Managing the value Co-creation of peer service providers in the sharing economy: The perspective of customer incivility

Abstract

Previous studies have discussed the preconditions for peer service providers participation in value co-creation from the perspective of the platforms or the peer service providers themselves. However, little attention has been paid to the influence of customers. In the sharing economy, however, customers interact closely with peer service providers, and they have a major influence on the attitudes and behaviours of peer service providers. Based on resource conservation theory, this study uses three waves of tracking surveys and two experiments to investigate the impact of customer unfriendliness on the shared value creation of peer service providers. The results suggest that rude customers in the sharing economy reduce the value creation behaviour of peer service providers by increasing emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, self-efficacy in regulating negative emotions is found to buffer the mechanism by which customer incivility increases the likelihood of emotional exhaustion. Peer service providers with higher self-efficacy in negative emotion regulation have weaker such relationships. This research fills the gap of how customers influence the value creation behaviour of peer service providers in the sharing economy, identifies the potential negative impacts of customer incivility and increases the overall added value of the sharing economy.