Online and Offline Communities in the Sharing Economy

Taneli Vaskelainen,Laura Piscicelli

doi:10.3390/su10082927

Abstract

The online community is crucial to sharing economy platforms because without it, no transactions can take place. Online communities have been studied extensively, but so far, little attention has been paid to how they link to different offline communities, such as geographic (e.g., neighborhoods) and relational communities (e.g., friends and colleagues). In this study, we address this gap by examining the importance of communities to the users and the entrepreneurs of the goods-sharing platform Ecomodo. We conduct a qualitative content analysis of archival and interview data to uncover the importance of different communities and the relationships among them. We discover that the platform design aimed to facilitate lending and borrowing in relational communities. However, geographic communities were more important to the users since most of them joined the platform to be acquainted with their neighbors. We also find that the platform entrepreneurs underestimated the behavioral changes needed to use the platform. The producers were not used to asking for money to lend their possessions, and it was difficult to teach consumers to borrow instead of buying. We use these findings to offer recommendations to practitioners and discuss some avenues for further research.

Highlights

Over the last decade, the rise of the sharing economy—defined by Frenken and Schor [1] as “consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized assets (‘idle capacity’), possibly for money”—has received growing attention because of its potential to foster more sustainable lifestyles [2]
We examine communities from the sharing economy platforms perspective and use the word communities more loosely to refer to groups of people that are relevant to the functioning of the platform
We examined what kinds of tools the platform offered to facilitate the creation of different communities and how the online community used and perceived them

Summary

Introduction

The rise of the sharing economy—defined by Frenken and Schor [1] (pp. 4–5) as “consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized assets (‘idle capacity’), possibly for money”—has received growing attention because of its potential to foster more sustainable lifestyles [2]. By tapping into the excess capacity of existing goods, such as cars and houses, the sharing economy can prevent new purchases, increase resource efficiency, and reduce waste [3]. The sharing economy represents a promising alternative to current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, and its wider diffusion can accelerate the much-needed transition towards sustainability [4]. Sharing economy practices (e.g., renting, swapping, lending and borrowing) are often facilitated by digital platforms that connect individuals who offer their goods (peer providers or producers) with people (peer consumers) willing to make use of the items for a short period [5]. Sharing economy platforms have to reach a critical mass of users to effectively match supply (producers) with demand (consumers) [6,7,8]. Interactions between producers and consumers require a significant degree of trust that platforms typically strive to create through the use of reputation systems, such as user ratings and reviews [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion