Platforms, Scales and Networks: Meshing a Local Sustainable Sharing Economy

Sharing economy digital platforms have been hailed as a way to manage finite resources to improve sustainability (e.g. Airbnb2014). At the heart of this is care for planet and climate, the protection of which entails developing forms of robustness such as social cohesion, collective action, fairer societies and mindful consumption (e.g. Randers et al. 2018). This requires global action at many levels (IPCC 2018), defined in terms of mitigation and adaptation¹.

This paper looks at how digital support for sharing practices might be designed to contribute to these goals. Introducing two studies of locally-managed platforms it builds on an analysis of the ‘relational assets’ generated through layers of collective neighbourhood sharing (Light and Miskelly 2015). Relational assets are the social benefits that emerge over time from local sharing initiatives, making further initiatives more likely to succeed. We offer recommendations for measured socio-technical intervention to develop a platform of platforms, so that these relational assets can contribute best to social sustainability. Relatedly, we adopt the concepts of mesh and scale to describe how platforms orientate to the physical spaces and activities of their users. As sharing is intrinsically social, requiring acts of collaboration and coordination to achieve resource management, we see CSCW as a good home for this discussion and the infrastructuring we propose, beyond the organization and into the neighbourhood.

While much of this paper is an examination of structures of neighbourhood sharing, presenting a cross-section and a longitudinal slice of London life, it is set against the rapid rise of the platforms of the sharing economy. Focusing on finite resources, rather than the movement of infinite intangible goods such as computer files (e.g. Aigrain 2011), we show how networks and platforms can support sharing in multiple ways that feed into better resource management. But we also seek to make the point that some ways of pursuing this are more sustainable than others (see Fig. 1). The findings suggest it is too simple a claim that sharing is good for the environment on the basis that, by making use of idle capacity, sharing uses fewer material resources than other forms of exchange (Curtis and Lehner 2019). This may be true, but the organization of sharing (and its relations with network technology) shows a link between the social aspects in caring-based sharing and environmental benefit, with the social cohesion fostered supporting capacity to mitigate (change damaging behaviour) and adapt (adjust to new conditions) in the face of global challenges (e.g. Randers et al. 2018; Raworth 2017). Our contribution is to reveal how CSCW insights can accelerate (and protect) caring-based sharing. Our orientation speaks to Dillahunt et al.’s (2017) recognition that discussion of topics ‘related to the pre-sharing economy’ is lacking (p. 11) though we would argue that we discuss sharing beyond the sharing economy (as they and others articulate it), rather than before it, i.e. we focus upon current activity not directly touched by new commercial networked models. We use this alternative approach to reconsider how technology is implemented.

The paper is organised as follows: a review of the opportunities and challenges of sharing; definitions of the sharing economy, scaling and meshing; two studies of neighbourhood sharing (cross-sectional and longitudinal); a discussion of spatial, social and economic characteristics and the types of network that support them; a conclusion offering a critique of current emphasis.

Sharing is a collaborative economic strategy, managing resources by borrowing /lending or collectively owning/acting/using. Studies show a range of physical goods and other finite, but less tangible, things get shared by and between people (e.g. Belk 2007). By way of introduction to our themes, Table 1 gives one answer from a short online survey on what counts as sharing, capturing a variety of more and less tangible things, lightweight organization and a mix of lending/borrowing and collective ownership, action and use (Light and Miskelly 2014). We note also the respondent’s mention of ‘neighbourhood’ – no scale was specified – and the absence of custom technology.

Unlike sharing as a whole, the sharing economy is digitally mediated. Curtis and Lehner’s literature review (2019) finds the ‘newness’ of the sharing economy comes from using ICT ‘to facilitate the efficient mediation or exchange between users and providers’ (np). Qualities include access instead of ownership, distributed networks of people and goods, and technologies that build and maintain such networks (Botsman and Rogers 2010). In these new systems, software matches people up and digital networks give potential for global reach.

The sharing economy mediates an increasing number of resource management interactions, offering brokering platforms and a structured process for exchange in a growing peer-to-peer marketplace (Bauwens 2012). The rapid global growth of a few brands in the for-profit sector of the sharing economy makes these players most apparent. These platforms scale by adding users without extending their software core (though advertising and servers may need to grow to win and manage new markets). We use the term scalable here to describe platforms using software over a digital network to offer a service in multiple locations without the need of local installation, but we use scaling to indicate that the platform chooses to exploit this potential for commercial gain or other efficiency benefits.

