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Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy
Earlier this year, HBS professors Benjamin Edelman and Michael Luca, working with doctoral student Dan Svirsky sent 6,400 rental requests to Airbnb hosts in five cities using distinctly white or distinctly African-American names. In the responses, the researchers found widespread discrimination: guests with African-American names are about 16 percent less likely to have their reservations accepted.
As Luca told the Washington Post:
“Nobody at Airbnb was thinking to themselves, ‘let’s build a platform where we could discriminate…And I think most hosts are not going on there thinking ‘oh-no, there’s no way I’m letting somebody who’s African-American stay in my place.’ I think more of what’s happening is a subtle, unconscious bias.”
The solution: Debias Yourself, a browser plug-in the research team created for Airbnb hosts. It hides an Airbnb guest’s name and photo from the host to prevent unconscious bias.
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