The researcher begging for interviews

Research
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Hi All!

My name is Brian, I’m in a Management PhD program at Stanford working on a project involving Airbnb’s use of new AI tools and the impact could have on hosts.

Here is my offical request:

I am conducting a research project that examines issues pertaining to the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Airbnb Hosts. This research is being conducted by researchers at the Stanford Department of Management Science and Engineering.

In particular, this research seeks to better understand the feelings and expectations of the use of AI in Airbnb. The goal is to promote the best implementation of tools.

If you would like to participate in an interview, please select a time using this link (Calendly - Brian Lattimore) or email me at blattimo@stanford.edu.

An interview should take around 30 minutes. I am hoping to record the interviews with your permission. All data you provide will be kept entirely confidential as specified by Stanford rules, and the research team will have sole access to the data. Only aggregated and de-identified data will be disseminated via talks, briefings, and research publications. If I want to make specific attributions, I will get explicit permission from you.

Thank you for your time and interest. I look forward to my discussions with you.

Kindest regards,
Brian Lattimore

Brian Lattimore MBA
Doctoral Student
Stanford School of Engineering
Management Science and Engineering

In addition to the formal request, I want to provide a few additional details.

Unfortunately, I am not able to offer any compensation for this interview (Since there’s no compensation, I redesigned the interviews to only last 30 minutes to try and take up the least amount of your time possible).

At this time, this study is restricted to hosts in the U.S. only.

I have no affiliation with Airbnb, this work is not commissioned in any way by Airbnb, and no data will be shared with Airbnb in any way (I know I mentioned this in my official blurb, but I wanted to make sure and “dot the ‘i’” on this point).

Finally, if you don’t find any times in the calendley link that work for you, please email me, and I’ll work to move things around to try and accommodate your schedule.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or if there’s anything that’s unclear.

I know you all get these requests often, and I appreciate your time is valuable. Hopefully I’ve done my due diligence and will take up the least amount of time possible (other than reading this long-winded post). I’m incredibly grateful to anyone who’s able to meet me. Thank you all in advance!

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This post has been pre-approved. Posts about offering compensation don’t add anything and will be deleted. The OP has already addressed this concern. Help out if you like. As a former student and teacher, I appreciated all those who freely gave me the help of their expertise over the years for my research. I also appreciate I didn’t have to deal with internet scolds while I was doing it.

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It’s the entrepreneurs trying to access and monetize our market knowledge without compensation that I scold, not legit researchers.

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Thank you everyone who has signed up for interviews already it is greatly appreciated! I’m still looking for a few more hosts to interview if anyone else is able to spare about 30 minutes. Looking forward to talking with more of you!

Thanks again :slight_smile:

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@StanfordResearch I’m curious as to why this is limited to US hosts only, when Airbnb is an international platform, and the use of AI affects all hosts equally.

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Thats a good question and one of the early decisions I had to make before starting the project. This might be more deatil than you were looking for but, the research review board Stanford (and many other institutions) uses to ensure research is safe for participants and ethical (called an “IRB”) does actually allow for sampling internaitonal populations. However including international participants makes the approval process more complicated. Many times researchers in the US will take the approach of “piloting” their study in the states to establish an effect before expanding the study internationally (if there’s reason to beleive the effect would change with a different national setting). thats the approach I took here, but I agree with you that international perspectives and impact are important to understand if we are able to establish an effect.

Hope that helps answer the question!

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Not too detailed at all- I appreciate the explanation. Wouldn’t have occurred to me that it was a sort of legal issue.

I was just curious because I would have been willing to be surveyed, but live in Mexico. I guess you wouldn’t know for sure if other demographics outside the US would have noticeably different answers, but I doubt it, since we all use the same platform.

I’d think the main differences in attitude towards AI might be between hosts who rent out space in their own home, where they live, and those who rent out entire houses, and/or have multiple listings, as the latter tend to want to automate things, whereas the former find that more personal contact with guests is preferable.