Relational work in Airbnb reviews

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Pablo de Olavide University

Relational work in Airbnb reviews

Maria de la O Hernandez-Lopez,

philology and translation department

Abstract

Keywords: Online consumer reviews, Airbnb, relational work, politeness, impoliteness, face

Аннотация

Работа над межличностными отношениями в отзывах на сайте Airbnb

Мария де ла О Эрнандес-Лопес

Университет Пабло де Олавиде, Севилья, Испания

В последнее время на таких онлайн-площадках, как Airbnb, которые дали толчок новым туристическим тенденциям, онлайн-отзывы потребителей становятся основным механизмом доверия и имеют троякую цель: принятие обоснованных решений относительно размещения, приобретение хорошей репутации и управление межличностными отношениями как продолжение офлайн - общения. В свете вышесказанного в данном исследовании будут проанализированы 120 отзывов (60 положительных и 60 отрицательных), написанных путешественниками, воспользовавшимися сайтом Airbnb. Они передают три различных эмоциональных состояния: восхищение / удовлетворение, амбивалентность / нейтральность и неудовлетворение / разочарование. Акцент будет сделан на иллокутивном и стилистическом аспектах с целью понять, как ведется работа по выстраиванию отношений, или «реляционная работа» (`relational work') (Watts 1989, Locher & Watts 2005, Locher 2006) и выяснить, что может быть «нормой» в этом конкретном жанре (электронном отзыве потребителей) и виртуальном сообществе (т.е. гости и хозяева отелей, общающиеся на сайте Airbnb). Результаты показывают, что нормой является вежливость, а грубость или оскорбление - это исключение. Полученные данные также свидетельствуют о том, что пользователи склонны проявлять вежливость посредством восторженных и очень дружелюбных сообщений, в то время как неудовлетворенность и амбивалентность проявляются имперсонифицированно, через официальный стиль и дистанцирование. Имплицитно информация о неудовлетворённости передается также через умолчание о тех или иных моментах. Представляется, что это понимают и члены данного сообщества, которые, по-видимому, воспринимают сообщение информации как необходимое условие оценки.

Ключевые слова: онлайн-отзывы потребителей, Airbnb, работа над межличностными отношениями, вежливость, невежливость, лицо

Introduction

Airbnb represents the most successful platform for accommodation sharing and experiences to date (Forbes 2018, Sundadarajan 2014), and is presumably the most popular platform for peer-to-peer accommodation in general. Its versatility (as it can be used as a communication tool with hosts, accommodation booking, search of experiences and posting of reviews, among others), popularity (established in many countries), social nature While it is true that many travellers renting apartments via Airbnb are not likely to meet the host (based on personal experience), travellers interested in meeting local people and attracted by the social appeal of this CoP usually decide to rent a private room at the host's house, so that offline, interpersonal contact is possible during their stay. This study only focuses on the latter., and the features of its review system (e.g. anonymity is not allowed, travellers are also evaluated, and there is user-friendly communication system that enables online interaction, among others) are characteristics that favour both its own success and trust among users. However, while the business and marketing literature provides a great amount of information regarding this platform, studies regarding communication in Airbnb, as well as its review system from a pragmatic perspective are almost nonexistent (but see Bridges and Vasquez 2016 and Hernandez-Lopez 2019). This study aims to explore OCRs in Airbnb to bridge this gap.

