2019-2023
During the past decade, shared short-term rentals grew spectacularly in many tourist destinations. Likewise, the Brussels Capital Region (BRC) experienced a rapid increase of available short-term rental dwellings, advertised on ‘peer-to-peer’ platforms, such as Airbnb and HomeAway. In the public debate, there are many concerns and unknowns about the patterns and consequences of this ‘collaborative economy’. This project aims to examine the and inequalities of the shared short-term rental market in the Brussels Capital Region. As social scientists, we are especially interested in the inequalities that come along with these shared short-term rentals: their unequal residential patterning over Brussels’ neighbourhoods (objective 1), the inequality in the type of providers of short-term rentals (objective 2), the discrimination of tourists on the peer-to-peer rental platforms and the potential inadequate supply of short-term rental dwellings for specific categories of tourists (objective 3) and the gentrifying effects of the growing shared short-term rental market for the local residents on the regular long-term housing market in terms of the availability and affordability of rental dwellings and the potential displacement of inhabitants (objective 4). Finally, we also want to formulate evidence-based policy recommendations to tackle the problems of inequality (objective 5). This research project will make use of unique data collection methods, among which webscraping short-term rental platforms, tourism websites and rental housing websites and performing field experiments such as correspondence tests on digital discrimination. Other innovative aspects include its analyses on the fine-grained level of personalised, scalable neighbourhoods (instead of the commonly used administrative statistical sectors), its integrated analysis of locations, providers and clients of shared short-term rentals, its evidence-based testing of anti-discrimination strategies, and its advanced quantitative analyses of potential gentrifying effects, using unique spatial-temporal micro-data on rental dwellings in the BCR.
