Who moves when Airbnb arrives? Ownership, home size, and residential mobility in Copenhagen

Airbnb's rapid expansion has intensified debates over housing affordability, gentrification, and the displacement of urban residents. However, its impact on residential mobility — and the mechanisms driving it — remains poorly understood. Using longitudinal administrative data from Statistics Denmark linked to Airbnb, Inc. records, we examine how the neighborhood prevalence of Airbnb rentals shaped residential mobility in Copenhagen between 2008 and 2016. Duration models with fixed effects for housing type, neighborhood, and year reveal that Airbnb's effect on mobility is highly heterogeneous. Households in small, privately-owned homes are substantially more likely to move as Airbnb activity in their neighborhood rises, an effect mediated by Airbnb-linked increases in housing prices. In contrast, households in cooperative or rental units — who cannot easily profit from either subletting or rising home values — show little response to Airbnb's presence. These findings shift the debate over Airbnb's social costs from aggregate price effects to the specific residents most exposed to them.