Releasing happiness: Influencing factors and configuration paths of shared accommodation customers’ positive emotions

Abstract

Despite the importance of positive emotions to positive customer behavior in shared accommodations, current research still lacks an adequate understanding of the complex process involved in generating positive emotions, making it difficult to grasp market dynamics and conduct customer management. Therefore, this study aims to explore antecedents of customers' positive emotions and their configuration paths by conducting grounded theory and fsQCA (fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis). The results show that service, social, information, and functional factors, authenticity, and hedonic value are the core factors influencing customers' positive emotions, while accommodation safety and price value are auxiliary factors. Furthermore, three driving models of positive emotions are identified: “high-quality shared service type”, “host-dominated featured hedonic type”, and “information-experience congruence type”. It reveals complex antecedents of customer’ positive emotions and their synergistic driving mechanisms from a systematic perspective. Importantly, the findings provide diversified strategies to maintain positive shared accommodation customer relations.