Exploring conflicts between stakeholders in tourism industry. Citizen attitude toward peer-to-peer accommodation platforms

Exploring conflicts between stakeholders in tourism industry. Citizen attitude toward peer-to-peer accommodation platforms José María Martín Martín Department of International and Spanish Economy, University of Granada, Granada, Spain Juan F. Prados-Castillo Department of Applied Economics, University of Granada, Granada, Spain M onica de Castro-Pardo Department of Financial and Actuarial Economics and Statistics-Statistics and Operational Research, Complutense University of Madrid, Pozuelo de Alarcon, Spain, and Juan De Dios Jimenez Aguilera Department of Applied Economics, University of Granada, Granada, Spain Abstract Purpose –The expansion of online platforms for renting tourist accommodations has given rise to a great deal of controversy in society. Likewise, the arrival of tourists in residential settings has led to a wide range of positive and negative impacts, resulting in conflicts between different stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether there is variation in the perception of the impacts associated with peer-to-peer accommodation platforms among different stakeholders? Additionally, it also seeks to investigate what kind of impacts generate the highest level of conflict among stakeholders? Design/methodology/approach –Given the relative novelty of the problem, this paper proposes an exploratory study that sheds light on some of the main issues with the purpose of supporting further researchinthefuture.Theaimistoanalyzewhichimpactsareperceivedasmorepositiveornegativeby each group and to create indexes of conflict for these groups regarding their perception of the impacts. This study is based on fieldwork carried out in April 2020, which consists of 600 online surveys of local residents in the city of Granada. This city, one of Spain’s main tourist spots, suffers the highest tourist pressure in the country. Findings –The exploratory study suggests that the greatest consensus is generated in the assessment of economic impacts, either negative or positive. The greatest conflicts are related to the assessment of the effect of this activity on housing preservation. The group comprising accommodation owners of tourist flats is the one that shows a more dissenting opinion from the rest, confronting especially the group formed by citizens whose income depends on tourism. Originality/value –There is a lack of studies on the perception of tourism impacts associated with online tourism rental platforms. This is the first study to analyze both, how the main stakeholders associated with this activity assess the different impacts derived from this form of tourist accommodation as a whole and the conflicts derived from such an assessment. An additional innovation is that the analysis investigates the potential fear of disease transmission caused by tourists. It would be interesting to continue this research by Peer-to-peer accommodation platforms 697 Received 13 December 2020 Revised 25 March 2021 Accepted 18 April 2021 International Journal of Conflict Management Vol. 32 No. 4, 2021 pp. 697-721 © Emerald Publishing Limited 1044-4068 DOI 10.1108/IJCMA-12-2020-0201 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1044-4068.htm