The Economy of Internet-Based Hospitality Exchange

TL;DR

This paper compares two non-profit internet hospitality exchanges, analyzing user effort and behavior to understand how altruism influences platform development and user interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to quantify user effort in online hospitality exchanges and examines how individual strategies affect overall platform growth.

Findings

Effort is measured in communication time units.

User behavior impacts platform development.

Altruism facilitates real-life interactions.

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze and compare general development and individual behavior on two non-profit internet-based hospitality exchange services -- bewelcome.org and warmshowers.org. We measure the effort needed to achieve a real-life interaction, whereby the advantages of mutual altruism arise. The effort needed is the communication quantified in units of time. Since the amount of effort is not obvious to individual users, the development of the effort investing strategy is investigated. The impact of individual behavior on general development is discussed.