Local commitment and withdrawal in the wake of conspicuous Airbnb place dynamics on a cold-water island.

Abstract In recent years, Airbnb has gained tremendous attention in sense-of-place and community-resilience research. Yet, we find few scholarly efforts to relate particular issues of community resilience to a sense of place that emerges in the wake of conspicuous place dynamics of Airbnb beyond the urban context. In this case study on Heimaey, Iceland, we use geographic information systems (GIS), AirDNA data on Airbnb, and in-depth interviews to address this research gap. We find that as professional Airbnbs concentrate in the 'downtown' (town centre) area, residents mourn over lost pasts with a heightened sense of place that fuels intentions to withdraw. The isolated, casual, Airbnb landscape in the 'residential west', meanwhile, still allows locals to retain stewardship over place meanings, identities and community structure, which translates into increasing commitment out of fear of losing these privileges in the near future. This chapter encourages future research to become concerned with Airbnb developments in non-urban environments where sense of place and community resilience are both intrinsically linked and negotiated by different types of host activities in different locations.