Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Very interesting and current topic of the article. 

The abstract is not very informative. Please define your research aim and problem in the introduction.

Literature review needs refinement. It is necessary to add literature and broaden the analysis.

Conclusions should be refined. 

Author Response

We would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions, comments and encouragement on the paper. The paper has been revised in line with all of these suggestions and comments. This report lists our responses in detail. (the text in blue is copied from the revised version of the paper)

 

 

Responses to the comments made by Reviewer #1

1. Very interesting and current topic of the article.

 

We thank the reviewer for the favorable and encouraging comment.

2. The abstract is not very informative. Please define your research aim and problem in the introduction.

   Thanks for this reminder. We have rewritten the abstract in the revised version, in the revised abstract, the research aim, question, and conclusions are included briefly. We also give definitions of the research aim and question in the introduction, please refer to this paragraph “two research questions arise in this paper: … in profit per listing. Such inconclusive findings can foil practitioners’ understanding of professional hosts’ success.”

3. Literature review needs refinement. It is necessary to add literature and broaden the analysis.

   Thanks for your suggestions. We removed the subsection 2.3 in the old version of this paper as it is in weak relation with the article topic. In addition, we added a number of recent literature to subsections of “Price issues in the sharing accommodation market” and “The impact of pricing interaction between professional and nonprofessional decision makers on the sharing market outcomes.” Based on this literature, we reorganize the logic of the literature review section to more powerfully explain our research aim and question.

4. Conclusions should be refined.

    Thanks for your suggestion. We have refined the conclusions to explain in brief why we choose this article topic, the research question, and the contributions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Literature review: lack  of recent contributions  (2019, 2020, 2021).

conclusions: please highlight theoretical, managerial and social implications

Author Response

Responses to the comments made by Reviewer #2

 

1. Literature review: lack of recent contributions (2019, 2020, 2021).

 

Thanks for this reminder. We have added a number of recent contributions from 2019, 2020, and 2021.

 

2. conclusions: please highlight theoretical, managerial and social implications

Thanks for your suggestions.

We have rewritten the discussion of theoretical and managerial implications in the revised version of the paper. In theory, this is one of the first attempts to analyze whether more professional decision makers benefits the market. Our paper enriches counterintuitive theories for markets mixing professional and nonprofessional decision makers. The theory arising in this study is that a high ratio of professional hosts cannot necessarily lead to maximum values of the cumulative transaction value, supply size, and platform profit, which drive the contemporary and long-term success of the sharing market. At the same time, unlike most existing literature that focuses on the competition aspect of the two types of decision makers, this paper focuses on their interaction in price and the impact of their interaction on market development.

For the practical implications, several managerial insights are given, please refer to subsection 6.2, “high ratios of professional decision makers does not necessarily bring the largest supply, the greatest cumulative market transaction value, or the maximum platform profit. Fourth, it is beneficial for the market to magnify differences in the unique features of two types of hosts to cater to customers’ experiences and expectations.”

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The emergence of digital platforms has allowed more service providers to offer their services than ever before, and it is important to discuss how the relationship between professionals and non-professionals on platform, which is the focus of this research, affects the supply and demand of these services. It is important to discuss how the relationship between professionals and non-professionals in the sharing economy, which is the focus of this research, affects its supply and demand. 

In particular, it is interesting that the approach is explained by the difference in the treatment of dynamic pricing employing Hoteling model, and this research may provide significant insight into this field.

However, there are many points that need to be corrected when viewed as an academic paper.

Major comments:

Abstract: Please describe what the findings of this study are as well. 

Page 2, Sec.1, Par.1: Before "...we will solve these questions", underline the research gap in terms of theory in the area you focused on . 

Page 2, Sec.1, Par.2: In order to explain why this study is a novel approach, author(s) should indicate research gaps, such as to what extent literature has revealed this subject and to what extent they have not.

Page 2, Sec.2: The literature review section should be organized in terms that make explicit the research gaps addressed in this study.

Page 3, 2.3, Par.1: Author(s) should first clearly identify the research gap and then position the purpose and aim of this study in it. 

Page 4, Sec.3: The structure is difficult to read because of the mix of model settings and numerical experiments. It should be structured so that there is a clear distinction between the theoretical framework and the numerical experiment session. 

Page 11, Sec.5, Par.1: Before presenting the implications, author(s) should underline what the findings of this study are, referring to extant literature to. 

Page 11, Sec.5, Par.1: Author(s) should also cite references for the implications so that the relevant literature can be discussed.

Page 13, Sec.6, Par.1: In the conclusion, the limitation and future development of this study should also be explained.

Minor comments:

Page 1, Sec.1, Par.1: "...pricing strategies Consequently,..." should be "...pricing strategies. Consequently,..." 

Page 3, 2.1, Par.1: As "listing" is a keyword for the model, please explain what means the listing in this paper. 

Page 4, 2.3, Par.2: Author(s) should explain how this paragraph relates to the issues this study addresses.

