Handbook of the Sharing Economy 2019946797, 9781788110549, 9781788110532

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HANDBOOK OF THE SHARING ECONOMY

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Handbook of the Sharing Economy

Edited by

Russell W. Belk Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing and York University Distinguished Research Professor, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada

Giana M. Eckhardt Professor of Marketing, School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Fleura Bardhi Professor of Marketing, Cass Business School, City, University of London, UK

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

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© Russell W. Belk, Giana M. Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946797

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

This book is available electronically in the Business subject collection DOI 10.4337/9781788110549

ISBN 978 1 78811 053 2 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78811 054 9 (eBook)

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Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Contents ix

List of contributors 1 Introduction to the Handbook of the Sharing Economy: the paradox of the sharing economy Russell W. Belk, Giana M. Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi

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PART I  THE NATURE OF SHARING AND THE SHARING ECONOMY 2 Situating the sharing economy: between markets, commons and capital Adam Arvidsson

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3 Sharing as an alternative economy activity Thomas Widlok

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4 The who and what of sharing: a phenomenological view Wolfgang Suetzl

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5 The sharing economy and lifestyle movements Mikko Laamanen and Stefan Wahlen

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PART II  OWNERSHIP, ACCESS AND COLLABORATIVE MODALITIES 6 To own or to access? An exploration of sharing and access practices by Arab ­millennials Maha Baz Radwan, Georgios Patsiaouras and Michael Saren 7 Object history value in the sharing economy Charis X. Li and Richard J. Lutz 8 Guest, friend or colleague? Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces Adèle Gruen and Laetitia Mimoun 9 Designing the economics of the sharing economy: towards sustainable management Ann Light

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PART III  EXCHANGE PRACTICES IN THE SHARING ECONOMY 10 The new face of bartering in collaborative networks: the case of Italy’s most ­popular bartering website Daniele Dalli and Fulvio Fortezza

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v

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vi  Handbook of the sharing economy 11 Sharing economy to the rescue? The case of timebanking Carmen Valor and Eleni Papaoikonomou 

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12 Crowdfunding: sharing the entrepreneurial journey Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang and Amitava Chattopadhyay

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13 Crowdfunding the development of new products and services Natalia Drozdova, Seidali Kurtmollaiev and Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe

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PART IV  H  YBRIDITY, INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS AND INSTITUTIONAL THEORY 14 Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy Andrea Geissinger, Christofer Laurell, Christina Öberg and Christian Sandström

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15 Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality Georg von Richthofen and Eileen Fischer

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16 The hybrid nature of online facilitated offline sharing Konstanty Strzyczkowski

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17 Decentralization as a new framework for the sharing economy Marc Rocas-Royo

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PART V LEGAL, REGULATORY AND PUBLIC POLICY CONSIDERATIONS 18 Urban mobilities and local regulation: transportation challenges and ­promise of the sharing economy Hugh Bartling 19 Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy? Adrian J. Hawley

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20 Creating value to mitigate disaster harm: how the sharing economy can support consumers and policy makers Lucie K. Ozanne

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21 How institutional work by sharing economy organizations and city governments shapes sustainability Oksana Mont, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan and Lucie Zvolska

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PART VI TRUST, SATISFACTION AND REPUTATION IN THE SHARING ECONOMY 22 Social dilemmas in the sharing economy Rense Corten

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Contents  vii 23 Leveraging trust on sharing economy platforms: reputation systems, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies Mareike Möhlmann, Timm Teubner and Antje Graul

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24 Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy303 Jérôme Mallargé, Alain Decrop and Pietro Zidda 25 Customer goodwill: how perceived competence and rapport influence eWOM’s diagnosticity of peer-to-peer and professional access-based services316 Christine Pitt, Theresa Eriksson and Kirk Plangger PART VII  CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SHARING ECONOMY 26 Constructing the collaborative consumer: the role of digital platforms Annmarie Ryan and Gabriela Avram

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27 Performing (in) the community: accounting, biopower and the sharing economy348 Penelope Van den Bussche and Jeremy Morales 28 The rhetoric of sharing: managerial literature on the sharing economy Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając

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29 Reputation: the fictitious commodity of the sharing economy? Alessandro Gandini

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Index385

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Contributors Adam Arvidsson teaches sociology at the University of Naples, Federico II (Italy). His research looks at the economic institutions of digital society, from the political economy of platforms and digital unicorns, via new forms of innovation and business to emerging alternatives. Gabriela Avram is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Interaction Design at the Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick (Republic of Ireland). Her research  currently focuses on socio-technical practices involved in the collaborative economy, and on the role of technology in supporting civic engagement of local communities. She has published in the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, VINE, and Interactions, as well as taking part in prestigious conferences such as the Association for Computing Machinery Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ACM CSCW) conference and Designing Interactive Systems. Fleura Bardhi is a Professor of Marketing at Cass Business School, City, University of London (UK). Her research explores how socio-historical changes transform the nature of consumption, possessions, identity, access, life transitions, social status, and global brands. She is on the editorial review board for Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, and Consumption Markets and Culture.