Previous research has shown that, while OCRs as a genre have characteristics of their own, every social platform will also constitute a separate Community of Practice (CoP However, this CoP or VCoP is not among travellers themselves (who cannot interact via the platform) but among travellers and hosts. Despite this limitation, the notion of CoP is still relevant here in that the platform gathers individuals with similar interests, willing to share their knowledge about accommodation. Also, their interactions, both in the form of personal contact and OCRs, will have an impact on their knowledge and practice. It is through the process of sharing information and experiences with the group that members learn from each other, while they obtain information that will help them take decisions. VCoPs are usually found in the form of forums (Dube et al. 2005). Airbnb provides the opportunity to post a review and answer to reviews that have been posted about each individual. See also footnote 3 for the notion of belonging in the platform.) (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992, Mills 2003), or VCoP (Dube et al. 2005) with features that are not transferable to other types of OCRs. The literature has already pointed out the differences between product-oriented and experiential OCRs (Vasquez 2011, 2014), as well as between business-to-peer and peer-to-peer travel patterns (Tus - syadiah and Pesonen 2015). Airbnb has also been identified as a community of travellers with interest in both practical aspects of the experience (Guttentag et al. 2017) and socialising with locals in the target destination (Ert, Fleischer and Magen 2016). That said, we believe Airbnb must be studied as a separate CoP where travellers constantly interact in both the online and offline worlds, and whose review system is constrained by the sense of community Due to the rapid growth of Airbnb since its foundation in 2008, its CEOs have made every effort to enhance the sense of community of this platform, as well as its users' sense of belonging. Apart from the versatility of the platform, which allows for communication among users (mainly guest-hosts), its advertising campaign enhances this sense of belonging (“belong anywhere”) and has been labelled by business experts as a “global community”, as in https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2014/07/ airbnbs-consistent-rebrand-focuses-sense-belonging-community/. Besides, hosts can also interact with each other in a related website (https://community.withairbnb.com), so that they can express their concerns and doubts, as well as explain their experiences via a public forum and private messages. So as to contribute to this sense of community, one of its CEOs, Brian Chesky (@bchesky) usually uses twitter to remind users that this is not an accommodation platform only to search a house, but a community of users with common interests seeking a home. its users have (Hernandez-Lopez 2019). It is precisely this social nature that makes Airbnb a platform of interest from a relational point of view, given that its review system has a threefold purpose: to make informed decisions regarding accommodation in a travel destination (guests), gain good reputation (both hosts and guests), and manage the relational component as continuity from the offline stage of the experience (both hosts and guests).

In the light of the above, this study will analyse 60 positive and 60 neutral and/or negative Airbnb reviews from an illocutionary and stylistic domain perspective. More specifically, this paper focuses on how Airbnb guests, who have shared some time and space with hosts (i.e., who rented a room at the host's house), manage relational work (Watts 1989, Locher and Watts 2005, Locher 2006, Locher and Watts 2008) in positive reviews, vis-а-vis lukewarm and negative evaluations, so as to know what is likely to be the norm of appropriateness in each case, and how guests manage polite, politic and impolite messages addressed to the host and other readers. By adopting a genre approach to relational work (cf. Garcйs-Conejos Blitvich 2010 for a genre approach to the study of im/politeness) and by looking at the intersection between genre and the features of this CoP, we aim to understand how macro issues (e.g., previous contact, as mentioned in reviews) and micro issues of the interaction (e.g., wording in the reviews) will help ascertain what is the norm (i.e., expected, politic) and what is the exception in this review system.

This paper will be structured as follows: first, a literature review on Airbnb as a platform, an overview of politeness and OCRs, as well as relational work from a genre perspective, is provided. Next, the results, presented in three different subsections (1) delighted/satisfied users, 2) neutral or ambivalent users, and 3) dissatisfied users), and a related discussion about relational work, is provided. The paper closes with some conclusions.

1. Airbnb as a peer-to-peer marketplace

Airbnb belongs to the group of so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces. Online P2P marketplaces refer to individuals (consumers) who interact directly with other users (sellers) who are non-employees, while the marketplace website is maintained by a third party (Botsman and Rogers 2011). Examples of P2P markets are eBay (online auction site) and Rent The Runaway (renting designer dresses), among many others. Within this group, those offering a particular service, rather than a product, are the most popular, in that users seek unique experiences in which social interaction is central (Ert, Fleischer and Magen 2016: 62). Some examples include food services (Eatwith, VoulezVousDiner), taxi services (Uber, BlaBlaCar), and accommodation services (CouchSurf, Airbnb, Vayable, Love Home Swap). This group of P2P markets has also been identified as collaborative consumption (Pizam 2014: 118), and its main trust mechanism is known as experiential OCRs (Vasquez 2011, 2014).

Airbnb defines itself as «a social website that connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay», with special emphasis on those interested in having a «personal, meaningful experience» (Airbnb website). Indeed, Airbnb's emphasis on its social appeal (Ert, Fleischer and Magen 2016) implies creating networks as a form of social capital (Burt 2000, Wong and Salaff 1998) in a system in which their members trade with a personal commodity: their living spaces. In this sense, each member's network capital is based on trust in others and self-built reputation (Rosen et al. 2011), with a twofold function: more opportunities to host other travellers and the construction of a sense of community within this network.

