Consumer motives for peer-to-peer sharing

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.326

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 204, 10 December 2018, Pages 144-157

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.326 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Overview of user motives for taking part or evading peer-to-peer sharing (PPS).
•
Development of a corresponding survey-based measurement model.
•
Identification of the strongest motives for and against PPS usage intentions.
•
(+) Financial benefits, trust in other users, and modern lifestyle.
•
(−) Effort expectancy, independence through ownership, and process risk concerns.

Abstract

Contemporary e-commerce platforms enable the exchange of idle resources among private individuals directly from peer to peer. The success of peer-to-peer sharing platforms largely depends on the capability of platform providers to understand the users' motives for engagement. To investigate the relative importance of consumer motives for and against peer-to-peer sharing, we develop a theoretical model based on a comprehensive set of potential consumer motives. We validate our model by means of a survey among 745 participants. Our findings suggest financial benefits, trust in other users, modern lifestyle, effort expectancy, and ecological sustainability as the five most important drivers and prerequisites of platform usage intentions. Based on our findings, we suggest directions for future research on peer-based sharing and discuss implications for both theory and practice.

Introduction

Today's e-commerce landscape has undergone the development of novel and innovative forms of online marketplaces. An ever-growing variety of platforms now enables resource coordination and exchange among private individuals (PwC, 2015; Sundararajan, 2016). While the rapid growth of ventures such as Airbnb is virtually unparalleled (Avital et al., 2015, 2014), many other platforms fail to grow and eventually vanish (Choudary, 2013; Van Alstyne et al., 2016). Against this background, it is vital for platform operators to understand the clientele they are serving and what attracts and alienates their current (and prospective) users. Thus, research providing deeper insights into consumers' motives for or against partaking in this “sharing economy” is essential.

Importantly, the popular notion of the sharing economy represents an umbrella term and often subsumes a broad variety of concepts and ideas. Common examples include “collaborative consumption” (Botsman and Rogers, 2010; Meelen and Frenken, 2015), “access-based consumption” (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2012), and “commercial sharing systems” (Lamberton and Rose, 2012). Within the scope of this work, we focus on a specific subset within the broader sharing economy landscape, which we denote as peer-to-peer sharing (PPS). PPS comprises peer-based transactions that can be characterized as non-corporate, commercial, temporal, and tangible. We present a more detailed definition for the context of this work in Section 2. To understand consumer motives (i.e., drivers, prerequisites, and impediments) for peer-to-peer sharing, we employ and empirically evaluate a comprehensive theoretical model grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991, 1985). In this context, a motive for or against a certain activity can be defined as a factor that arouses, directs, and integrates a person's behavior in relation to this activity (Iso-Ahola, 1982). Based on prior literature, we explore 17 prospective motives and their effects on consumer attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, behavioral intention, and actual PPS platform usage. Overall, we find empirical support for twelve distinct factors playing a significant role as antecedents of PPS usage. Among these, our findings suggest that financial benefits and the desire to display a modern lifestyle are the strongest drivers and that trust in other users represents a crucial precondition. On the other side of the coin, effort expectancy, process risk concerns, and the independence gained through ownership (instead of relying on sharing alternatives) are key impediments to PPS usage. In linking consumer motives to intentions and actual platform usage, this paper makes two core contributions. First, based on our extensive overview of prospective motives, we present a validated, survey-based measurement model with satisfactory psychometric properties. Second, we establish a comprehensive model of consumer motives for either taking part in or evading PPS services, thereby shedding light on the usage of platform-mediated PPS as a socio-technical system.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we describe the basic principles of the sharing economy and introduce a tangible delineation of PPS. We then review the literature on sharing economy adoption and consumer motives, on the basis of which we derive a theoretical model. Section 3 then presents the procedures and results of our survey. We discuss our findings in Section 4. Section 5 concludes.