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Hugh Bartling is Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies, DePaul University (Chicago, USA). Professor Bartling teaches courses on urban policy, environmental policy, and sustainable urban development. Maha Baz Radwan is a PhD student at the School of Business, University of Leicester (UK). Maha has been conducting research around the emergence and growth of the sharing economy in the Middle East, focusing on the collaborative consumption and access practices of millennials. Russell W. Belk is York University Distinguished Research Professor, Schulich School of Business, York University (Canada) and Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing. He has received the Converse Award, two Fulbright Awards, and the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Consumer Research Award for Long Term Contribution to Consumer Research. His research involves extended self, meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving, sharing, digital consumption, and materialism. Hannah H. Chang (PhD, Columbia University, USA) is Associate Professor of Marketing and Lee Kong Chian Fellow at Singapore Management University. Her research examines the role of affect in consumer decision-making, the impact of psychological proximity, and consumers’ sense of the self. She has published in leading journals in marketing and psychology. Amitava Chattopadhyay is an expert on branding and innovation. Over three decades, he has published extensively in leading journals, as book chapters, and a book. He is area ix

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x  Handbook of the sharing economy editor at the Journal of Marketing and on the editorial boards of several other journals. He is a Fellow at the CEIBS Center for Emerging Market Studies (China). Rense Corten is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). His research revolves around the themes of cooperation, trust, and (the dynamics of) social networks, with empirical applications including adolescent networks, social media, the sharing economy, online criminal networks, and laboratory experiments. Daniele Dalli is Full Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behavior at the University of Pisa (Italy). He studies consumers’ emotions, brands, working consumers, corporate social responsibility, and social media. He has published in various international journals and he is the co-author of a consumer behavior textbook. He is the editor of the Italian Journal of Marketing. Alain Decrop is Full Professor of Marketing in the Department of Business Administration, Namur Digital Institute (NADI-CeRCLe), University of Namur (Belgium). He is the Director of the Center for Research on Consumption and Leisure (CeRCLe) and is a member of the Namur Digital Institute (NADI). His current research interests focus on decision-making processes, collaborative exchanges, and contemporary consumption phenomena, with applications most often related to tourism and leisure.

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Natalia Drozdova is Doctoral Research Scholar at NHH – Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Strategy and Management (Bergen, Norway). Her research interests include crowdfunding, sharing economy, collaborative consumption, and online movements. Giana M. Eckhardt is Professor of Marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London (UK). Her work examines branding, the sharing economy, and consumer culture, and has been published in outlets such as Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer Research. She is also the author of The Myth of the Ethical Consumer. Theresa Eriksson holds a Master of Science degree in Informatics. She is a doctoral student in marketing in the Division of Industrial Marketing, at the Luleå University of Technology (Luleå, Sweden). Her research interests include leadership and the entrepreneurship‒marketing interface. Eileen Fischer’s research interests are at the intersection of consumer and entrepreneurship research. She studies how people, acting as consumers and/or entrepreneurs, navigate and reshape the markets that matter to them. Her work has been published in a wide range of marketing and management journals. Fulvio Fortezza is an Associate Professor of Marketing and International Marketing at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Ferrara (Italy), where he also runs the Research Center on the Knowledge Economy and Innovation. His main research interests are collaborative consumption, happiness, and experiential and entrepreneurial marketing. Alessandro Gandini is a sociologist and a Senior Researcher at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan (Italy). Previously, he was a Lecturer in the

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Contributors  xi Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London (UK). His research interests include the transformation of work, social relations, and research methods in the digital society. Andrea Geissinger is a PhD student in business administration at Örebro University (Sweden) and the Ratio Institute (Stockholm, Sweden). She has a strong interest in societal change processes facilitated by technological drivers in markets and organizations. Her main research focuses on the specific societal challenges and opportunities that arise out of the sharing economy for individuals and organizations alike. Antje Graul is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Utah State University (USA). She received her PhD in Marketing from the University of Leeds (UK). Her research interests lie in the area of consumer decision-making, value perception, and attachment. She investigates its application to motivations for anti-consumption and consumer sharing. Adèle Gruen is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Institute of Management Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). She holds a PhD in marketing from the Université Paris-Dauphine (France). Adele’s research explores the relationship consumers develop with objects and places they access and share with other consumers (car sharing, coworking).

