Problem of plenty? understanding the impact of choice and information overload on Airbnb bookings

Abstract

Online sharing platforms offer countless choices and detailed product descriptions to consumers. In this study, we demonstrate the effect of choice and information overload on booking decisions using large-scale field data from Airbnb and observe an inverse U-shaped association. Furthermore, our results show that providing quality assurance of the product exacerbates the choice and information overload relationship. As a post-hoc analysis, we perform topic modeling to gain better insights into how product information influences booking decisions. Specifically, the post-hoc analyses show that the number of topics in the description has a positive association with the number of bookings. Furthermore, topic count moderates the information overload effect by intensifying the influence of product description on the number of bookings. Our findings have important implications for online sharing platforms, service providers, and travelers as they shed light on the detrimental effects of excessive variety and information on booking decisions.