation has become a widely discussed topic (Hesse and Raya Vílchez, 2021). In the past decade, it has grown tremendously in the hospitality and tourism industry. P2P accommodation is defined as “the space suitable for overnight stays sold by a non-commercial provider (host) to an end-user (guest) for short-term use through direct interaction between host and guest” (Dolnicar, 2019). The host–guest interaction and sense of...