One bad safety review can tank an Airbnb booking — Even among thousands of positive ones, new study finds

(Press-News.org) When finding the right Airbnb property, reviews really matter.

That’s the takeaway from new study involving the Binghamton University School of Management, which found that reviews mentioning an Airbnb property’s neighborhood safety problems can reduce bookings, lower nightly prices and make customers less likely to return — even if those represent a fraction of all the property’s online reviews.

The study, co-authored by Assistant Professor Yidan Sun, explores how platforms like Airbnb balance financial incentives with customer welfare. While platforms might be tempted to downplay or bury negative reviews, researchers found that increasing transparency with positive and negative safety reviews could provide the greatest long-term benefits.

“Travelers should treat safety-related reviews as meaningful signals when choosing where to stay. Guests who personally encounter neighborhood-safety issues are more likely to leave the platform or switch to different areas afterward,” Sun said. “For hosts, the study finds that on-property safety issues are associated with larger occupancy penalties than vicinitysafety reviews, and the negative effects are stronger for newer listings.”

After researchers analyzed 4.8 million Airbnb guest reviews from five major U.S. cities — New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans — between 2015 and 2019, they classified safety-related reviews into the following categories:

Listing safety reviews: citing issues within a property, such as broken locks or unsafe conditions.

Vicinity safety reviews: citing concerns about the surrounding neighborhood, such as crime or feelings of insecurity.

According to the study, only 0.5% of reviews flagged safety concerns, but nearly half were deemed vicinity safety reviews. When a property received a safety review, occupancy dropped by 1.5-2.4%. Meanwhile, average nightly prices fell by about 1.5%.

However, a person’s own experience seemed to have a much bigger impact than simply reading reviews. The study found that travelers who experienced a neighborhood safety issue were 60% less likely to book again on Airbnb.

In addition, researchers compared vicinity safety reviews with crime statistics from each city. They found a connection between those reviews and reported crime patterns, especially in low-income areas.

According to the study, platforms like Airbnb face a built-in misalignment between guest and platform interests: guests benefit from transparency, while platforms may be tempted to downplay negative information that could dampen bookings.

“The study’s simulations also bring to the surface a clear transparency-versus-revenue trade-off for platforms,” Sun said. “Hiding vicinity-safety reviews can lift short-term bookings, but it reduces consumer welfare, while highlighting them supports trust, even if it trims near-term revenue.”

The study, “Safety Reviews on Airbnb: An Information Tale,” was published in Marketing Science. It was also authored by Aron Culotta of Tulane University, Ginger Zhe Jin of the University of Maryland and the National Bureau of Economic Research and Liad Wagman of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

About Binghamton University

Binghamton University, State University of New York, is the #1 public university in New York and a top-100 institution nationally. Founded in 1946, Binghamton combines a liberal arts foundation with professional and graduate programs, offering more than 130 academic undergraduate majors, minors, certificates, concentrations, emphases, tracks and specializations, plus more than 90 master's, 40 doctoral and 50 graduate certificate programs. The University is home to nearly 18,000 students and more than 150,000 alumni worldwide. Binghamton's commitment to academic excellence, innovative research, and student success has earned it recognition as a Public Ivy and one of the best values in American higher education.

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