Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

in these markets, eWOM plays a crucial role in transacting and pricing. With the obvious security risks of lodging with strangers come the relationship and communitarian benefits of cultural and social embedding. Grounding themselves in the signaling and trust-transfer theories, the authors deploy machine leaning and economic analysis, using the data from a major platform. As the researchers discover, platform-based eWOM plays a more significant role in the customers’ decision making than do the listing-based reviews. Their results allow the authors to offer granular recommendations to all the stakeholders in the accommodation-sharing markets. Taken together with the preceding article, we have a significant contribu-tion to platform-based mechanism design.