Tourists’ use of Airbnb app for visiting a historical city

Abstract Airbnb is a home-sharing mobile platform that enables tourists and local hosts to connect. Airbnb mobile app allows hosts to list down the space available for rent and allow tourists to look for accommodations that are often more localized. Historical cities are often engaging tourists using traditional hotel reservation methods such as phone reservations or booking by travel agents, however, given digital disruption more local businesses are adopting technology in their business. This motivated the current study to assess the rate of peer-to-peer technology pervasiveness in historical city tourism, particularly for hotel booking using Airbnb app. This research investigates the factors that predict tourists’ behavioural intention to use Airbnb app when they travel to the historical city of Malacca in Malaysia by adopting the Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model and by critically evaluating the exhaustiveness of the theory to measure tourists’ use of a mobile app. Partial Least Square analysis was used to test the research model, construct path model and to validate research hypotheses. The results from a sample of 200 tourists who visited and stayed in Malacca show that price value and social influence have high significant positive influence on their behavioural intention to use Airbnb app when booking accommodation in the historical city. In contrast, hedonic motivation and habit were found not significant, potentially due to the short-term and occasion-specific usage of Airbnb app not forming enjoyment in the process of usage, which raises concerns on applicability and relevance of UTAUT2 theory to measure user adoption of a mobile app for tourism. A peculiar finding in the study is the significant negative influence of facilitating condition to behavioural intention, for which we explain a plausible cause in the paper.