A scaling approach is common in connecting peers and their goods. Scalability is commercially important; the venture capital that supports many start-ups values the potential of platforms to extend turnover faster than costs. This financing demands an aggressive growth strategy: competing with older business but with fewer staff and storage overheads (Slee 2015). Attaining scale is a fundamental because brokering is best as a monopoly, while both ad revenue and percentage-based fee structures need to scale to be profitable, even as peer-to-peer traders suffer inefficiencies (Coppola 2016; Powley 2018). However, potential to scale a service varies. Yu (2018) points to global and local network effects, saying, for instance, that ride-sharing has no global network effects²; the network effect only applies locally. Though the software is scalable, drivers – and the cultures in which they work – are bounded by location.

We note that a commercial digital brokering platform perfectly exemplifies Benkler’s ‘crisp transactions’ (2004): binary indicators of identity and financial solvency; precise, market-adjusted charges; instant financial exchanges; software overseeing decisions, all operating at a distance. If people trust the platform, they establish legally-binding obligations across space (Lampinen and Brown 2017; Botsman 2017), reducing uncertainty and fostering rental between strangers.

We also note Botsman’s phrase ‘access instead of ownership’, which Curtis and Lehner’s review (2019) associates with sustainability. It is with this transition to access models of use and the exploitation of latency that, irrespective of who owns the resource and how much is charged, using idle capacity becomes equated with sharing. With this shift, people are increasingly ‘making money from assets and skills they already own’ (BIS 2014). We see, for example, room-renting service Airbnb gain visibility over room-lending service Couchsurfacing (Ikkala and Lampinen 2015; Jung et al. 2016; Jung and Lee 2017; Lampinen 2016; Lampinen and Cheshire 2016).

Unlike Curtis and Lehner (2019), Frenken and Schor (2017) assess evidence of sustainability supported by the sharing economy, concluding that well-off home-owners profit most, environmental benefits lie mostly in car/ridesharing, and social effects are complex. Against claims of ‘common good’, they observe that, as more people participate in platforms for economic reasons, social interaction declines, citing the codification of trust into ratings and technical fixes, such as smart locks for home lets, that mean less face-to-face contact. And it is ‘possible that sharing platforms may be harmful to social cohesion’ (ibid, p. 7): people used to making profit no longer lend to friends and family. Scaling digital tools do not just benefit from a global marketplace, they increase trade and enable forms of globalization, such as transportation, that fuel climate change (Hakken et al. 2016).

CSCW has looked at many types of digital brokering platform, such as those enabling crowdfunding (Harburg et al. 2015) and peer-to-peer exchange (e.g. Carroll and Bellotti 2015; Ikkala and Lampinen 2015), and, generally, raised issues of collaboration and trust for “sharing economy” platforms (Lampinen et al. 2015b). Here, we add to this body of work in two ways: exploring the idea of ‘a platform of platforms’ and looking at how such a thing might come into being.

We describe, above, how local sharing activities build alternative economies that are not ‘crisp’, but full of enduring negotiations. Looking at resource management at local level and the associated relationships that exist independent of digital networks, Katrini (2018), Light and Miskelly (2015) and Light (forthcoming) draw attention to the potential to create sharing culture, from social networks that grow informally and locally: ‘to co-produce, manage, and share resources, time, services, knowledge, information, and support based on solidarity and reciprocity rather than economic profit’ (Katrini 2018, np). Cultures can foster a solidarity economy (Miller 2009), where actors ‘build economic relations based on cooperation and collaboration, …on mutuality and reciprocity’ (Vlachokyriakos et al. 2018, p. 3).

This action is highly situated. In thinking about solidarity, space changes from an abstract concept, through which networks scale, to a co-constructed and political space (Massey 2005), through which place is shaped as an intersection of activity, history, geography and politics. Our interest is in social structures that support better resource management, essential in making transitions to sustainable living (e.g. Raworth 2017; Randers et al. 2018). We value the allusion to neighbours and sense of manageable distance carried by the term neighbourhood. We seek to build on our earlier analysis - that there are ‘relational assets’ generated in particular areas (Light and Miskelly 2015) that support solidarity - by looking at how these assets emerge from sharing practices and offer an ecology of mutually-supportive systems in a place (meshing³).

