Sharing Economy Platforms Research Articles

The Effects of Online Trust-Building Mechanisms on Trust in the Sharing Economy: The Perspective of Providers

Trust is considered to be one of the key factors influencing the sustainable development of the sharing economy. In this paper, we focus on the trust issue of peer-to-peer accommodation models like Airbnb and Xiaozhu, which are among the most common examples of a sharing economy. This research divides trust into two types from the perspective of an accommodation provider in the context of peer-to-peer accommodation sharing: trust in the sharing platform and trust in consumers. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of how the three types of online trust-building mechanisms affect providers’ trust in the sharing platform and trust in consumers. The structural equation modelling with partial least square method was used to empirically test the influence of the online trust-building mechanisms of a sharing economy platform on provider’s trust in the platform and provider’s trust in consumers, based on a sample of 209 providers on online short-term rental platforms in China. The empirical results show that perceived personal safety mechanisms, perceived property safety mechanisms, and perceived review mechanisms are positively related to a provider’s trust in the platform. Provider’s trust in the platform has a positive effect on trust in consumers, while perceived personal safety and review mechanisms have a positive effect on provider’s trust in consumers by the mediation of trust in the platform. This study has theoretical and practical significance for the promotion of the research and development of trust mechanisms in the sharing economy.

Participants’ interaction with sharing economy platforms in Russia

PurposeThe objective of this contribution is to pinpoint the practices of users' interactions with sharing economy platforms in Russia, as well as explore the source of motivation to use such platforms on the three cases of sharing economy platforms in Russia: Darudar [Gift-to-gift] (sharing goods), Bank Vremeny [Timebank] (sharing time and services) and Couchsurfing (sharing accommodation and leisure).Design/methodology/approachEmpirical data were gathered from 25 in-depth interviews conducted for active users of the platforms and ethnographic observations of users' offline meetings as well as digital observations.FindingsThe results reveal that participants of the platforms tend to establish their own rules and norms of interaction, thus, fostering social connection. Findings suggest that users of sharing economy platforms are driven by the potential of minimising transaction costs and intrinsic motivation, such as getting experiences which have no market alternatives, upcycling and disposal of belongings, self-promotion and self-realisation.Original/valueIn this study, sharing as based in the sharing economy is conceptualised as a separate principle of resource allocation. The theory was applied to the empirical material of three Russian platforms, which has not been done previously in the paradigm of sharing. The current literature on the sharing economy is largely switched to the for-profit North American platforms, while case studies from other settings are lacking. This article aims to fill this gap by providing insights into non-profit platforms' operation in Russia.

New digital tourism ecosystem: understanding the relationship between information sources and sharing economy platforms

PurposeThe purpose of this study resides in a better understanding of the relationship between the use of traditional operators, online travel agencies, such as Booking.com and Expedia, comparators, tour operators and traditional travel agencies, airlines, new non-tourist companies like Google and the use of sharing economy platforms to obtain information about a travel destination.Design/methodology/approachApplying an analysis to 13,243 tourists from 19 European countries, a binomial logit analysis was carried out with the latest version of the SPSS statistical analysis program.FindingsThe use of Expedia and Booking.com has a positive effect on the use of sharing economy platforms to obtain information about travel destinations. However, it can also be observed how the use of Google, Facebook, tour operators and travel agencies, airlines and Twitter can have a negative effect.Practical implicationsThe study provides interesting recommendations for destinations to be able to design better marketing strategies which focus on cognitive components of the destination image in different information sources.Originality/valueTourists search for information that helps them make better decisions when it comes to choosing a travel destination and they do so using different channels that have evolved over time. The proliferation of internet platforms has transformed the way tourists search for information and consequently the way the secondary image of destination is formed. The sharing economy plays an important role in this new tourism ecosystem. These new business models, based on platforms, coexist with other traditional information sources, tour operators and travel agencies and airlines. However, previous studies have not inquired about the relationship between them all.

