5/10 Bradley Turner, ‘Hosting Strangers and Hitching Homestays: Intimacy and Exchange in CouchSurfing.org’
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Bradley Turner, University of Chicago, MAPSS
Tuesday, May 10, 12-1:20 p.m.; Harper Memorial Library, Room 148
Abstract*
CouchSurfing.org is a social networking website somewhat like a systematized hitch-hiking
service for travelers. Instead of rides, members share home-stays. Using original interviews and
survey data, this paper evaluates what motivates the members of this 2.6-million strong
community. It finds that almost all Couch Surfers are initially motivated to join by the intent to
travel, eventually, and that they are unanimously incentivized by saving money. Even so, they
are not of the genus homo oeconomicus (Mauss 1925: 74; Sen 1977: 332). The community
boasts nearly as many hosts as travelers (“surfers”), and hosts receive no economic
remuneration. Moreover, there is no official, website-embedded mechanism which coerces
hosting. Therefore, it is argued that Couch Surfers are also motivated by social incentives
(Lauterbach et al. 2009; Teng et al. 2009) and reciprocity (Molz 2007). Although a fair amount
of work has been done on reciprocity in Couch Surfing, researchers have tended to ignore or deal
superficially with economic motivations. The contribution of this paper is to show the interplay
between economic exchange and intimacy in the Couch Surfing community. At the outset, it is
worth defining intimacy. Zelizer uses intimacy to describe relations consisting of the sharing of
particularized knowledge and attention, which need not be mutual, but which depend on trust,
and imply risk (Zelizer 2007: 14). This is the definition used by the paper. The case will be made
that the relations created through Couch Surfing adhere to these terms.
*Full paper available by request: brturner@uchicago.edu
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