Exploring guest response towards service failure in home-sharing: service presence and consumption motivation

The present study leverages the tenets of social presence theory (SPT) and attribution theory to demonstrate a service presence effect on guests' behavioral responses toward home-sharing platforms following a service failure. Results indicate that in the case of a typical, controllable service failure, guests with a hedonic motivation have a higher tendency to complain and switch out of the home-sharing platform when the service contact is a hotel representative (vs. a private host), and this effect is mediated by levels of fault attributed to the home-sharing platform. However, guests with a utilitarian motivation respond to service failure equally across types of service contacts. For uncontrollable service failures, the service presence effect holds true across consumption motivations and is explained by fault attribution. The study is the first comprehensive inquiry into service failure in the home-sharing context and has important implications for theory and businesses competing in this space.