Entry of Providers Onto a Sharing Economy Platform: Macro-Level Factors and Social Interaction

Despite the recent proliferation of sharing economy platforms, little is known about what drives providers (individual people who own assets) to enter onto a sharing economy platform. The platform does not own the assets that underlie transactions but depends on individuals to provide them. In the burgeoning market of home rental properties, we investigate the role of macro-level factors to explain geographical differences in the number of entries of providers with diverse motivations onto a sharing economy platform. Using a sample of listings posted by property owners on the Airbnb platform across different cities in Spain between 2010 and 2015, we examine how social and economic motivations of providers interact with macro-level antecedents to affect their entry. We show that macro-level drivers have a different effect on the entry of providers depending on the degree of face-to-face interaction between host and guest. We find that industry growth and the availability of underused assets increase the entry onto the platform of hosts who have little face-to-face interaction with guests, while the strictness of regulation decreases their entry. By contrast, the entry of hosts with high face-to-face interaction with guests is not affected by these factors. We discuss theoretical and research implications of the role of social interaction in provider entry and offer practical advice for those in the sharing economy about the role of social interaction in driving providers onto their platforms.

Entry of Providers Onto a Sharing Economy Platform: Macro-Level Factors and Social Interaction

Entry of Providers Onto a Sharing Economy Platform: Macro-Level Factors and Social Interaction

A 2020 perspective on “How knowledge contributor characteristics and reputation affect user payment decisions in paid Q&A? An empirical analysis from the perspective of trust theory”

Abstract Knowledge sharing economy has been revolutionizing the way people obtain knowledge. As the foundation of sustainable development of sharing economy, factors influencing trust are worth studying, especially in paid Q&A since users (buyer) barely have no information about the knowledge commodity (answer) except for the price. From the perspective of knowledge contributor, the previous article has examined the role of knowledge contributor characteristics and reputation on trust and user pay decisions in paid Q&A, and we have highlighted the importance of trust in knowledge sharing economy. Now, with massive data in sharing economy platforms, researchers have the opportunity to take advantage of advanced methods like text analysis, sentiment analysis, computer vision and deep learning to uncover the effect of self-reported information, facial features, and social influence on trust. Moreover, in combination with neuroscience, researchers can reveal the mechanism of how trust-related factors affect payment decisions more objectively and accurately.

A 2020 perspective on “The limits of trust-free systems: A literature review on blockchain technology and trust in the sharing economy”

Abstract Blockchain technology has reached a trough of disillusionment, especially with regard to sharing economy platforms. Following up on our reasoning in the limits of trust-free systems, we provide propositions as to why. In particular, we suggest three common misconceptions on the applicability of blockchain technology to the sharing economy as well as the broader platform economy. First, blockchain technology does not inherently solve all trust issues when it comes to real-world interactions between human beings: the trust-free fallacy. Second, the role and importance of platforms as the broker and curator must not be neglected, but often is: the disintermediation fallacy. Third, unlike tech enthusiasts, main street consumers do not put much weight on the underlying technology: the consumer will fallacy.

Understanding the intention to buy secondhand clothing on sharing economy platforms: The influence of sustainability, distance from the consumption system, and economic motivations

AbstractSharing economy (SE) platforms are increasingly providing an effective means of connecting providers and users of secondhand goods. While media seem to emphasize that the trend of selling/buying secondhand has been growing due to the consolidation and development of peer‐to‐peer (P2P) sharing platforms, a comprehensive identification of the antecedents of buying secondhand on SE platforms is virtually missing. This study addresses this gap by (a) identifying different sets of motivations and attitudes leading consumers to adopt SE platforms for secondhand buying and (b) testing a model on a sample of UK consumers in the context of P2P sharing platforms for secondhand clothing. This study reveals that there are three major antecedents of consumers' attitude towards buying secondhand clothes on P2P–SE platforms: perceived sustainability, economic motivations, and taking a distance from the consumption system. Perceived sustainability and economic motivations influence positively attitude toward buying secondhand, as well as motivations in the form of distance from the consumption system. Attitude toward buying secondhand is positively influenced also by distance from the system and, in turn, has a strong positive influence on behavioral intention to buy secondhand clothes. Moreover, past experience of buying secondhand online has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between perceived sustainability and distance from the consumption system.

