Enhancing customer trust in peer-to-peer accommodation: A soft strategy via social presence

Despite its global popularity, the Web-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) accommodation platform (e.g. Airbnb, Xiaozhu.com) commonly suffers insufficient customer trust due to its lean human/social elements. This study examines a soft strategy of trust establishment that addresses the impersonal nature of Web-mediation by improving social presence, and assesses its applicability and functional mechanism in the context of P2P sharing economy. Specifically, this study models and tests a social presence-utilitarian/hedonic engagement-trust-purchase intention framework. Data was collected from 571 Chinese P2P accommodation customers, and analyzed using structural equation model. The result confirms that social presence does enhance P2P customer trust and purchase intention via both utilitarian and hedonic engagement. Implications and limitations are also discussed.