Understanding guests’ distrust of P2P accommodation: A dual-stage analysis using PLS-SEM and fsQCA

Trust is crucial in peer-to-peer (P2P) housing services; they typically include many stages of interactions among hosts and guests in both online and offline situations. However, few explorations have focused on examining the main factors affecting guests' distrust of P2P accommodation. This empirical study presented a more in-depth understanding of how to simulate guests' distrust of P2P accommodation in the UK. The proposed configurational model built upon both complexity theory and fsQCA to test the study hypotheses. Guests' demographics, personal traits, and hosts' attributes represent the three main configurations that predict the causal antecedents of guests' distrust of P2P accommodation. Our model was tested using data collected from 746 P2P guests in the UK. The findings revealed that personal traits (i.e., agreeableness, openness to experience, neuroticism, conscientiousness, extraversion) and hosts' attributes (i.e., ulterior motivation; fake identity) are key drivers of guest distrust towards P2P. The fsQCA results revealed that 5 recipes were valid for attaining high distrust of P2P. Our study offers significant theoretical and managerial implications. The findings underscore the complex nature of consumers trust towards P2P accommodation, suggesting that firms should closely monitor consumers personal traits and hosts’ attributes to improve consumers trust towards P2P accommodation.