The motivation for Muslim customers’ participation in the sharing economy

The sharing economy concept has attracted considerable attention among both academic researchers and practitioners. Several factors that can motivate customers’ participation in sharing-economy activities have been discussed in the literature, but there has been an absence of investigations of the Muslim context, which could differ markedly given the significant impact of Islamic values regarding what is allowed or forbidden. This study seeks to narrow this gap by exploring the motivation for Muslim customers’ participation in the sharing economy. By conducting qualitative research using grounded theory methods, we investigated Muslim customers of Go-Jek, the largest transportation sharing-economy platform in Indonesia. Our findings lead to the proposal of a Muslim customer motivation model, indicating that diverse intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including Islamic values, tend to impact on the motivations behind Muslim customers’ participation in this sharing-economy platform, which offers a significant contribution to the literature, as well as important implications for management.

Sharing Economy Platforms’ Pricing Strategies and Decision Preferences: The Example of DiDi

The sharing economy model is a new trend in the development of the Internet economy and has been widely applied in transportation industry, showing an increase in its popularity. The proliferation of the sharing economy’s application prompts an investigation of its mechanisms and implications. Using DiDi, a car-sharing company, as an example, and a revenue sharing model built for the study, this paper analyzes the main factors influencing the pricing strategy choices and the decision-making behaviors of sharing economy platforms, then analyzes the factors influencing the risk of resource and customer loss. The following conclusions are drawn: First, when faced with different optimal price choices to ensure revenue maximization for platform only, versus both the platform and the providers, pricing decision of sharing economy platform is related to the sharing costs of providers and the price elasticity of expected transaction volumes. Second, a sharing economy platform tends to choose a low price strategy when the user scale (or number of users) does not exceed the scale threshold (user base), which represents the positive feedback point; otherwise, it involves high price strategies. Third, the decision preferences of a sharing platform will vary according to different marketing stages. The contributions reveal that the price-setting decisions of platform are influenced by sharing costs of providers, user scale and price elasticity.

Innovations in Tourism Marketing: Sharing Economy Platform

This research summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of potential tax evasions and increased rental rates that one of innovative home-sharing platforms might causes. The study aims to find possible tax evasion that each property and each host can cause by considering creative activities in tourism marketing and a sharing economy platform, Airbnb in Prague. Besides, the authors identified the potential problems in the rental accommodation market. Systematization literary sources and approaches for solving the problem of sharing economy platforms indicate that although these platforms benefit for some economic, social and environmental issues, they pose some troubles in various markets. Regarding methodological tools of the research method, this paper used a web scraping technique to gain data from the Airbnb website. The authors analysed 13918 accommodations that were rented by 6768 Airbnb users between April 2016 and March 2017. In the study, the authors used the Microsoft Excel 2016 program and a model created by researchers to make calculations. The paper presented the results of an empirical analysis showing that in case the sensitive regulation of the number of nights will apply the potential tax incomes will lower only on 0.98% when considering accommodations and on 6.40% when considering users. In this case, 16832 rental units will appear in the long-term housing market. Moreover, tax evasion becomes more when considering each dwelling instead of each host because some users rented more than one rental accommodation. The research also empirically confirms and theoretically proves that that extended limits for overnight stays yield benefits for costs, supply and demand of rental housing. Those findings can be useful for governments, academicians that are interested in tourism marketing, firms in the accommodation industry that look for new marketing innovations and short or long-term housing market participants such as lessor and lessees. Keywords: accommodation, tourism, marketing, Airbnb, innovation, home-sharing, Prague, sharing economy, taxation.

