“If Airbnb is not at least somewhat flexible on their part, cities will just dig in their heels,” said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, referring to the company’s changing tone with municipalities.

Image “There is going to be more people doing home-sharing tomorrow than there are today; there is going to be more the day after that,” said Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs. Credit... Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Many of Airbnb’s messaging changes lately originated with Mr. Lehane, who, after performing consulting work for the company for years, officially joined Airbnb full-time in August. Mr. Lehane, a longtime political operative, brings to the job a reputation for hands-on, bare-knuckle sparring with Washington insiders.

Mr. Lehane said Airbnb’s messages were not inconsistent. The mobilization of voters was meant to fight against the hotel industry, which has not been receptive to home sharing, he said.

“We have always said we want to partner with cities,” Mr. Lehane said. “As Prop F in San Francisco made clear, our community will fight and win if the hotel interests are threatening the economic lifeline of home sharing, but on the natural we would prefer to be lovers of cities and not fighting with the hotel industry.”

The pledges within the Airbnb Community Compact are intended to give local governments data and other information that they have been asking for from the start-up. Some municipalities have long appealed for Airbnb data to help them crack down on illegal operators of large blocks of rooms, for instance.

That issue was front and center last year in New York City. Last May, after a protracted battle in court, Airbnb agreed to hand over anonymized data on the company’s hosts in the city to Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general. The goal, Mr. Schneidermann said at the time, was to hunt down so-called illegal hotels using the service.

On Wednesday, Mr. Schneiderman said Airbnb’s Community Compact “is a transparent ploy by Airbnb to act like a good corporate citizen when it is anything but. The company has all of the information and tools it needs to clean up its act. Until it does, no one should take this press release seriously.”