Addressing the Contamination Issue in Fashion Sharing: Does Ownership Type of Shared Goods Matter?

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, there has been a growing trend in the sharing of commodities by renting or purchasing secondhand goods through online platforms—a phenomenon known as collaborative consumption (CC). One of the major concerns among CC users is the issue of contamination (i.e., feeling ‘grossed out’ when sharing items with anonymous others). Still, very little is known about how CC companies can handle this issue. The purpose of this research is to examine the issue of contamination through exploring the effect on consumers’ CC intentions by ownership type of the shared goods.