Consumers' choice among peer-to-peer sharing platforms: The other side of the coin

Many peer-to-peer sharing platforms are transforming their business model from sharing for free to renting with or without in-person interactions. How will these changes affect consumers’ participation in peer-to-peer sharing of personal items? The work studies consumers’ choice among three business models that vary on two dimensions: “free versus renting” and “with or without in-person interactions.” The novelty is to consider that consumers’ choice can be driven by their perceptions of relationships among peers, which are shaped by the business models of sharing platforms. Perceptions of communal sharing (CS) relationships among peers are found to differ across business models and to predict consumers’ choice among the platforms above and beyond the economic and social benefits that consumers seek. Interestingly, perceptions of CS are not only found to explain the choice of a sharing for the free business model over the two others, but also the choice of renting with in-person interactions over renting without in-person interactions. For managers of peer-to-peer sharing platforms, this means that renting does not make sharing completely similar to traditional market exchanges as long as in-person interactions are involved. For scholars, this calls for more work on the factors that bring about perceptions of CS

A relational-models view to explain peer-to-peer sharing

textabstractThe growth of peer-to-peer sharing is crucially dependent on continued participation of current platform members and on them behaving prosocially towards other participants who are usually strangers. We propose a relational-models view that revolves around the idea that how members perceive the relationships among participants on a sharing platform significantly affects these behavioural outcomes. We test this idea with a survey where we capture participants’ perceptions of sharing relationships using Fiske’s (1991) relational models ‒ communal sharing, market pricing, and equality matching. We show that communal sharing and equality matching foster prosocial behaviour (which we label sharing citizenship behaviour) and the willingness to continue participating, whereas market pricing does not have the negative effects we expected. Our work advances relational models theory in addition to contributing to the literature on the sharing economy

A relational-models view to explain peer-to-peer sharing

The growth of peer-to-peer sharing is crucially dependent on continued participation of current platform members and on them behaving prosocially towards other participants who are usually strangers. We propose a relational-models view that revolves around the idea that how members perceive the relationships among participants on a sharing platform significantly affects these behavioural outcomes. We test this idea with a survey where we capture participants’ perceptions of sharing relationships using Fiske’s (1991) relational models ‒ communal sharing, market pricing, and equality matching. We show that communal sharing and equality matching foster prosocial behaviour (which we label sharing citizenship behaviour) and the willingness to continue participating, whereas market pricing does not have the negative effects we expected. Our work advances relational models theory in addition to contributing to the literature on the sharing economy

The Distinctive Domain of the Sharing Economy: Definitions, Value Creation, and Implications for Research

The objective of this special issue is to expand our understanding of the sharing economy. To this end, we consider how the sharing economy can be demarcated and provide a definition that distinguishes the sharing economy from other forms of economic organization and resource orchestration. Specifically, the sharing economy entails multisided platforms that facilitate user access to - rather than ownership of - assets that are rivalrous in their use, and that are not owned by said platforms. Using this definition, we identify and show how the sharing economy creates and distributes economic value among participants and we summarize the six articles in the special issue. All in all, this introduction and the six studies clarify how the sharing economy and its three main constituencies - sharing platforms, asset providers, and users - reduce commercial friction by increasing trust, facilitating interaction, easing resource access and orchestration, and maximizing ecosystem-wide value