Beauty premium or beauty penalty in sharing accommodation situations based on lay theories

Purpose Limited research has paid attention to the physical attractiveness stereotype in peer-to-peer sharing accommodation settings. Since the high-risk situations in sharing accommodations, this paper aims to exam whether beauty premium is still relevant in peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation. Design/methodology/approach The mixed method, including 2,506 secondary data analysis and two scenario experiments, is carried out to test the research framework. Findings The results show that both beauty premium and beauty penalty exist in the e-commerce context. Excessively high attractiveness and plain looking of hosts are likely to decrease consumers’ booking decision while moderately attractive hosts will stimulate more booking behaviors. Moreover, perceived trustworthiness mediates the effect of physical attractiveness on booking decision. Additionally, similarity between hosts and consumers plays a moderating role in the relationship between physical attractiveness and perceived trustworthiness. Research limitations/implications This study reveals the physical attractiveness stereotype effects in P2P accommodation and carry implications to P2P platforms and hosts for providing moderately attractive profile photos, enhancing trustworthiness and similarity between hosts and consumers. Further studies can investigate the robustness of the findings as well as more possible reasons for its occurrence. Originality/value The research provides a clearer understanding of physical attractiveness stereotype effect in peer-to-peer sharing accommodation platforms. Besides, the linkage between physical attractiveness and perceived trustworthiness is dynamic; a high host – consumer similarity weakens the negative impact of both excessively high attractiveness and plain looking on consumers’ perceived trustworthiness.

CEO pulchronomics and appearance discrimination

PurposePulchronomics studies the economics of beauty. The purpose of this paper is to research CEO pulchronomics by examining whether a beauty premium exists in CEO compensation and whether this beauty premium is justified by differences in CEO performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors calculate a facial attractiveness scores (FAS) based on facial symmetry, facial structure and the golden ratio. The authors then perform OLS regressions to examine the effect of CEO beauty on CEO compensation and firm performances.FindingsThe authors find that base salaries for attractive CEOs are higher than those for unattractive CEOs, but incentive pays for attractive CEOs are not different from those for unattractive CEOs. The latter is likely due to the fact that attractive CEOs do not outperform unattractive CEOs in operations, innovation, corporate social responsibility and financial reporting quality.Originality/valueSince the CEO beauty premium is not supported by the superior performance of attractive CEOs, this paper provides new evidence of appearance discrimination in CEO compensation.

“Beauty” premium for social scientists but “unattractiveness” premium for natural scientists in the public speaking market

In the face of scientists’ increasing engagement in public discourse, we examine whether facial attractiveness affects their market value (i.e., audience willingness to pay). For a sample of scientists who participate in public speaking, we find that facial attractiveness is uncorrelated with internal academic achievements (as measured by publications and citations) and is only weakly but positively linked to attention outside of academia. Notably, we find that the effect of facial attractiveness on external influence is only robust to measures where speakers’ physical appearance is likely to be most apparent to the public, such as invitations to give TED talks or Google web page counts while the effect on the number of book publications or book awards is not significant. Our results also suggest that these relationships do not differ across scientists’ fields of research. However, we find that in terms of speaking fees, social scientists benefit substantially from being more attractive, whereas unattractiveness is a comparative advantage for natural scientists. A similar divergence in the direction of the relationship between speaking fee and facial attractiveness is also evident for nonacademic speakers from different fields: whereas those from a natural science (job) background gain from unattractiveness, those with a social science history benefit from a beauty premium. This market premium for unattractiveness conforms not only to the common stereotype of the natural scientist but also to a belief that the more unattractive of these researchers engage in higher quality work. Overall, the findings indicate that facial appearance is important in the public perception of academics and, to some extent, their dissemination of knowledge.