Page 4, Sec.3, Par.1: "...fee rare..." is a typo?

Page 8, Table 1.: There is no "delta = 0.9" in p_nonpro = 5.0 in the low demand case. 

Page 9, 3.1, Par.1: "...derived by KKT conditions" should be explained briefly why it is not appropriate to calculate by Lagrange's undecided multiplier method. 

Page 10, 4.3, Par.1: "Because It can't..." should be "Because it can't...".

Page 10, 4.3, Par.1: "...is cloase to..." is "...is close to..."?

Page 13, Sec.6, Par.1: There is no description of the second managerial insight.

Language: The introduction and other sections are not well organized within each paragraph, making it very difficult to read. There are also grammatical errors and typos. Author(s) need to improve their writing style, for example, by using a professional proofreading service for journals. 

Author Response

Responses to the comments made by Reviewer #3

1. The emergence of digital platforms has allowed more service providers to offer their services than ever before, and it is important to discuss how the relationship between professionals and non-professionals on platform, which is the focus of this research, affects the supply and demand of these services. It is important to discuss how the relationship between professionals and non-professionals in the sharing economy, which is the focus of this research, affects its supply and demand. 

In particular, it is interesting that the approach is explained by the difference in the treatment of dynamic pricing employing Hoteling model, and this research may provide significant insight into this field.

Thanks for your comprehensive understanding.

2. However, there are many points that need to be corrected when viewed as an academic paper.
   Major comments:

• Abstract: Please describe what the findings of this study are as well.

Thanks for your suggestion. The findings of this paper and its implications are described in the abstract of the revised version. Please refer to, “A high ratio of professional hosts does not necessarily maximize indicators of hosts’ earnings, platform’s profit or supply size, indicators that measure the accommodation-sharing market’s contemporary and long-term success. Also, the market improves with magnified differences in the unique features of two types of hosts and they can cater to customers’ experiences and expectations, differentiating the market positioning of the two types of hosts.”

• Page 2, Sec.1, Par.1: Before "...we will solve these questions", underline the research gap in terms of theory in the area you focused on . Page 2, Sec.1, Par.2: In order to explain why this study is a novel approach, author(s) should indicate research gaps, such as to what extent literature has revealed this subject and to what extent they have not.

  Thanks for your suggestions. We have outlined the research gap in the introduction section. Please refer to the paragraph, “Considering this distortion of the “sharing” aspect of the shared-accommodation market, and nonprofessional hosts displeasure with the platforms,” where we discuss the extant work from recent literature such as Xie et al. (Xie, Heo et al. 2021) that has proved that although more professionals are reported as more beneficial to market revenue in previous studies, earnings per listing the professional hosts hold underperform compared to nonprofessionals. Hence, the paper aims to examine whether more professionals is more benefit to market outcome in terms of multiple indicators rather than only taking the cumulative transaction value indicator (the cumulative transaction value is defined as the cumulative market revenue), as the cumulative transaction value cannot sufficiently indicate contemporary and long-term success of the sharing market.

• Page 2, Sec.2: The literature review section should be organized in terms that make explicit the research gaps addressed in this study. Page 3, 2.3, Par.1: Author(s) should first clearly identify the research gap and then position the purpose and aim of this study in it. 

Thanks for your suggestions. We removed subsection 2.3 in the revised version as this subsection is in weak relation with the article topic. In addition, we added more recent literature to subsections 2.1 and 2.2, and reorganized the logic embedded in Section 2. Subsection 2.2 of the revised paper majorly to deal with the issues of “The impact of pricing interaction between professional and nonprofessional decision makers on the sharing market outcomes,” which should make the research gap explicit.

• Page 4, Sec.3: The structure is difficult to read because of the mix of model settings and numerical experiments. It should be structured so that there is a clear distinction between the theoretical framework and the numerical experiment session. 

   Thank you for this reminder. We have restructured the theoretical framework and the numerical experiments into Sections 4 and 5, respectively.

• Page 11, Sec.5, Par.1: Before presenting the implications, author(s) should underline what the findings of this study are, referring to extant literature to. Page 11, Sec.5, Par.1: Author(s) should also cite references for the implications so that the relevant literature can be discussed.

  Thanks for your suggestions. We underline the findings of this study in the revised version, please refer to “Conclusion 1, ..., Conclusion 2, ..., Conclusion 3” in Section 5. We have cited references discussing the conclusions and implications. For example, Usual extant reference (Kwok, et al. 2019) believe that increasing the number of professional hosts is beneficial for increasing the cumulative transaction value. However, our findings contradict this argument. In addition, it is reported that professional and nonprofessional hosts deliver similar services with a small noticeable difference. However, we obtain the conclusion that when customers have larger preference difference in choosing services between the two types of hosts, the sharing market may have a better situation for contemporary and long-term success.

