While home-sharing and ride-sharing companies strive to make the world smaller, more friendly, and more trusting, their customers still view hosts and drivers much more as strangers than friends, according to new research co-authored by Gies College of Business professor Aric Rindfleisch and Gies PhD student Jie (Doreen) Shen. Airbnb, for example, declares that it “promotes people-to-people connection, community and trust around the world,” and while that may be true, this research shows society at large is still slow to truly trust those they’re transacting with.