Two Harvard Business School professors have alleged that Airbnb, an online home exchange marketplace, makes it easier for people to practice racial discrimination when selecting homes.
Benjamin Edelman and Michael Luca wrote a report entitled, “Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com,” in which they argue that Airbnb’s website features unnecessarily prominent profile photos of the hosts thereby making people readily aware of the host’s race. They contend that this makes people less likely to rent homes from Black hosts, resulting in Black hosts being forced to rent out their homes for an average of 12 percent less money.
Their findings are based on data from Black New York City landlords in 2012.
Airbnb, of course, denies that they have in any way encouraged discrimination on their site.
“The data in this report is nearly two years old and is only from one of the more than 35,000 cities where Airbnb hosts welcome guests into their homes. Additionally, the authors made a number of subjective or inaccurate determinations when compiling their findings.” For example, Edelamn and Luca weren’t able to get reads on the number of bookings each property receives each year, a figure that could totally skew the data.
Edelman responded to that sentiment in an interview, saying simply: “The important thing is we have the same information available to us as potential guests.”
Edelman and Luca suggest that the site either diminishes the prominence of the profile photos or gets rid of them altogether. “Particularly when a guest will be renting an entire property, the guest’s interaction with the host will be quite limited, and we see no real need for Airbnb to highlight the host’s picture.”
I have to agree with the authors of the study here. Regardless of the numbers, the profile pictures have the potential to cause issues and they’re not even necessary. Yes, people can just use inanimate objects, landscapes, etc. instead of images of their faces to avoid the issue, but why should they have to?