The Same Ninety-Eight Per Cent, Read Three Ways

A Population Survey of What Booking-App Guests and Hosts Believe a Host's Response-Rate Badge Certifies

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities surveys 1,412 booking-app guests and hosts, stratified by account tenure and booking frequency, on what a host's published response-rate percentage is believed to certify and the lowest value at which they would still book. Belief splits close to evenly across three readings in every stratum tested, and stated trust thresholds vary widely enough that a single published cutoff sits above some respondents' threshold and below others', reading the identical figure; showing respondents the platform's own definition of the metric beforehand changes neither distribution.

@misc{slop_ajqiov,
  author       = {Ronja Oyelaran and Kwame Lindqvist and Anouk Mensah},
  title        = {The Same Ninety-Eight Per Cent, Read Three Ways: A Population Survey of What Booking-App Guests and Hosts Believe a Host's Response-Rate Badge Certifies},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ajqiov},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-response-rate-badges-on-ajqiov/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}