In line with social networks, each member creates a personal profile including age, gender, location, education, and any other personal details that they may want to let others know. Members may choose to be either host or guest, although combining both roles in the same profile is also possible. This fact is key to understanding the complexity of this dynamic system, as each member may be evaluated as a host (similar to business - to-peer platforms), but also as a guest. Guests will be allowed to read their host's review (and vice versa) on condition that they post their own review about the host. Thus, this system ensures that their opinions are not biased by the other parties' comments.

In line with business-to-peer platforms (B2P) such as TripAdvisor, guests use, on the one hand, star ratings to evaluate features of their listings (i.e. their properties), and experience (mainly cleanliness, location, veracity and communication), together with the written texts used to share their experience. However, personal interaction and the fact that the Airbnb experience is built among peers (and not between businesses and peers), make this platform have characteristics of its own, mainly because it is not only the room or apartment to rent that matters, but also personal interaction (Bridges and Vasquez 2016, Cansoy and Schor 2016), and it is precisely this personal interaction in the offline component of the experience that may have an impact on reviews.

2. Politeness, the genre of OCRs, and travellers' websites as VCoP

The emergence of online sites for communication, business and leisure has marked a shift from situated politeness to globalized politeness, in which it is the affordances of the system, together with culture and other sociological variables, that have an impact on interaction. Such is the case in OCRs; overall, they have been studied as a genre to understand how users manage face, politeness and other relational issues. A case in point is Vasquez (2011, 2014), who found that complaints in TripAdvisor are rather different from face-to-face complaints, in that prosumers (i.e., consumers who are also producers of online content) attempt to maintain public self-image or social identity, rather than the other's face. This is partly given by the system, as the experience under review is usually based on an institution (e.g., a hotel). Ho (2017) also studied experiential OCRs from the angle of the reviewed institution to understand how managers respond to complaints, with attempts to recover face and enhance rapport.

In the sharing economy business, Dayter and Rьdiger examined users' complaints in CouchSurfing and found that conflictive reviews are expressed in a way that balances «the obligation to write honest references» with «the desire to protect face» (2014: 194). The accumulation of social capital is also a motivation to avoid blunt criticism. Therefore, even when the complaint is obvious, the insertion of positive elements helps ensure both positive self-presentation and the reaffirmation of solidarity with the addressee (p. 207). In line with this, Bridges and Vasquez (2016) use the term «lukewarm» review to designate those evaluations that are not explicitly negative but cannot be classified as positive either, and explain the reasons for this positivity bias in Airbnb (host-guest social interaction or personal acquaintance, the reciprocity of the review system, the sense of mutual trust on this online community and lack of anonymity, which means that every contribution to the website is also a contribution to building host and guest identities).

One of the latest contributions to this area of research is Hernandez-Lopez (2019), who examined positive Airbnb reviews written by British speakers. The author found that 1) reviews in this platform have characteristics of their own, such as reciprocity, considering the host as part of the experience, importance given to the host's personal traits and identity, etc. 2) personal acquaintance with the service provider has an impact on the way reviewers write their evaluations, and 3) these reviews are, in fact, social reviews in that users take the opportunity to not only inform other readers but also contact the host and ensure a certain continuity in terms of the relationship established during the offline component of the experience.

The above-mentioned studies reveal two facts: 1) that the review genre is not homogeneous across platforms; and 2) that the affordances of the website, together with the pragmatic affordances (Virtanen 2017) of the review system constrain relational considerations (e.g. politeness, rapport, etc.). It is at this point that we see that, while genre (i.e., text genre) has been advocated as a useful unit of analysis in politeness studies (cf. Garces-Conejos Blitvich 2010, Garces-Conejos Blitvich and Sifianou 2019), the specific profile of each CoP must be taken into account as well. For the purpose of this study, therefore, the features of Airbnb as a CoP will be taken into account to understand its review system as a genre. The CoP found in Airbnb is that of a community of travellers and hosts with a sense of belonging On the sociability of Airbnb, see footnote 3., where guests, or travellers, are interested in accommodation offered by local people or peers, and are often attracted by the system's social appeal (Hernandez-Lopez 2019). Hosts, in turn, often show interest in offering accommodation with differentiating characteristics (e.g., unique experience, low price, very friendly hosts, or great location, among others). This review system, as a genre, involves mutual evaluations (guest and host), and is addressed to both a wider audience (i.e., other travellers) and the person that is being evaluated, be it the host or the guest. Users are not kept in anonymity and strive to gain good reputation in order to be shown as trustworthy and gain more users. It is by looking at the intersection of this CoP and this review system as a genre that relational considerations will be examined.

