Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Sci Adv. 2023 Feb 10;9(6):eadd2315. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add2315. Epub 2023 Feb 8.
Recent studies have documented racial discrimination in online interactions, mirroring the historic bias observed offline. The sharing economy is especially vulnerable due to greater dependence on mutual trust in sharing a ride, residence, or date with a stranger. These services rely on user recommendations to build trust, but the effects of these peer evaluations on racial bias are only beginning to be explored. Using data from Airbnb, we examine in-group preference for same-race hosts as well as same-race recommendations. The unexpected result is that these two manifestations of racial bias are offsetting, not reinforcing. White guests largely overcame their racial bias in host selection when hosts were endorsed by previous white guests. Moreover, we found no evidence of racial bias in the affective enthusiasm of endorsements, which suggests that the preference for same-race endorsements is motivated by the race of the recommender, not the content of the recommendation.
最近的研究记录了在线互动中的种族歧视，这反映了线下观察到的历史偏见。由于在共享乘车、住所或与陌生人约会时更依赖相互信任，共享经济尤其容易受到影响。这些服务依赖于用户推荐来建立信任，但这些同行评估对种族偏见的影响才刚刚开始被探索。我们使用 Airbnb 的数据，研究了同种族房东的群体偏好以及同种族推荐。出乎意料的结果是，这两种种族偏见的表现是相互抵消的，而不是相互加强的。当房东得到以前的白人房客的认可时，白人房客在选择房东时在很大程度上克服了他们的种族偏见。此外，我们没有发现推荐中的情感热情存在种族偏见的证据，这表明对同种族推荐的偏好是由推荐人的种族驱动的，而不是推荐内容的影响。
