关键词: 共享经济, 在线短租平台, 交易佣金, 网络外部性

Abstract: As one of the most important platforms for sharing economy, the online short-term rental platform has its own distinctive features. First of all, it only provides services such as displaying room information rather than providing products. At the same time, it only decides the amount and the object of the commission for the transaction but has the landlord decide the quality and price of the rental service. We set up three-stage dynamic game models respectively under the three kinds of online short-term rental platform profit models-the landlord, the tenant, and the two sides of users are charged commissions for the transaction. The service quality and price equilibrium are derived by backward induction. Through equilibrium analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn. At first, regardless of the profit model chosen by the platform, when the number of landlords on the platform is small, the increase in the number of landlords is not conducive to profitability of the platform. And when the number of landlords exceeds the threshold of the scale, the increase in the number of landlords will bring more benefits to the platform. Interestingly, if the platform wants to attract more consumers, the profit model that charges the landlord for trading commissions is not always optimal.

Key words: sharing economy, online short-term rental platform, trading commission, network externality