3. A genre approach to relational work

The abovementioned studies show that, while OCRs are not a new field of study in politeness studies, its paths of research are scarce and, in the case of peer-to-peer consumption, almost non-existent. In the case of Airbnb, given its social nature (Hernan - dez-Lopez 2019, Sthapit and Jimenes-Barreto 2019), we contend that a model within interpersonal communication that is wide enough to cover the versatility of the online milieu is needed. In this sense, politeness will be understood as a fundamentally discursive concept, that is, one which does not have an objective existence outside of the discourses in which it is oriented to or talked about by users and observers of (different varieties of) a language. (Haugh 2019: 201)

Something that can be deducted with certainty from this definition is that politeness is shaped in the ongoing dynamics of interaction, in line with the so-called `third wave of politeness studies' (Garces-Conejos Blitvich and Sifianou 2019). This third wave includes approaches such as Arundale's (1999, 2006) face constitution, Spencer - Oatey's (2000, 2008) rapport management, or Watts' (1989) relational work (see also Locher and Watts 2005, Watts 2005, Locher 2006). Despite their differences in scope and approach, all of them consider that politeness is not an ever-present phenomenon but is given in specific situations, and that interlocutors need not be interested in being polite only. Thus, while rapport management (Spencer-Oatey 2008) acknowledges that there are at least four rapport orientations (rapport enhancement, rapport maintenance, rapport neglect and rapport challenge), relational work (Watts 1989, Locher and Watts 2005, Watts 2005, Locher 2006) also aims to cover the entire spectrum of interpersonal behaviour, from negatively marked behaviour (i.e., impoliteness or rudeness), via non-marked or politic behaviour, which involves being appropriate to the interaction in question, to positively marked behaviour (i.e., politeness) (Locher 2006: 250). Thus, depending on the interlocutors' intention, they may engage in face-enhancing, face-maintaining and face-aggravating relational work (Locher and Watts 2008, Angouri and Locher 2012).

Relational work is defined as « `the work' individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others» (Locher and Watts 2005: 10) and acknowledges that most of the time it is the unmarked form, rather than politeness or impoliteness, that is expressed and perceived in interaction. Also, appropriateness in interaction is subject to the specificities of the context in question. Thus, participants familiar with a particular CoP invest in appropriate degrees of relational work and are likely to share what they deem appropriate locally, at the same time as constantly negotiating what is and what is not appropriate, what is polite, impolite or over-polite Hernandez-Lopez and Fernandez-Amaya (2019) also include the category `very polite', as dif-ferent from `polite'. They requested a number of participants to rate their hotel experience as `very polite', `polite', `neutral' or `impolite', and explain why. The findings revealed that, while `very polite' is linked to behaviour that goes beyond the travellers' expectations, `polite' was marked when com-munication matched their (high) expectations and where interaction was considered appropriate. The category `neutral' was associated with indifference, and impoliteness with a bad hotel service in general.. While it is true that negotiation is not something new when it comes to research on politeness or the relational component in general (cf. Fraser 1990), what constitutes a fundamental shift of perspective is that much of the relational work will be assessed as non-marked (`appropriate' or just `normal', a lay person may say), or behaviour that participants construct as being «appropriate to the ongoing social interaction» (Watts 2003: 276). Within this discursive approach (Locher 2006, but also Garces-Conejos Blitivich and Sifianou 2019, among others), the researchers' main task should be to identify what is appropriate and the expected norm, while what is polite or impolite is also subject to participants' evaluations. This perspective is inclusive, given that politeness may include a variety of styles based on intentions and linked to speech style, such as friendliness, distance, respect, modesty, individuality or solidarity, to name a few (cf. for instance, Barros Garcia and Terkourafi 2014, for a discussion regarding rapprochement and distancing contexts).