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Adrian J. Hawley is a PhD candidate in the School of Management at Royal Holloway, University of London (UK). During an international career in industry he obtained an MBA at Henley/Brunel and subsequently returned to academia with an MRes, with distinction, in International Business and the EU from Birkbeck, University of London (UK). Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe is Professor of Marketing at the Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Strategy and Management (Bergen, Norway). Her research revolves around diffusion of health innovations, the new collaborative economy, and visual analysis. She is a producer of award-winning videographies, and her work has appeared in Psychology and Marketing, Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, European Journal of Marketing, Services Industries Journal, and Consumption Markets and Culture. Seidali Kurtmollaiev is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Strategy and Management at NHH – Norwegian School of Economics (Norway). His main research interests are in strategic management and marketing, with a focus on service innovation. His work on innovation management, innovation adoption, and organizational change have appeared in, among others, the Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal, the Journal of Service Research, and the Journal of Management Inquiry. Mikko Laamanen is Lecturer in Marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London (UK). Mikko has a PhD from Hanken School of Economics (Finland). His research investigates subversive politics in alternative economies and lifestyles, as well as practicetheoretical approaches to marketing and organizational work. Christofer Laurell is Docent at the Center for Sports and Business, Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research (Sweden) and Assistant Professor at Jönköping International Business School (Sweden). His research interests are focused on institutional pressures created by the rise of digitalization and its implications for management and marketing.

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xii  Handbook of the sharing economy Charis X. Li is a PhD candidate in Marketing at the University of Florida (USA). Her dissertation explores objects’ history value, with a focus on implications in the sharing economy. Charis received her BS in Marketing from Wuhan University (China) and her MS in Consumer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). Ann Light is Professor of Design and Creative Technology, University of Sussex (UK) and Professor of Interaction Design, Social Change and Sustainability at Malmo University (Sweden). Her research addresses social and ecological justice, digital platforms and the future of work, and the politics of design. Her Design for Sharing report (2014) links social, environmental, and economic sustainability with developments in technology. She has advised the European Union on the sharing economy. Richard J. Lutz is J.C. Penney Professor of Marketing at the University of Florida (USA). He received his BS, MS and PhD in Marketing from the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign (USA). He is a past president and Fellow of the Association for Consumer Research, and past editor of the Journal of Consumer Research. Jérôme Mallargé is Researcher in Marketing at the University of Namur (UNamur) (Belgium). His research interest is mainly on collaborative consumption and consumer evaluation process. He is a member of the Namur Digital Insitute (NADI) and a member of the Center for Research on Consumption and Leisure (CeRCLe).

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Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając is a research and teaching assistant at Kozminski University (Poland). Her research revolves around institutionalization of digital platforms. During her two-year stay at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) she conducted fieldwork on the institutional history of Couchsurfing and the regulation struggle around Airbnb in San Francisco. Laetitia Mimoun is a Lecturer in Marketing at Cass Business School, City, University of London (UK). Laetitia holds a PhD in marketing from HEC Paris (France). Her research focuses on consumer liminality and liquid lifestyles. She examines consumer identity among consumers who embrace transition, contingency, and uncertainty (flexible workers, migrants, and so on). Mareike Möhlmann works as an Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Management at Warwick Business School (UK). Her current research focuses on digital platforms, the sharing economy, digital trust, algorithmic management, and new ways of working in the digital age. Oksana Mont is a Professor in Sustainable Consumption Governance at Lund University (Sweden). She conducts interdisciplinary and international research in the design, application, and evaluation of policy, business strategies, and tools for sustainable consumption, currently working on the sharing and circular economy and sustainability in cities. Jeremy Morales is a Reader at King’s College London (UK). His research focuses on critical perspectives on accounting and organization. He studies how management and control practices and technologies frame, and are shaped by, individual and collective representations. He has studied various settings, including multinationals but also non-governmental organizations, theatres, the military, the sharing economy, and the organizing of death.