When we look at how meshing happens, we join scholars interested in infrastructuring (Karasti and Baker 2004; Karasti 2014), described as ‘the work of creating socio-technical resources that intentionally enable adoption and appropriation beyond the initial scope of the design’ (Le Dantec et al. 2013). Developing upon Jegou and Manzini (2008), who speak of ‘a system of material and immaterial elements (such as technologies, infrastructures, legal framework and modes of governance and policy making)’ (p. 179), we, therefore, understand a platform not just as a digital foundation upon which things can be built (e.g. Gawer 2009), but as a configuration of people, values, actions and tools and, thus, socio-technical infrastructure for building upon. Platforms are relational (Star and Ruhleder 1994), operating in a temporally layered system of interdependencies. In our accounts here, we see this in the wealth of activities in one area and how they relate to each other over time.

The next sections describe two studies of sharing practice. They focus on London, a major city and cultural melting pot. London’s size means neighbourhoods have added significance and some areas regard themselves as villages. The character of London inflects findings, as one would expect.

One study involves interviews with organizers of collective sharing initiatives in a small area, which we first drew on for a single example (Light and Miskelly 2015; Light and Briggs 2017); the other looks at the evolution of a digital platform intended to impact behaviour nearby. All our findings are now brought together, here, to consider how sharing happens at local level across time. Neither study concerns individualized lending, though there are instances of it. The first addresses shared use of common resources, while the second explores a service that promotes buying and selling, but takes an interesting path.

More details are given below, and a research rationale can be found in Light and Miskelly (2008, 2014) and Light and Briggs (2017), which report on the two broader projects from which we drew these cases. To combine our findings, we point to themes that appear across both: sharing, trust, localness, connectedness.

Our other study comes from a longitudinal project on platforms for social action. It is picked to speak to choices of scale and neighbourhood impact, drawn from long-term observation of several UK platforms concerned with social innovation, sustainability and societal transformation (see Light and Briggs 2017). Light has been tracking sites with these aspirations since 2007 (Light and Miskelly 2008). More than 10 platforms⁴ have been studied over 10+ years, with ventures coming, going and evolving. Longitudinal engagement with social innovation initiatives is arbitrary; it is impossible to determine which will endure and possibly achieve their goals. Instead of attempting to sample systematically, a main criterion was access to key decision-makers for each case. Privileged access to initiators’ thinking, before, during and after launch, came through personal relationships and intermediary introductions over years of participating in business, social and activist networks. Choosing on this basis has had the advantage of allowing the authors to gather detailed and early information on motivations for design decisions, which has informed other work (e.g. Light and Briggs 2017).

The account below involved interviewing key people and tracking decisions and changes as the enterprise evolved. Progress was sampled every few months and founders/other key stakeholders were asked to explain their actions and decisions. Within interviews, attention was paid to claims made for the platform and how interviewees spoke about their goals and we treat them as insight into the decision-making process. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using content analysis and discourse analysis to trace patterns (e.g. Potter and Wetherell 1987).

The case study was chosen, from others, to provide an illustrative account of design choices in the context of producing a platform for use in a particular locale. It is not given as representative; rather it is informative in looking at certain trends. It is based on several interviews with the two founders, Kristina Glushkova and Karen Martin, as well as observation over 8 years, which included being part of the same research project during 2013.⁵ Quoted material comes from a key hour-long interview with Glushkova in 2011, shortly after launching, unless otherwise stated.

In other words, we are comparing scaling and meshing not because they are two ends of a single spectrum, such as for-profit⁶ vs non-profit, or global vs neighbourhood, but because the tight relation between financing, values and reach manifests in patterns of digital network deployment. The use of scaling in the sharing economy is well documented (e.g. Choudary 2015; Moazed and Johnson 2016; Reillier and Reillier 2017). The idea of meshing provides a necessary contrast: necessary not merely to think creatively about network configuration, but because it carries a different environmental heft (see Fig. 1). If we return to the difference between mitigation strategies (such as using fewer resources) and add adaptation strategies (such as building resourcefulness and social cohesion, which relate, too, to willingness to mitigate), we see there is more at stake than levels of resource use.

