Conference paper

Airbnb in Melbourne: how does the existing urban spatial structure shape the location of short-term accommodation sharing economy activity?

Publisher
Gig economy Housing location Sharing economy Geographic information Melbourne
Resources
Attachment Size
apo-nid178531.docx 2.59 MB
Description

Airbnb is a short-term accommodation in the sharing economy platform that has become increasingly prevalent since its inception in 2008. Despite the growth of Airbnb, limited research has been focussed on understanding how this facet of the sharing economy interacts with the existing urban spatial structure. Within this paper metropolitan Melbourne is used as a case study to further an understanding of how Airbnb occupies space in cities. Spatial analysis of the distribution of the entire home, private room and shared room listing types in January 2016 was undertaken to gain an insight into the temporal and spatial characteristics of Airbnb listings in metropolitan Melbourne. The findings suggest that each listing type demonstrated a distinctive spatial pattern. The entire home listings were highly concentrated in central Melbourne and the private room and shared room listings were more evenly but less intensively distributed throughout the central, middle and outer ring suburbs. Results from the regression analyses revealed variances in the contribution of economic, household and locational characteristics in explaining the number of Airbnb listing specific to the types over space. The findings provide a context specific understanding of the distribution of Airbnb listings in Melbourne as well as some of the factors that contribute to this distribution.

Publication Details
Peer Reviewed:
Yes
DOI:
10.4225/50/5b2de56a75918
Access Rights Type:
open