Abstract
Within the immigrant population, there is a sub-group at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). Compared to others, BoP immigrants receive lower incomes, have weaker informal networks, and face greater resource constraints. As more and more BoP immigrants participate in the sharing economy, we suggest that the use of sharing economy platforms by BoP immigrants would have a significant impact on their integration into a new country because it would influence cultural distance and affective commitment in multiple ways. Hence, in the present study, we seek to explore the relationships among the technology affordance of sharing economy platforms, the cultural distance, and the affective commitment of BoP immigrants. Unlike prior research suggesting a nonlinear relationship between cultural distance and affective commitment, our results support cultural distance as a full mediator of the relationship between technology affordance and the affective commitment of BoP immigrants. Our study makes several theoretical and practical contributions related to technology affordance theory, the sharing economy literature, and BoP immigrant populations.