Collaborative tourism in Europe: the role of travel motivations on new platforms and information sources

The sharing economy has emerged as an alternative of suppliers of goods and services traditionally provided by long-established industries. Since its inception, the tourism industry has presented itself as one of the sectors that has allowed it to keep growing and in which the sharing economy has had a greater impact. Thus, this study analyses 'collaborative tourism' (the sharing economy in tourism) and the use of other information sources (comparators, social media) and explores the profile and behaviour of tourists who participate in it (socio-demographic characteristics, nationalities and travel motivations). The paper also identifies the differences between the profile of tourists who use different kinds of collaborative platforms (Airbnb, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, Coachsurfing and BlaBlaCar), differentiating between platforms where an economic transaction is required and those that are free. The results indicate the existence of a grouping together of cultures (countries) in four segments, depending on the use they do of sharing economy platforms. Applying a comprehensive analysis with 9,383 tourists from 19 European countries, the study provides interesting conclusions for destinations with a view to better designing marketing activities across different European countries.

The sharing economy in Germany and Vietnam - is it internationally uniform

The sharing economy is of international interest. It is said to be an international phenomenon - however, is there one 'sharing economy' or are there differences between countries? By means of a content analysis of texts available on online sharing economy platforms, this study contributes to an understanding of the sharing economy as an embedded component of the economy and of society. Two countries, Germany and Vietnam, are considered, and an international collection of 280 evaluated online platforms serves as the dataset. Asking which of these international online platforms are available in these two countries and, in a second instance, comparing their features with one another provides an idea of their similarities and differences. On the basis of this, assumptions are made in order to conduct further research on the international aspect of the sharing economy. In a broader perspective, it points to how the sharing economy and the frame of a country-specific system, including its economy and culture, shape it. This is relevant for all actors such as individuals, enterprises, institutions, and academics who are part of the sharing economy.

The sharing economy in Germany and Vietnam - is it internationally uniform

The sharing economy is of international interest. It is said to be an international phenomenon - however, is there one 'sharing economy' or are there differences between countries? By means of a content analysis of texts available on online sharing economy platforms, this study contributes to an understanding of the sharing economy as an embedded component of the economy and of society. Two countries, Germany and Vietnam, are considered, and an international collection of 280 evaluated online platforms serves as the dataset. Asking which of these international online platforms are available in these two countries and, in a second instance, comparing their features with one another provides an idea of their similarities and differences. On the basis of this, assumptions are made in order to conduct further research on the international aspect of the sharing economy. In a broader perspective, it points to how the sharing economy and the frame of a country-specific system, including its economy and culture, shape it. This is relevant for all actors such as individuals, enterprises, institutions, and academics who are part of the sharing economy.

Assessment and improvement of the Moscow residential real estate market's environmental friendliness by sharing economy principles

Sharing economy platforms transform traditional production and consumption systems in cities around the world. While the sharing economy aims to increase the resilience of different economic systems, its actual economic, social, and environmental effects remain under-researched. During the pandemic of Covid-19, economic and environmental crises, and growing uncertainty, it becomes essential to promote sustainable and promising forms of shared (distributed) resources. Ways to benefit from the sharing economy's advantages, despite the significant number of Russian and foreign publications, are still poorly understood. At present, it is crucial to explore the roles, perspectives, and effects of both resource owners and users and Russian interaction platforms. Let us look at this sharing economy's development aspect on the example of the Moscow real estate market, taking into account the environmental impact of the large-scale housing renovation program. There have been identified some digital environmental IT platforms aimed at improving the efficiency of transfer and use of information resources (the main principle of sharing – to improve the efficiency of resources and information, in this case - environmental) on the environmental situation in Moscow and the region to inform the public about the opportunities and the primary environmental risks in housing purchase or construction.

