Impact of short-term rental regulation on hotel industry: a difference-in-differences approach

While short-term rentals such as Airbnb have experienced very rapid growth in recent years, many local governments have been introducing intensive limits, restricting its operations. For example, in 2016, New York State prohibited listing an advertisement for illegal short-term rentals, which has raised an interesting of question whether the regulation affected the performance of the hotel industry or not. This paper, therefore, aims to examine the impact of the short-term rental regulation on hotel performance in an affected state. This study conducted a difference-in-differences technique in comparing the performance of hotels in New York and Washington D.C. Results show that the regulation had a positive ripple effect on the performance of lower-scale hotels.