On April 28, 2025, Assistant Professor Angela LU from the Department of Information Systems at City University of Hong Kong visited our Science Park and delivered an academic lecture titled Resource Partitioning in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from Airbnb Service Provider Concentration and Local Income Inequality. Prof. LU's research focuses on platform economy and societal impacts, specializing in computational social science methods to analyze organizational behavior and market dynamics.

The lecture explored the dual phenomena of Professional Service Provider (PSP) concentration and rapid growth of Non-Professional Service Providers (NPSPs) in sharing economy platforms. Based on Resource Partitioning Theory (RPT) and an analysis of 1.4 million zip-code-level Airbnb listings (2014–2019), the study reveals that PSP concentration facilitates NPSP expansion but reduces their performance, with income inequality significantly moderating this effect. The research employs a Bartik-style instrumental variable and Airbnb Plus policy for causal identification, offering critical insights for platform ecosystem design and socioeconomic inequality governance.

Third from the left in the front row: Angela Lu

    Prof. LU is currently an Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. Her work has been published in top-tier journals such as the American Journal of Sociology and Production and Operations Management (UTD24), and she received the Best Track Paper Award at ICIS 2022 and the Best Student Paper Award at ICIS 2023.

     Additionally, Prof. Angela LU hosted a Q&A session to address students' research inquiries and provide guidance on academic planning, offering valuable suggestions for their scholarly development.