Double blades: does a sharing platform benefit from integration to a popular OTA platform?

ABSTRACT With the rapid development of sharing economy, meal-sharing platforms are dedicated to expanding their influence and inclined to cooperate with online travel agencies (OTAs). The consequences of such an action remain unclear. Based on expectation disconfirmation theory (EDT) and dataset from EatWith, this study conducted empirical analyses with a difference-in-differences (DID) research design. The results suggest that the meal-sharing platform’s integration into an OTA brings more tourists to hosts at the cost of ratings decrease. This study underscored the double-blade effect of platform integration that the hosts, platform managers, and industry required attention and need to balance in practice.