Analysis of the motivations and barriers to the use of Airbnb from the belgian guest perspective.

Abstract

In recent years, the sharing economy has grown dramatically. This advent is due to the rise of technology and platforms. One of them is Airbnb, which allows you to rent almost any type of accommodation to individuals anywhere in the world. Airbnb is considered an innovation that disrupts traditional types of accommodation like hotels. However, limited research has been devoted to the understanding of what motivates and deters Belgian consumers to use this platform. Therefore, by adopting a quantitative method, this thesis first aims to determine whether motivations and barriers identified in previous research also influence the intention of Belgian consumers to use Airbnb. In a second step, the same analysis at the segment level is conducted in order to discover the differences that exist between different groups of consumers according to their sociodemographic characteristics.