Capstone Project
Discrimination and the Sharing Economy
Project Status: On-going
Problem Space
However, in light of recent scrutiny regarding what appears to be discriminatory practices on the Airbnb platform, the company is now faced with a difficult challenge of ensuring fair and equitable treatment for and from all guests and hosts regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. These reports of discrimination are potentially damaging for Airbnb and have renewed question about the need for regulations within the sharing economy in general and Airbnb in particular. The irony in all of this is that these reports suggest that members using the platform exhibit significant levels of discrimination; incidence of racial discrimination were also common within the Hotel Industry, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law.
The question for Airbnb then is how do you create not only awareness around these issues but also how do you create the requisite amount empathy to provoke change through design? Should you self regulate? Should members using your service create a chain of accountability? Lastly, and possibly most importantly, what are the implications of this ethos on your design decisions? The goal of my capstone project is to better understand the phenomenon of discrimination on Airbnb. I am also interested in exploring how insights derived from this study can help answer these questions and offer suggestions as to what Airbnb can do to address this issue. For the purposes of this project, I will focus on racial discrimination that is characterized by cancelled guest reservations for users with African American sounding names or guests visiting from other countries (non-European).
