Fairness, legitimacy and the regulation of home-sharing platforms Gemma Newlands and Christoph Lutz Department of Communication and Culture, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this study is to contribute to current hospitality and tourism research on the sharing economy by studying the under-researched aspects of regulatory desirability, moral legitimacy and fairness in the context of home-sharing platforms (e.g. Airbnb). Design/methodology/approach – Three separate 2Â1 between-subjects experimental vignette surveys are used to test the effects of three types of fairness (procedural, interpersonal and informational) on two outcomes: moral legitimacy and regulatory desirability. Findings – The results of the research show that high perceived fairness across all three types increases moral legitimacy and reduces regulatory desirability. Respondents who perceive a fictional home-sharing platform to be fair consider it to be more legitimate and want it to be less regulated. Research limitations/implications – Following established practices and reducing external validity, the study uses a fictional scenario and a fictional company for the experimental vignette. The data collection took place in the UK, prohibiting cultural comparisons. Practical implications – The research is useful for home-sharing platform managers by showing how they can boost moral legitimacy and decrease regulatory desirability through a strong focus on fairness. It can also help policymakers and consumer protection advocates by providing evidence about regulatory desirability and how it is affected by fairness perceptions. Originality/value – The study adds to hospitality and tourism research by offering theoretically meaningful and practically relevant conclusions about the importance of fairness in driving stakeholder opinions about home-sharing platforms. Keywords Sharing economy, Fairness, Regulation, Legitimacy, Ride-hailing, Home-sharing Paper type Research paper Introduction By popularizing asset-sharing among private individuals, the so-called “sharing economy” has ushered in a variety of technological, economic and societal advances (Hamari et al., 2016; Malhotra and Van Alstyne, 2014). However, the rapid growth of the sharing economy has garnered criticism for its disruption of traditional industries, ranging from transport and tourism to logistics and finance (Einav et al., 2016; Gy odi, 2019, 2018; Zervas et al., 2017). With their legitimacy called into question (Frenken and Schor, 2017), sharing economy The research was funded by the Research Council of Norway within grant agreement 275347 “Fair Labor in the Digitized Economy” and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Program within grant agreement 732117 “Ps2Share: Participation, Privacy and Power in the Sharing Economy”. We want to thank the anonymous peer reviewers of the article as well as International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management’s Editor-in-Chief Professor Fewzi Okumus for a very constructive peer-review process that helped strengthen the paper. Regulation of home-sharing platforms Received 29 August 2019 Revised 20 March 2020 17 June 2020 13 August 2020 Accepted 13 August 2020 International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management © Emerald Publishing Limited 0959-6119 DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-08-2019-0733 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0959-6119.htm