‘My host is my buddy’: revisiting guests’ emotional solidarity with hosts in Peer-to-Peer(P2P) accommodation

The intimate host-guest relationship greatly affects tourists’ experience, spending, and purchasing. Yet, its presence and manifestation in semi-commercial contexts, such as Peer-to-Peer(P2P) accommodation, remain unstudied and warrant further investigation. By drawing on the theory of emotional solidarity, this study captured such host-guest intimacy. A mixed-method approach was further adopted to re conceptualize guests’ emotional solidarity with hosts in the context of P2P accommodation and develop a measurement tool accordingly. Study 1 derived three dimensions (emotional closeness, enjoyable socialization, and service cooperativeness) employing qualitative thematic analysis. In Study 2, after a four-step scale development process, a 19-item scale was developed and validated by surveying 735 guests. This study extends emotional solidarity theory by confirming its existence and prominence in the semi-commercial context, and laying the theoretical foundation for further investigating its role in shaping guests’ behaviors. Moreover, it offers practical implications for P2P accommodation to retain guests and gain competitiveness through relationship marketing.