4. Methodology

Data

1. Any destination within the UK.

2. Any review written in English.

3. Travellers staying in a private room for two people at the host's house. This option has been selected because we understand that it gives more opportunities to interact with the host(s) than those cases in which whole apartments are rented. It is assumed that sharing some time and space with hosts will potentially give more opportunities to engage in interpersonal communication that may have an impact on the final write-up of the review.

4. Only experienced users (i.e, those with more than five reviews) were considered to ensure that they are knowledgeable of the underlying norms of behaviour of this CoP, and familiarized with the review genre. As expressed by Locher (2006: 253), interactants participating in the same speech event and being familiar with the norms of behavior established in this particular type of interaction over time will of course be more likely to have approximate evaluations than interactants who are newcomers to a particular community.

Finding positive reviews is easy in Airbnb, given that more than 90% belong to very satisfied users (cf. Bulchand-Gidumal and Melian Gonzalez 2019). In this sense, and after considering the abovementioned selection criteria, the 60 positive reviews were selected randomly out of an initial selection of 230 positive reviews of accommodation in Bristol. In turn, and given the difficulty to find neutral/negative reviews in one single destination, the selection of this second group was not random, but the result of detailed reading of reviews at different destinations (Glasgow, Bristol, London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Lancaster and Belfast). Those reviews that described any type of fault, disagreement, criticism or ambiguity were collected as part of this data set. At times, some reviews are ambivalent in meaning but include the reply of disappointed hosts. In these cases, we understand that the review has a negative valence as well. Regarding ethical considerations, all the reviews are open access in the platform. Examples in this paper have been anonymized.

Procedure

The analysis of the data will be based on the computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) perspective proposed by Herring (2004: 339), «grounded in empirical, textual observations» and «informed by a linguistics perspective». More specifically, data will be examined considering an illocutionary (i.e., the performance of certain speech acts) and stylistic (e.g. choice of tone or choice of genre-bound lexis) domain perspective to understand how travellers manage relational work.

Data will be organised attending to the users' emotional stance: (1) delighted or satisfied, (2) lukewarm or ambivalent, and (3) (very) dissatisfied. Whereas (1) and (3) will be reviews that are unequivocally positive or negative, (2) includes reviews that either mix positive and negative comments, or are ambiguous in tone and/or intention. In all three cases, the role of content, specific speech acts and tone, for instance, will be examined to determine the type of relational work reflected in reviews. Thus, this analysis will hopefully contribute to understand what constitutes appropriate or politic behaviour in this particular genre (experiential reviews) and CoP (travellers in the sharing economy).

Given that we do not always count on the addressee's replies (i.e., they are optional) and the interpretation of other readers, we are aware of the fact that it may be difficult to differentiate between lukewarm and negative reviews. For this reason, we consider that reviews have a negative valence when there is at least one negative comment or note of dispraise in the review (even when the rest of the information in it is positive). Within this group, lukewarm reviews are those that are ambivalent in tone and wording, or those with compensation strategies to minimize the expressed fault (e.g., «It was very noisy but [the host] was super friendly and understanding, and we would give it a second chance»). Clearly negative reviews are those with scarce mitigation or clear disappointment, as in «Not clean at all. I wouldn't recommend». We will consider that reviews have a positive valence when these are unequivocally positive, and their users' emotional stance is that of clear satisfaction, as in the following review: «The property was beautiful and I really felt the luxury of a top hotel. The hosts made every effort to print a map, knowing where I was going to meet friends later. Really kind. Thanks for a great stay. I would definitely book it again».

Following Locher (2006), we will deem a message as polite when there is «positive concern for the addressee» (251), and a message will be impolite when there is lack of concern for the addressee's face or reputation, or when there is the desire of the speaker to attack face or clearly damage the host's reputation. In order to classify reviews, the host's reply (if there is any) will also be taken into account to understand how the review has been interpreted. Besides, the sample was coded twice in order to ensure validity of these classifications.

Results

The vast majority of reviews present features that orient towards enhancing the relational component. Overall, users not only aim to express what they think but also try to not damage the relationship at hand (either by enhancing it or by avoiding damaging it). Besides, there are a number of reviews that shows dissatisfaction and scarce concern for the other's face. This group, which constitutes a minority, is oriented towards aggravating the relational component. Table below summarizes the findings in numbers.

Classification of reviews according to the users' emotional orientation (delighted/satisfied, neutral/moderately satisfied and dissatisfied/disappointed)