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The impact of Instagram on Airbnb’s listing prices in the city of Barcelona

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Abstract

The purpose of our study is to analyse whether consumers’ preferences—evaluated through social media—to different tourist sites have a significant impact on Airbnb’s prices. With this purpose, we develop an empirical application in the city of Barcelona where we evaluate the impact of Instagram—identifying the main points of interest in this city—on listings’ prices. We estimate a micro-territorial hedonic model on Airbnb’s prices against different subsamples established according to listings’ characteristics. Our results show a negative and significant effect for the representative variable of the geographic distance of Airbnb’s listings to the tourist sites on Instagram. In particular, each additional 10% increase in the distance from Instagram tourist spots to Airbnb’s listings resulted in a 2.7% decrease in Airbnb’s listing price in Barcelona. This study provides additional evidence about the relevant role of social networks when accommodation offerings are examined, even when we consider accommodations included in the sharing economy.

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Fig. 1

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Source Own elaboration with Instagram information

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Notes

  1. https://instagram-press.com/our-story/

  2. See Mur and Angulo (2009) for a further discussion about selection strategies in spatial models.

  3. www.insideairbnb.com/get-the-data

  4. Shared rooms were eliminated because this category weighs 1.06% in the sample.

  5. This classification should not be confused with the term “superhost”, which refers to the badge that Airbnb awards to hosts that meet certain objectives set by the company every three months.

  6. https://opendata-ajuntament.barcelona.cat/en

  7. https://www.locationscout.net/home

  8. This increase is continuous, even when we increased the distance \(d\) to values above 0.10 kms.

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Acknowledgements

Mariluz Maté acknowledges the financial support received from Fundación Séneca, Science and Technology Agency of the Region of Murcia, Contract nº 19884/GERM/15 and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2019‐107800GB‐I00.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economics, Accounting and Financial Department, Technical University of Cartagena, Calle Real 3, 30201, Cartagena (Murcia), Spain

    Ricardo Teruel-Gutierrez & Mariluz Maté-Sánchez-Val

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  1. Ricardo Teruel-Gutierrez
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  2. Mariluz Maté-Sánchez-Val
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Correspondence to Mariluz Maté-Sánchez-Val.

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Teruel-Gutierrez, R., Maté-Sánchez-Val, M. The impact of Instagram on Airbnb’s listing prices in the city of Barcelona. Ann Reg Sci 67, 737–763 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-021-01064-z

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