Earlier in an article titled, "Be Hospitable" I said that I was waiting for an email from CouchSurf Representatives and when I did receive a reply I would post it on the blog. They did reply back in which they attached my questions within the email. Here I have copy and pasted the email:
Hello Doug,
thank you very much for your inquiry!!
We´d like to invite to become a member of CouchSurfing.com to know how it works and gather the information you want.
please do not hesitate to contact us again if there any other question occurs!
happy travel
YOUR QUESTION:
I'm an economics major at Florida State University and was looking at your risk reduction strategy and trust metrics and have a couple questions.
1. Have you run a regression analysis on the traits involved in past failures between host and guests? I know they aren't frequent but when they do occur do you record that information for future use?
2. With the voucher trust metric where someone vouches for you is there any penalty involved for the voucher if the "vouchee" breeches some universal behavioral norm such as theft?
I'm really trying to understand where you are coming from and how far you have advanced in this, streamlining the trust metric by making it effective and more consolidated. (Like a QB rating in football?)
Any information you could provide would be fantastic. I love what you are doing at couchsurf and am considering joining.
Sincerely,
Doug Norton
So that was the extent of the feedback for that particular email I received earlier in the week, however, there was a much more exciting development in a comment that was made on "Would Adam Smith Surf" by a CouchSurf Representative. It's an interesting comment, however, much like the email I received, Mr. Edelman didn't answer either of the questions posited in my article and doesn't mention the problems surrounding ordinal rankings and the use of scalar rankings in econometrics. I really like the idea of CouchSurf. When a friend told me about it over a month ago I went to the website to see what it was all about. As mentioned in the email that is copied onto the blog I am interested in joining, I just want to know the economic rationale.
4 comments:
A couple months back I read an article on Wired.com, I believe, about the eBay "underground." According to the article, scam artists would set up accounts and then boost their ratings with false sales to other accounts they operated or just very small scale and honest sales. After time, the profile was well prepped to sell, oh, let's say a car. Of course, there was no car and the seller disappeared after the hefty money transfer.
This is something that no "trust metrics" can account for - and in the business of staying in one's home, the consequences could be much more dire - abduction or assault or theft. So, ultimately, it does come down to nothing but trust - and perhaps faith, if you've any.
I'm not saying that Couch Surfing is mortally flawed or anything. In fact, once I have a home of my own, I intend to to give very thorough consideration and prayer to this opportunity. But it is ultimately an item that wholly requires trust.
QB ratings are worthless Doug, I thought you followed football closely enough to know that :P They are set up so that they favor one type of quarterback universally over others: the west coast offense game manager. The rating puts a large value on completion % when it is in fact a relatively meaningless stat. Yards per completion is the most important stat, but is given the least value in the rating. Would you rather have a QB who completes 3 of 4 passes for 18 yards or a QB who completes 2 of 4 for 40 yards? That's an exaggeration but is done so to illustrate my point. Statistics don't lie, only those who compile them and create meaningless rating systems do.
That's one is just for you, and if you don't want to post it, that's ok :P I just saw the QB rating ? and thought I'd give you a bit of a ribbing, I'll make another comment on the actual blog post itself separately.
As the person who told you about couchsurfing, I thought I'd pipe in on why they aren't answering your questions. Being the ubiquitous economist that you are ;), you look to find an "economic rationale" in everything, but couchsurfing.com seems to lie outside the realm of making money that many so-called non-profits eventually fall into.
For instance, you may balk at my claim and say: "but there are 180 thousand members, surely they are making a pretty penny at $25 a pop for verification purposes." 4.5 million is nothing to sneeze at, but less than 5000 have been verified via credit card if you check their statistics page under info. Many do not give $25 U.S either since global economies vary so much. That is probably around $100 thousand from verification, or not much if you're in it for the money.
Blah, I have a high fever and my mind is quitting on me again. I'll come back to share the rest of my thoughts later.
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