“商学大讲堂”系列学术讲座（135）

讲座题目：Recent advancements on sharing economy in the tourism industry and behavior biases affecting risky choices in strategic environment

主讲嘉宾：Prof. Giovanna Lo Nigro

讲座时间：2019年9月11日（星期三）15：00—17：00

讲座地点：商学院118利安达厅

欢迎感兴趣的老师和同学参加！Biography

Giovanna Lo Nigro，PHD，Professor in Business and Management Engineering at the Department of Engineering, University of Palermo. She is mainly engaged in production economics and supply chain pricing, and she has published three books and over 50 papers. And she is the member of the "Editorial Board" of the journals such as European Journal of Operational Research、International Journal of Production Economics、Journal of Business Research、International Journal of Production Research.

Abstract

This seminar consists of two parts. The first part examines how the emergence of sharing economy platforms influences incumbents' price responses. Grounding on the literature on price reactions to new entrants and on the unique characteristics of the sharing economy, we argue that the effect of the penetration of the sharing economy on incumbents' prices is not straightforward, and actually depends on the type of incumbents as well as certain product/service offer characteristics. Indeed, relying on a large sample of hotel price offerings from the Italian market, we find that the effect of the growing relevance of the sharing economy on incumbents' prices depends on the type of incumbents (low/medium-end versus high-end hotels) as well as on the accommodation period (weekend versus weekdays), and thus on the type of consumers looking for accommodation. Specifically, low/medium-end incumbents set lower prices in geographical areas where sharing economy has a higher penetration, but this occurs only for weekend accommodation search. In contrast, high-end incumbents tend to set higher prices in geographical areas where sharing economy has a higher penetration, irrespective of the accommodation period. We discuss the important implications of our findings for incumbents, sharing economy platforms, consumers, and policy makers.

The second part considers risky choices in strategic environments. Managers frequently make decisions under conditions of fundamental uncertainty due to the stochastic nature of the outcomes and competitive rivalry. In this study, we experimentally test a theoretical model under fundamental uncertainty and competitive rivalry by designing a sequential interaction game between two players. The first mover can decide either to choose a sure outcome that assigns a risky outcome to the second mover or to pass the decision to the second mover. If the second player gets the chance to decide, she can choose between a sure outcome, conditioned by the assignment of a risky payoff to the first mover, or the sharing of the risky outcome with the first mover. We then introduce the following experimental treatments: (i) relegating second-mover participants to a purely passive role and substituting them with a random device (absence of strategic uncertainty – that is, when the source of uncertainty is a human subject); (ii) providing information about the behavior of second-mover counterparts; and (iii) completely removing the second-mover participant. We find that decision makers are sensitive to the presence or absence of strategic uncertainty; indeed, in the presence of strategic uncertainty, first movers more often diverge from the behavior predicted by the model. Given our experimental results, the theoretical model needs to be revisited. The standard model of monetary payoff-maximizing agents should be substituted by one of decision makers who maximize a utility function which includes the psychological cost induced by strategic uncertainty.