The article The Conditioning Function of Rating Mechanisms for Consumers in the Sharing Economy by Gemma Newlands, Christoph Lutz and Christian Fieseler was published in the prestigious journal Internet Research (2018 Impact Factor of 4.109). The paper is a continuation of their 2018 HICSS paper Emotional Labor in the Sharing Economy and forms part of a forthcoming special issue about the sharing economy.
Gemma, Christoph and Christian show through a mixed-methods design how sharing economy consumers (e.g., Airbnb guests, Uber passengers) perform emotional labor, for example by hiding negative feelings. According to the results from a survey in the United States and in-depth focus groups across six European countries, such emotional labor is perceived as burdensome but necessary due to the bilateral rating mechanisms that major sharing platforms have in place. The article can be found here.