Airbnb Hosts and Their Contribution to Sustainability Through Entrepreneurship and Consumption: Research Gaps and an Exploratory Study in Nordic Tourist Destinations

The entrepreneurship of private households and incumbent companies operating as hosts on the Airbnb platform plays an important role in tourism development. Despite Airbnb’s gain in importance for tourism, the literature highlights its manifold negative externalities, which impair the achievement of sustainability goals. However, the platform also contributes to sustainable rural development through facilitating the micro-entrepreneurship of, and consumption and investment by, rural dwellers through income earned on the platform. This chapter explores this link for Nordic rural regions in a two-step approach: firstly, a literature review will elaborate three research gaps in the extant literature about Airbnb, Airbnb hosts, sustainability, and rural tourism. Subsequently, and based upon this review, an exploratory case study of Nordic Airbnb hosts in three rural case regions (North Iceland, Iceland; Northern Jutland, Denmark; and Nordland, Norway) will highlight the link between Airbnb-based entrepreneurship and local consumption and investment empirically. The case study utilises a sample of 64 Airbnb hosts, gathered through phone surveys in 2022 in the selected case regions. The chapter concludes by summarising the obvious, yet underresearched link between Airbnb hosts and sustainable development in rural tourist destinations that emphasises the entrepreneurial potential and redistributive effect of hosts on the digital platform.