Sustainability Potentials of the Sharing Economy: The case of accommodation sharing platforms

The sharing economy, which facilitates technology-enabled sharing of underused assets, is an umbrella for a variety of segments and platforms. The concept includes peer-to-peer, business-to-business and business-to-consumer platforms which are celebrated for their potential to facilitate a transformative change towards a sustainable society grounded in access over ownership, empowerment, inclusiveness, democracy and an economically, environmentally and socially sound way of doing business. While claims emphasising the sustainability potentials of the sharing economy are ubiquitous in the literature, research on the sustainability implications of the sharing economy is scarce and the potentials have not been contested in scientific studies. Critics of the sharing economy have brought to light some of the negative repercussions sharing platforms might create: exacerbation of wealth inequality, increase of environmental degradation and a race to the bottom. This thesis takes an explorative approach and synthesises the overarching sustainability claims inherent to the sharing economy which are then tested on the accommodation segment. The analytical framework utilised for the discussion of sustainability claims emerged from the literature and primary data was collected via ten in-depth interviews with providers of accommodation sharing platforms and a quantitative survey with their users. The research found a wide spectrum of business models and identified different sustainability implications for each of type of accommodation sharing platforms

Urban Sharing in Shanghai

This city report is the result of a Mobile Research Lab conducted online in Shanghai during spring 2020. The Mobile Research Lab involves a combination of methods, including case studies, interviews, observations, expert panels, and in-situ field work. This report presents insights gained by the Urban Sharing research team Oksana Mont (PI), Andrius Plepys, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Matthias Lehner, Steven Curtis, Lucie Zvolska and Ana Maria Arbelaez Velez

Urban Sharing in Toronto

“Urban Sharing in Toronto” explores the landscape of the sharing economy in the city context. This research is a result of a Mobile Research Lab conducted by 8 researchers from Lund university in 2019. Specific focus is on three sectors: sharing of space, mobility and physical goods. For each sector, we discuss the drivers and barriers to the sharing economy, the associated sustainability impacts, the potential impacts on incumbent sectors, and the institutional context of sharing. Then, attention is turned to the role of the city council in engaging with the sharing economy and specific governance mechanisms employed by the city council are described. Since the sharing economy is not sustainable by default, urban sharing organisations, city governments and incumbents all have important roles to play in ensuring that the sharing economy positively impacts cities and their citizens. In the face of negative perceptions and possible impacts of the sharing economy, we may need to be more deliberate in thinking in terms of scaling the sharing economy to the size, needs, and capacities of cities. In this report we provide five recommendations to the City of Toronto and its citizens.Insights contained within this report may support the City of Toronto and other Sharing Cities, as well as urban sharing organisations and third-party actors in Toronto and beyond in their strategic work with the sharing economy for sustainability

Sustainability framings of accommodation sharing

The existing research often overlooks the fact that accommodation sharing is not a homogeneous sector but comprises rental, reciprocal and free platforms. This paper aims to compare sustainability narratives held by operators and users of the three platform types with the narratives identified in the literature. First, drawing on framing theory, environmental, economic and social framings of accommodation sharing are mapped based on the extant literature and expert interviews. Second, sustainability framings of operators and users from the three types of accommodation sharing platforms are presented. The data is collected via 10 in-depth interviews and 86 responses to a qualitative structured online questionnaire. We find that current framings of sustainability implications of accommodation sharing vary among those who formulate them as well as among the three platform types. This has implications for the role of these platforms in advancing different types of sustainability

How institutional work by sharing economy organizations and city governments shapes sustainability

In this chapter, we explore how the institutionalization of the sharing economy takes place in cities by applying the framework of institutional work to SEOs (Zvolska et al. 2019) and city governments. Both large and small, for-profit and non-profit sharing organizations are included in this study. Our intention is to contribute to research on the sharing economy by retooling conceptualizations of institutional work, and to contribute to the institutional work literature by testing the institutional theory framework against rich empirical data from SEOs, third-party actors and cities

How do sharing organisations create and disrupt institutions? Towards a framework for institutional work in the sharing economy

The sharing economy is a new form of resource distribution that is affecting traditional markets, cities and individuals, and challenging the prevalent regulatory frameworks, social norms and belief systems. While studies have examined some of its disruptive effects on institutional actors, there has been less focus on the ways in which sharing economy organisations work to create new or disrupt prevalent institutions. This study aims to fill this gap by 1) applying a framework for institutional work by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) to help understand, map out and classify a variety of mechanisms for urban sharing organisations to engage in institutional creation and disruption, and by 2) testing and adjusting the framework to the context of the sharing economy. The analysis builds on empirical data from case studies, field observations and almost 70 interviews with representatives of urban sharing organisations and actors in their organisational field

A decade of the sharing economy : Concepts, users, business and governance perspectives

Sharing economy platforms have been transforming production and consumption systems in cities around the world. While the sharing economy may contribute to addressing sustainability issues, its actual economic, social and environmental impacts remain poorly understood. Advancing more sustainably promising forms of sharing and leveraging its benefits, while circumventing its pitfalls, is becoming increasingly important in the era of Covid-19 and climate crisis, economic downturn and uncertainty, and loss of social connectedness, particularly in anonymous urban environments. The ways to capitalise on strengths of the sharing economy are still poorly understood. In particular, the roles and perspectives of users, businesses and municipal governments in institutionalising the sharing economy in various geographical contexts are essential to examine. This volume seeks to advance the research field by focusing on four research areas: 1) understanding the sharing economy conceptually; 2) user perspectives on the sharing economy; 3) business perspective on the sharing economy; and 4) urban governance perspective on the sharing economy. The twenty articles in this volume discuss sustainability implications of the sharing economy from different perspectives, in various geographical contexts, and drawing on a range of disciplines. The volume makes a significant contribution by bringing in empirical findings from emerging and developing economies, including Brazil, China, Indonesia, Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, thereby supplementing more frequently discussed perspectives from high-income countries. The volume also outlines the course for future research