There are grey areas, of course. Yu (2018, np) reports that Uber is giving way to local services in some areas, identifying ‘an alternative strategy for platform growth, one where it’s less about geographic spread than about the depth of a chosen market’. We are seeing the rise of platform cooperatism, which brings users into the management of their platform (Scholz 2014; McCann 2018). These trends involve the adoption of ‘crisp’ software to match-make, vet and manage trust, handle payment, aggregate data and alter algorithms to meet changing needs, but not homogenously, at scale, and not necessarily out of the decision-making hands of those whose lives are impacted.

Meshing is not a matter of exploiting digital network effects by designing a one-size-fits-all tool; it is creating the conditions for socio-technical infrastructures of sharing. We need to ask what makes tools work in aggregate, over time, for each context, activity and combination of actors. We can start with the higher-order question: what makes sharing work? Digital networks may be helpful, irrelevant or hindering. They are costly and, in a caring-based economy where there may be little money, this points to finding affordable and reconfigurable approaches.

Pargman et al. (2016) ask if the sharing economy can help provide guaranteed, fair and equal access to resources in a shrinking economy or manage tendencies to hoard and monopolize. These questions address long-term environmental crisis (IPCC 2018). Technology has its place in responding, but we need careful deployment. We do not want to impact adversely qualities needed to deal with these social stresses.

Environmental and social sustainability are tightly linked – we will sustain in place because of environmental action, while the social aspects of life around us make it more likely that we care about our world, act on it and find meaning in solidarity. Looming challenges make strengthening the fabric of society critical. Martin (2016) warns ‘If the sharing economy follows [the] pathway of corporate co-option it appears unlikely to drive a transition to sustainability’ (p. 149). The new wave of technologies claiming social and environmental good in the shape of the sharing economy may let us down.

In this paper, we have paid particular attention to the scale at which platforms perform, across cultures and locations, and how trust is situated, but we have also observed the tendency of the scaling sharing economy to financialize transactions and perform other ‘crisp’ interactions using software. Finding easy ways to use idle goods may produce side-effects that are less welcome than the more challenging task of attending to social fabric. Any act of renting, buying or paying a subscription may be a step to promoting resource sustainability, but the promotion of renting as sharing has different societal consequences. We began this paper by suggesting that sharing embedded in everyday caring practices contributes more than the resource management offered by services that trade idle capacity. The sustainability challenges for the most aggressive brokers in the sharing economy fall into four areas:

These patterns are associated with unscrupulous scaling, if not scalability. But platforms can also be used to promote a different socio-economic structure. To contrast with this divisive approach, this paper has focused on local structures to support collaborative activity and develop social cohesion, giving examples of the spatial, temporal and social issues involved in caring-based sharing and discussing how meshing of platforms offers an alternative to these competitors in the global economy. We have introduced the idea of a ‘platform of platforms’ to address this, noting that, while there is growing literature on organizations that challenge current economic arrangements, there is less on neighbourhoods. To talk scale, this places our study between studies of individual platforms and those of the economies in which they operate. Specifically, we present the difference between meshing and scaling as a means to look at sharing and the sharing of shared infrastructures. This allows us to explore the economics of scaling and meshing orientations and the values they speak to. It also reveals the spatial work in how services are constructed.

We have drawn on material from two small areas of south London with much in common. The detail cannot be generalized, but the broader points – of what to support and how to recognize it as evolving and enmeshed – remain true across contexts. We have teased out the organizational structures and processes that help develop collective sharing over time. Indeed, our contribution has been to look at how individual initiatives interlace, from the bottom up, to become part of a greater phenomenon, while analyzing the spatial and temporal dimensions of how people, values, actions and tools come together in particular places.

Sharing practices can create layers of sociotechnical infrastructure as the connections between people become as important as the things they possess. We close by advocating design for growth of shared initiative-taking that transcends market models to respond to local interests and broader environmental realities. The suggestions here are brief and partial, given to encourage thought about neighbourhoods and their potential. They point to a need, rather than producing a solution. They attempt to refocus energy from dominant discussions of networks and platforms, by giving a how, and just as importantly, a why to thinking locally about network growth and economies of sharing.