Sharing Economy In Tourism Research Articles

Is the sharing economy inclusive? The age-related segmentation of Polish inhabitants from the perspective of the sharing economy in tourism

The sharing economy (SE) in tourism (SET) refers to all tourist-oriented initiatives and services based on individuals’ practices of sharing resources with others, including transport and accommodation, among others, through the use of online networks. While tourism is one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the SE, the question arises if everyone has equal access to the SET. The aim of this paper is to verify the age-related differences of those who participate in the SET. We hypothesize that the mean age of those who potentially participate in the SET is lower than for non-participants. For this purpose, we conducted a cluster analysis on a sample of N = 35,279 Polish inhabitants to classify them according to their potential participation in the SET. We found that 22% of Polish inhabitants are potential participants in the SET. Their mean age is around 36 years. Those who are excluded (or who have a high chance of being excluded) from the SET have a mean age higher than those who are potential SET participants. Their share in total Polish inhabitants is 28%. Our findings may have broader significance for SET providers in Central-Eastern European countries, who (will) face problems of an aging population.

Examining recent research in the field of sharing economy in tourism

Sharing economy has become a rather troublesome concept and business model in the process of tourism development during the recent years. Despite its undoubtful economic benefits for service providers and consumers, there are numerous negative impacts which can be related to the sharing economy, ultimately leading to unsustainable tourism development on destination level. In general, sharing economy can be attributed numerous benefits, but in terms of tourism, it recently became closely related to the issue of overtourism, thus becoming one of the initiators of negative attitude of the local community towards the future tourism development. Therefore, the concept of sharing economy has been in the focus of numerous researchers during the last several years, with increasing number of papers being published since 2016. This research is focused on analyzing the evolution and importance of sharing economy within the tourism study. The focus is given to the bibliographic analysis of journal articles within the “sharing economy in tourism” search. Additionally, based on qualitative content analysis the aim is to identify current state of the research in this field and to determine research gap with respect to the issue of overtourism and to identify future research potentials.

Externalities of development of the sharing economy in tourism cities

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to identify the state-of-the-art of scientific research on externalities generated in cities by the sharing economy in tourism (SET) based on an extensive literature review. Design/methodology/approach This review detected benefits and costs of the SET in cities development described in the literature using the economic externalities theory approach. The SALSA (Search, AppraisaL, Synthesis and Analysis) research procedure was used to collect relevant academic articles. For findings, the qualitative and quantitative content analysis combined to make a critical analysis of selected papers was conducted. Findings Thirty articles devoted to the impact of the SET in cities were identified. Five topics that gained researchers’ attention were recognized: real estate market; transportation; quality of life and gentrification; entrepreneurship and innovativeness of citizens; and local budgets’ incomes. The studies that present externalities of development of the SET in a more complex way are extremely rare. Research limitations/implications Research limitations are related to the methods used. The subjectivism of the research is a limitation to possibilities to achieve similar results when analyzing the same set of papers by different researchers. The results then are not to be generalized. Practical implications The research reveals a list of problems with externalities of the development of the SET in tourism destinations. Those problems are to be solved by policymakers in cities. Originality/value This study identified the gaps of previous research on the impacts of the SET on cities’ development. The paper presented an original conceptualization of future research.