The Effect of Sharing Economy on Digital Resilience: Evidence from Airbnb

Digital resilience builds sustained ability to address adverse events such as natural disasters, as local communities can leverage digital technologies to mitigate the growing pressure on scarce federal and state resources in disaster assistance. This paper examines the digital resilience effect of the sharing economy, a peer-to-peer model of resource sharing that contributes to community disaster relief. Different from normal top-down strategies, the bottom-up approach derived from sharing economy harnesses the enormous power of the crowd. Using data from the Airbnb platform, we find that communities with higher Airbnb engagement are more resilient, as shown by lower dependence on outside aid. The resilience effect of the sharing economy operates through its sociability values, which tend to be more economically significant and longer lasting than its economic benefits. The platform involvement via a platform policy launch, the “Open Homes” Program, further enhances hosts’ sociability motivation in community engagement and increases the digital resilience effects. This research contributes to the literature on the sharing economy in disruptive events and its role in improving local community sociability and resilience. Practical implications for disaster managers and digital platforms are outlined.