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Contributors  xiii Anirban Mukherjee is Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing at INSEAD (Singapore), affiliated faculty with the Science of Networks in Communities research group  at Northwestern University (USA), and Fellow of the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). His research develops and applies quantitative and computational methods to examine important marketing problems. Christina Öberg is Professor/Chair in Marketing at Örebro University (Sweden), and she is also associated with the Ratio Institute (Stockholm, Sweden). Her research interests concern mergers and acquisitions, customer relationships, innovations, and new ways to pursue business, including the sharing economy and effects of additive manufacturing. Lucie K. Ozanne’s research has focused on examining the impact of consumption behavior on the natural environment. Recent research examining sharing behavior through the use of community toy libraries, and the potential for individual and community capacity development through the use of timebanks, has extended her focus beyond environmental sustainability to issues related to the family and the wider community. Her experience of the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury, New Zealand earthquakes inspired this chapter. Eleni Papaoikonomou is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the Rovira and Virgili University (Spain). Her research interests include consumption and sustainability, anticonsumption and collaborative consumption. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Macromarketing and the Journal of Business Ethics. 

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Georgios Patsiaouras is Lecturer in Marketing and Consumption at the School of Business, University of Leicester (UK). Georgios’s research interests lie around the areas of conspicuous consumption, sustainability, and social-cultural readings of marketing theory. His work has been published in Marketing Theory, Journal of Marketing Management, and Journal of Macromarketing, amongst others. Christine Pitt is a PhD candidate at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) (Stockholm, Sweden). She has published peer-reviewed articles in Industrial Marketing Management, Business Horizons, and Psychology and Marketing. Her research interests include online word-of-mouth and automated text analysis and its application to marketing contexts. Kirk Plangger is an Associate Professor at King’s Business School, King’s College London (UK). His research interests include the mediation of the buying process through technology and how organizations should address these technologies. Dr Plangger integrates his research in his classroom, challenging his students to apply academic concepts to practical challenges. Marc Rocas-Royo is a PhD candidate at the Open University of Catalonia (Spain), focused on the governance systems of the blockchain, the sharing economy, and the commons. He is also a founding board member of the Blockchain Catalonia Association, and teaches Strategic Management at the University of Barcelona School of Economics (Spain). Annmarie Ryan is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Kemmy Business School (KBS), University of Limerick (Republic of Ireland). Her work spans business relationships and networks, cities of culture and market studies. She has published in Human Relations, as well as in many leading marketing and organizational journals, including Marketing

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xiv  Handbook of the sharing economy Theory, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Rural Studies, and Scandinavian Journal of Management. Christian Sandström is Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and Jönköping International Business School (Sweden). He is also associated with the Ratio Institute (Stockholm, Sweden). His research interests concern technological change and the challenges they present for firms, especially with regard to business models. Michael Saren is Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, University of Leicester (UK). He previously held chairs at the universities of Stirling and Strathclyde (UK), and was an Honorary Professor at St Andrews University (UK). He has published articles in many academic management journals in the UK, Europe, Australia, and the USA. Konstanty Strzyczkowski is a Lecturer in the Institute of Sociology at University of Warsaw (Poland). His main research interests are in identity, prosumer practices, online communities and social media. He is the author of Identity in the Context of Developing Trends for Postmodern Society (2012, in Polish), Consumer Work: Theories, Practices and Preconditions (2018, in Polish) and co-editor of Between Routine and Reflexivity: Cultural Practices and Strategies of Everyday Life (2012, in Polish). Wolfgang Suetzl is an Assistant Professor at the School of Media Arts and Studies, Ohio University (USA). With a PhD in Philosophy from the Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, Spain), his research interests include theoretical aspects of sharing, as well as media phenomenology, Continental media theories, and media archaeology.

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Timm Teubner is an Assistant Professor at TU Berlin (Germany). His research interests include online platforms and multi-sided markets, trust, internet user behavior, as well as crowdsourcing. He received his PhD from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Germany). Carmen Valor is a Lecturer at Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Spain). Her work focuses on sustainable consumption and transition to sustainability. Previous research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, Psychology and Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Management, among others. Penelope Van den Bussche is a PhD candidate in Accounting, ESCP Europe Paris (France). Her research focuses on critical perspectives on accounting, specifically how accounting and control mechanisms shape individual constructions of the self. Her research interests include forms of control in digital settings such as platform organizations and dating sites, biopolitical approaches, and subjection. Georg von Richthofen is a Doctoral candidate in Marketing at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich (Switzerland). His research focuses on brand management of platform-based firms in the sharing economy, and service interactions between their users. Yuliya Voytenko Palgan is an Assistant Professor at Lund University (Sweden). She works in the areas of sustainability, urban governance, innovation, and sustainable consumption. Her work focuses on strategies for sustainability solutions in new economies: sharing

