Impact of guest-generated photos: Evidence from Airbnb

Home-sharing platforms have evolved to allow guests to include photos along with their textual reviews. However, the impact of these guest-generated photos on property sales performance remains underexplored. From the perspective of property uncertainty, this study proposes that guest-generated photos have a complex effect on sales. Using a quasi-experiment on Airbnb, we find that guest-generated photos, on average, negatively impact property sales. Multi-method analysis of the underlying mechanisms reveals that these photos can either reduce or increase guests' perceived property uncertainty, thereby influencing sales. Furthermore, our heterogeneity analysis shows that this negative impact is exacerbated by lower-quality or indoor photos, while looser cancellation policies or high host professionalism can mitigate it.