Modeling the Determinants of Consumers Intentions to Use Online Sharing Economy Platforms

Modeling the Determinants of Consumers Intentions to Use Online Sharing Economy Platforms

신남방지역 디지털경제 협력방안 (The Digital Economy in ASEAN and India: Policy Implications for Korea)

신남방지역 디지털경제 협력방안 (The Digital Economy in ASEAN and India: Policy Implications for Korea)

Two-Sided Adverse Selection and Bilateral Reviews in Sharing Economy

We examine two-sided adverse selection in a sharing economy context where a platform matches service providers with consumers and both providers and consumers derive heterogeneous payoffs depending on whom they are matched with. Unlike the more prevalent unilateral review scheme in which only consumers rate providers, many sharing economy platforms use a bilateral review scheme in which both consumers and providers rate each other to reduce the information asymmetry on both sides of the market and to facilitate superior matches. However, we show that the bilateral review scheme does not necessarily lead to a higher social welfare than either the unilateral review scheme or the no review scheme. If the proportion of the low-cost consumers is less than a threshold, consumers are better off, the platform is worse off, and the providers are worse off under the bilateral review scheme than the unilateral review scheme. The key driver for these results is that the price competition between providers for the low-cost consumers can be fundamentally different under the different review schemes; the price competition affects the consumer preference for a provider and hence the match between consumers and providers, which ultimately determines the payoffs to participants and the social welfare. Our results highlight the importance of addressing the consumer-side adverse selection first to eliminate a market failure even in the sharing economy context. Our findings also contribute to the adverse selection literature by identifying the critical role played by demand and supply conditions on the impact of adverse selection.

Airbnb impact and regulation issues through destination life cycle concept

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to re-establish the role of Airbnb platform in the contemporary tourism destination management. Given the fact that sharing economy is mega-trend with various impacts at any destination, the paper’s purpose is to underline that sharing economy platforms, such as Airbnb, has a different impact on each stage of destination’s life cycle. Given this, a more effective strategy and policies plan should be deployed and implemented, expanding the benefits of multiplying and accelerating effects on local economy. Design/methodology/approach The neologisms of “Over-tourism” and “Tourism-phobia” and the growing conflicts between locals and tourist, along with various collateral implications in local economy, were the initial incentive to focus on the subject. The methodology was based on the critical approach of regulatory measures taken in destinations with different characteristics. Findings Findings indicate that general and nationwide restrictions on Airbnb are often unfounded, mainly based on bias against its impact on traditional hotels and local lifestyle preservation, rather than concrete and objective impact measurements. Research limitations/implications A primary qualitative and quantitative research should follow the concept of association between destination’s life cycle and sharing economy applications, for authorities to form the appropriate regulatory framework. Originality/value The paper associates the implications of sharing economy with the stages of destinations life cycle, underlying that measures need to be customized to the specific characteristics of each destination.

Factors influencing travelers’ behavioral intentions to use P2P accommodation based on trading activity: Airbnb vs Couchsurfing

Purpose The growth of information and communication technology and the appearance of the sharing economy have affected the market. This trend will potentially create a competitive transformation, especially in the accommodation sector. While Airbnb has become the leader in the sharing economy, more competitors are coming into the market, some with different business propositions and positioning strategies, thereby offering different points of differences (PODs). The purpose of this study is to identify and compare the factors that influence the usage of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation services for trading activity (renting vs lending), particularly between Airbnb and Couchsurfing. More specifically, this study examines the causal relationships among some major factors that influence customers’ purchase intentions, such as perceived risk, perceived value, price sensitivity and word of mouth. Design/methodology/approach A total of 400 millennial respondents – 200 for each service – who have used the respective mobile applications participated in the online survey. Using structural equation modeling, the analysis revealed that the model acts differently across the groups. Findings The results revealed that Airbnb respondents paid more attention to perceived risks when booking the accommodation, thus indicating that they are more risk-averse, whereas Couchsurfing’s users sought the perceived value that they would receive at the destination. Practical implications The findings of this study are beneficial for Airbnb and Couchsurfing in particular and players in the industry in general. Originality/value This study reveals that factors that influence the intention to use the sharing economy platform work differently based on the form of trading activities.