To Combat Racial Bias by Airbnb Hosts, Try Blind Reservations

A new Harvard study found racial discrimination by Airbnb hosts -- a poignant reminder that new technology doesn't automatically eliminate old problems.

As Bloomberg Business reported, researchers at the Harvard Business School found that people with names that sounded African-American had a harder time booking a place to stay on Airbnb than people with names like this correspondent's. The authors conducted a field experiment that examined 6,400 listings on Airbnb in five cities, concluding that "requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names."

That difference was the same regardless of whether the host was African-American, white or female, whether the property was expensive or cheap, or whether the host shared the property. The bias came at a price for hosts as well. According to the researchers, hosts who rejected guests they believed were African-American found a replacement guest just 35 percent of the time.

One approach that corporations and nonprofits like the Sunlight Foundation have used in recent years to increase the diversity of their hiring pools is to use "blind auditions."

In blind hiring, applicants separate information that identifies them -- like their name -- from their qualifications, expressed in a resume, cover letter, and portfolio of design or software projects. 

The technique, applied to on-demand companies like Airbnb and Uber, that might express itself as showing a potential host or driver someone's rating and reviews, but not a name. 

"We are committed to making Airbnb one of the most open, trusted, diverse, transparent communities in the world," a company spokesperson told The Huffington Post. "We recognize that bias and discrimination are significant challenges, and we welcome the opportunity to work with anyone that can help us reduce potential discrimination in the Airbnb community. We are in touch with the authors of this study and we look forward to a continuing dialogue with them."

As platforms like LinkedIn, Uber and TaskRabbit take on increased importance in the on-demand economy, it's incumbent upon operators of these services to address demonstrated bias. Otherwise, 21st century platforms for collaborative consumption will just embed social biases from the cultures they exist within. 

This article has been updated to include a statement from Airbnb.

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