• Page 13, Sec.6, Par.1: In the conclusion, the limitation and future development of this study should also be explained.

Thank you for this reminder. We have explained the limitation and future work in the conclusion: “Market-condition parameters such as the number of potential consumers, the number of potential hosts, and the nonprofessional hosts’ price have few values through the numerical experiments. Hence, in the future, a larger number of values will be assigned to these market-condition parameters. At the same time, we will download data from such shared-accommodation markets as Airbnb to empirically verify the model and findings proposed in this paper.”

3. Minor comments:

• Page 1, Sec.1, Par.1: "...pricing strategies Consequently,..." should be "...pricing strategies. Consequently,..." . Page 3, 2.1, Par.1: As "listing" is a keyword for the model, please explain what means the listing in this paper. Page 4, 2.3, Par.2: Author(s) should explain how this paragraph relates to the issues this study addresses.Page 4, Sec.3, Par.1: "...fee rare..." is a typo? Page 8, Table 1.: There is no "delta = 0.9" in p_nonpro = 5.0 in the low demand case. Page 10, 4.3, Par.1: "Because It can't..." should be "Because it can't...". Page 10, 4.3, Par.1: "...is close to..." is "...is close to..."?

  Sorry for these typos. We have removed and corrected them in the revised version.

• Page 9, 3.1, Par.1: "...derived by KKT conditions" should be explained briefly why it is not appropriate to calculate by Lagrange's undecided multiplier method. 

  Thank you for this reminder. We explain it in the revised version as “the model contains a multi-objective optimization problem. By assigning weights to each, it can be turned into a single-objective optimization problem. The solution of the single-objective optimization problem is equal to the Pareto solution of the original multi-objective optimization problem. ”

• Page 13, Sec.6, Par.1: There is no description of the second managerial insight.

Thank you for this reminder. In the revised version, the second managerial insight in the old version is rewritten and explained as “Conclusion 3: (1) when customers have a preference difference between service from the two types of hosts (), a high ratio of professional hosts cannot guarantee maximum values for ,  (which indicated long-term success of the market ) and , and (2) a high value of  usually leads to the maximum value of the platform’s profit . A possible explanation for the second part of Conclusion 3 could be that when  becomes larger, customers’ choice of service from professional hosts is insensitive to , so the platform has more flexibility to adjust  to a larger profit value of .” in Section 5 of the revised version.

• Language: The introduction and other sections are not well organized within each paragraph, making it very difficult to read. There are also grammatical errors and typos. Author(s) need to improve their writing style, for example, by using a professional proofreading service for journals. 

Thanks for your suggestion. We have reorganized each paragraph and used a professional proofreading service for the paper.

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Kwok, L.; Xie, K. L. (2019). Pricing strategies on Airbnb: Are multi-unit hosts revenue pros? International Journal of Hospitality Management 82: 252-259.

Xie, K., et al. (2021). Do professional hosts matter? Evidence from multi-listing and full-time hosts in Airbnb. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 47: 413-421.

           

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript has been well revised based on the review comments.
The following are minor comments. In addition, recommend that authors proofread their manuscripts in terms of English. 

% Page 1, 29:
"The In recent years," should be "In recent years,".

% Page 1, 32:
"Jan" might be good to spell out as "January". 

% Page 7, 265:
"parato" might be good to "pareto value" as same in (24).  

% Page 8, 303:
The font of the variables used in the table is too small to be readable. It is necessary to enlarge the font of the variables to be visible (The same applies to the following tables and figures).

% Page 12, 453:
The authors should explicitly claim what are the limitations of this study.

Author Response

 

Responses to the comments made by Reviewer #3

1. This manuscript has been well revised based on the review comments.

 

We thank the reviewer for the encouraging comment.

 

2. The following are minor comments.
   • Page 1, 29:"The In recent years," should be "In recent years,".

Sorry for these typos. We have removed and corrected it in the revised version.

• Page 1, 32:"Jan" might be good to spell out as "January".

Thanks for this reminder. We have corrected it in the revised version.

• Page 7, 265:"parato" might be good to "pareto value" as same in (24).

Thanks for your suggestions. We have corrected it in the revised version.

• Page 8, 303:The font of the variables used in the table is too small to be readable. It is necessary to enlarge the font of the variables to be visible (The same applies to the following tables and figures).

Thanks for this reminder. We have enlarged the font of the variables in all the tables and figures in this manuscript.

 

3. Page 12, 453:The authors should explicitly claim what are the limitations of this study.

Thanks for your suggestions. The limitations of this paper are described in the conclusions of the revised version. Please refer to, “The study is limited due to the fact that market-condition parameters such as the number of potential consumers, the number of potential hosts, and the price of non-professional hosts’ price have few small numbers of values through the numerical experiments. Hence, in the future, a larger number of values will be assigned to these market- condition parameters. At the same time, we will download data from the shared- accommodation markets such as Airbnb to empirically verify the model and findings proposed in this paper.”

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