Section snippets

Related work and hypotheses development

Almost 30 years ago, Malone et al. (1987) foresaw that information technology (IT) would reduce transaction costs and thus make market-based coordination increasingly attractive in comparison to hierarchical coordination. The emergence of the sharing economy may be regarded as one manifestation of this progressive shift from hierarchical to decentralized and peer-based market schemes. Today, platforms such as Airbnb enable users to share access to their private resources with a large community

Survey design and procedure

To evaluate the proposed research model, we conducted two surveys. In the first survey, we operationalized and validated the measurement instruments for all of the model's constructs as reported in Hawlitschek et al. (2016b). To evaluate the proposed hypotheses in this study, we then conducted a second, large-scale online survey. In line with recent research on sharing platforms, we argue that PPS is particularly attractive to young users and so-called millennials (Akbar et al., 2016; EU, 2017;

Discussion

This paper makes two core contributions. First, we develop a validated, survey-based measurement model for consumer motives with satisfactory psychometric properties. This eases the study of PPS consumers for researchers and practitioners alike. Second, we establish a comprehensive model of consumer motives for taking part in or avoiding PPS, shedding light on the social side of platform-mediated PPS as a socio-technical system. Overall, we identified 12 distinct consumer motives as

Conclusion

The sharing economy is a growing and fascinating phenomenon. Peer-to-peer sharing (PPS) represents an important sub-category therein, including services such as accommodation sharing (e.g., Airbnb, Homestay), ride sharing (e.g., BlaBlaCar), and many niche platforms for renting special-purpose commodities (e.g., camera equipment, outdoor gear, boats, etc.). As we have highlighted in this paper, the range of user motives for either taking part in or avoiding PPS is truly diverse. While previous

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Marc Hild for his valuable support and feedback during the elaboration of the foundations of this article. Furthermore, we want to thank Christof Weinhardt and Alexander Mädche for their critical comments as well as Ryan Grabowski for proof reading. Lastly, we would like to express our thanks the anonymous reviewers.

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View full text

Consumer motives for peer-to-peer sharing

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Related work and hypotheses development

Survey design and procedure

Discussion

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change

Orgnizational Behav. Hum. Decis. Process.

J. Bus. Res.

Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change

J. Bus. Res.

Comput. Hum. Behav.

Comput. Stat. Data Anal.

Tourism Manag.

Environ. Innov. Soc. Transitions

Environ. Innov. Soc. Transitions

Electron. Commer. Res. Appl.

Ann. Tourism Res.

Ann. Tourism Res.

Electron. Commer. Res. Appl.

J. Clean. Prod.

Tourism Manag.

Geoforum

Privacy and human behavior in the age of information

Science

The theory of planned behaviour is alive and well, and not ready to retire: a commentary on Sniehotta, Presseau, and Araújo-Soares

Health Psychol. Rev.

From intentions to actions: a theory of planned behavior

Dimensions of consumer expertise

J. Consum. Res.

Alternative marketplaces in the 21st Century: building community through sharing events

J. Consum. Behav.

Millenials' intentions to book on Airbnb

Curr. Issues Tourism

Estimating nonresponse bias in mail surveys

J. Market.

Extending the understanding of end user information systems satisfaction formation: an equitable needs fulfillment model approach

MIS Q.

The collaborative economy: a disruptive innovation or much ado about nothing?

The sharing economy: friend or foe?

Empirical Analysis of Customer Motives in the Shareconomy: a Cross-sectoral Comparison

Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change

Psychol. Rev.

Access-based consumption: the case of car sharing

J. Consum. Res.

A muddle of models of motivation for using peer-to-peer economy systems

Quo vadis, TAM?

J. Assoc. Inf. Syst.

Behavioral intention formation in knowledge sharing: examining the roles of extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces, and organizational climate

MIS Q.

The Sharing Economy Lacks a Shared Definition

The Currency of the New Economy Is Trust

What's Mine Is Yours: the Rise of Collaborative Consumption

Predicting collaboration technology use: integrating technology adoption and collaboration research

J. Manag. Inf. Syst.

What is mine is NOT yours: further insight on what access-based consumption says about consumers

Am I afraid of my peers? Unserstanding the antecedents of information privacy concerns in the online social context

How to write up and report PLS analyses

Why Business Models Fail: Pipes Vs. Platforms. Wired

On product uncertainty in online markets: theory and evidence

MIS Q.

An extended privacy calculus model for e-commerce transactions

Inf. Syst. Res.

Exploring consumer attitudes to alternative models of consumption: motivations and barriers

J. Clean. Prod.

Racial discrimination in the sharing economy: evidence from a field experiment

Am. Econ. J. Appl. Econ.

Exploratory Study of Consumer Issues in Online Peer-to-peer Platform Markets

These Are the Cities where You Can Make the Most Money Renting Properties on Airbnb

Sharity: Die Zukunft des Teilens

How Airbnb Designs for Trust