Study Suggests Link Between Airbnb Listings And Boston Crime

BOSTON, MA — As the number of Airbnb listings in a neighborhood goes up, so do the reports of violent crime – at least, that's what one study suggests.

Research conducted by Northeastern University professors Daniel O'Brien and Babak Heydari and doctoral candidate Laiyang Ke found that the rise in crime was not due to increased tourism, but rather the undermining of community dynamics.

Researchers looked at the number of Airbnb listings in Boston from 2011-2018, as well as 911 calls during that time.

"Airbnb prevalence in a neighborhood appears to be associated with increases in violence, but not with public social disorder or private conflict," the study found. "Interestingly, the effect on violence was only consistent visible for the measure of Airbnb penetration – or the extent to which buildings in the neighborhood have one or more listings (and for the measure of density, or the listings per household in the two-year lags)."

But the study has one notable detractor: Airbnb itself. In a statement on its website, the company hit back against the findings, calling the methodology "flawed." The company said variables such as new housing construction, overall economic conditions and yearly median household income, were not taken into account, and the study relied on scraped data.

Airbnb cited a discrepancy that would happen when relying on its "Joined In" data – if a person created an Airbnb account in 2013 as a guest but started hosting in 2016, the host would still appear as having joined in 2013.

The study's authors found Boston experienced an Airbnb boom from 2014-2018 and suggest that the widespread conversion of housing units into short-term rentals erode a neighborhood's social organization, and thus its ability to counteract violent crime.

Notably, the findings did not directly test for social disruption but rather drew that conclusion after eliminating tourism as a contributing factor.

"We of course have not directly tested whether social organization is indeed the intervening variable, but it seems clear that the issue is not the tourists themselves but something about how the extreme transience of a short-term rental unit fails to contribute to critical neighborhood social dynamics," the authors wrote.

Airbnb suggests these breakdowns could have occurred independent of its presence in a neighborhood.

"The authors' own robustness check appears to indicate that a rise in crime could occur before or after an increase in Airbnb listings in a neighborhood, which raises the basic question as to how the paper could reach any such conclusion for these districts within Boston, let alone for the city of Boston, never mind serving as the empirical basis to support a nationwide finding," the company's statement read in part.

Airbnb said it will reach out to Northeastern University with its concerns.

Click here to read the full study.