Looking to rent a room on Airbnb? Then you might want to read the findings of this recent Harvard study first.

The study titled "Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com" has discovered that rental spaces owned by a non-black host might actually cost way more than the average price:
We find that non-black hosts are able to charge approximately 12% more than black hosts, holding location, rental characteristics, and quality constant. Moreover, black hosts receive a larger price penalty for having a poor location score relative to non-black hosts. These differences highlight the risk of discrimination in online marketplaces, suggesting an important unintended consequence of a seemingly-routine mechanism for building trust.
The presumption here is that black Airbnb hosts actually have to lower their prices in order to compete with non-black Airbnb users, simply because these users would prefer to not rent from a black host. 

In a statement to Recode, Airbnb, attempted to dismiss the study's findings as complete hogwash:
"We are committed to making Airbnb the most open, trusted, diverse, transparent community in the world and our Terms of Service prohibit content that discriminates. The data in this report is nearly two years old and is from only one of the more than 35,000 cities where Airbnb hosts welcome guests into their homes. Additionally, the authors made a number of subjective or inaccurate determinations when compiling their findings."