IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/infosf/v27y2025i4d10.1007_s10796-024-10548-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Problem of Plenty? Understanding the Impact of Choice and Information Overload on Airbnb Bookings

Author

Listed:
  • V Athi Karthick

    (Mahindra University)

  • Adrija Majumdar

    (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad)

  • Indranil Bose

    (NEOMA Business School)

Abstract

Online sharing platforms offer countless choices and detailed product descriptions to consumers. In this study, we demonstrate the effect of choice and information overload on booking decisions using large-scale field data from Airbnb and observe an inverse U-shaped association. Furthermore, our results show that providing quality assurance of the product exacerbates the choice and information overload relationship. As a post-hoc analysis, we perform topic modeling to gain better insights into how product information influences booking decisions. Specifically, the post-hoc analyses show that the number of topics in the description has a positive association with the number of bookings. Furthermore, topic count moderates the information overload effect by intensifying the influence of product description on the number of bookings. Our findings have important implications for online sharing platforms, service providers, and travelers as they shed light on the detrimental effects of excessive variety and information on booking decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • V Athi Karthick & Adrija Majumdar & Indranil Bose, 2025. "Problem of Plenty? Understanding the Impact of Choice and Information Overload on Airbnb Bookings," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1693-1718, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:infosf:v:27:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10796-024-10548-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s10796-024-10548-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-024-10548-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10796-024-10548-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:infosf:v:27:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10796-024-10548-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.