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Contributors  xv economy, circular economy, and bio-economy, and sustainable urban innovation and experimentation. Stefan Wahlen is Professor in Food Sociology at the University of Giessen (Germany). In research and teaching he is interested in food consumption practices, broader food cultures as well as their political, organisational and institutional parameters, such as in the sharing economy. He received his PhD in Consumer Economics from the University of Helsinki (Finland) and a graduate degree from the University of Bonn (Germany). Thomas Widlok took his degrees in Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) (UK) and has worked at a number of universities and research institutions in Europe (including the UK). He is a specialist in hunter-gatherer research, and a Professor at the University of Cologne (Germany). His most recent book is Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing. Pietro Zidda is Full Professor of Marketing and Management in the Department of Business Administration, member of the Namur Digital Institute (NADI) and of the Center for Research on Consumption and Leisure (CeRCLe) at the University of Namur (Belgium). He is mainly interested in retail management, relationship marketing, and collaborative consumption.

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Lucie Zvolska is a PhD student at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University (Sweden). In her research, she aims to examine, test, and advance knowledge about the design, sustainability of practices, and institutionalization processes of the sharing economy.

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1.  Introduction to the Handbook of the Sharing Economy: the paradox of the sharing economy Russell W. Belk, Giana M. Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi

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THE NATURE OF SHARING AND THE SHARING ECONOMY The sharing economy, defined as a social and economic system of transactions in which individuals use third-party technology platforms that match providers and users to exchange goods, services, or ideas in a manner that does not transfer ownership (Eckhardt et al. forthcoming), is coming of age. It has been more than a decade since the advent of exemplar platforms such as Airbnb and Uber came into existence, and since pioneering academic thought began exploring sharing (e.g., Belk 2007). Besides the big players such as TransferWise in the fintech space and Grubhub Seamless in the food delivery space, there are also many smaller players that are leading innovations in the sharing economy, such as OpenBazaar, able to compete against the big players because of blockchain technology (De Filippi 2017). This Handbook aims to explicate what the phenomenon of the sharing economy is, as it can be treated in wildly different ways in different literatures; how this economy has evolved over the past 15 years (for example, its growth and sectors); and what the key dynamics are as we move into the next decade. We do this from an interdisciplinary perspective, examining aspects such as labor and governance in addition to consumption. In this introductory chapter, we seek to examine how the sharing economy has developed, what its future might be, and what the consequences of the sharing economy are to businesses, consumers, and society. A key issue that many of the chapters in this Handbook of the Sharing Economy address is the paradoxical character of its two components. “Sharing” implies a moral economy of “sharing in” within a small community of close others (Belk 2010), while “economy” implies a market economy where access-based consumption takes place within a potentially large community of distant others (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). The treatments in the chapters that follow variously attempt to resolve this contradiction by: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

theorizing hybrid economic forms; positing an alternative economy through sharing; examining an exploitative cooptation of human labor in an entrapping gig economy; considering the replacement of the human trust of the moral sharing economy with a transactional reputation economy; investigating the elimination of the need for trust in others through blockchain technology; exploring the negation of the human emotional component of sharing through the use of smart contracts and DAOs (distributed autonomous organizations); demonstrating the suspension of the egoistic market economy rules in times of crisis; 1

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2  Handbook of the sharing economy ●●

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●●

evaluating the renegotiation of market economy rules by municipalities; contemplating possibilities of moral economies within market economies.

While these perspectives reflect a variety of ways of dealing with the paradox of the sharing economy, they all agree that the sharing economy is something new and significant, even if it draws on millennia of the coexisting, but largely separate, moral and market economies (Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016; Fontaine 2014; see also Chapter 8 by Gruen and Mimoun, and Chapter 10 by Dalli and Fortezza, in this volume). What is new is the marketization of sharing, which has greatly upset the status quo in several markets. The chapters in this Handbook broaden the spatial and conceptual scope and understanding of the sharing economy beyond the North American context that has dominated prior research. Current chapters include cases and studies from regions such as Southern Europe, the Nordic countries, and the Arabian Gulf. For example, Baz Radwan et al. (Chapter 6) examine the emergence of the sharing economy in Arab countries with their distinct histories and traditions of ownership, religious sharing, and communal property rights. These authors trace the history of sharing practices to the nomad Bedouin tribes who had to rely on alternative forms of exchange and shared consumption among themselves as well as with other, non-kin travelers in order to cope with the dire natural settings. Islamic religion also had an influence, through the practice of zakat that structures formal sharing, informal sadaqah sharing, and the hospitality traditions of the region (Sobh et al. 2013). The Handbook chapters also advance our understanding of the exchange practices that have proliferated via the sharing economy. Widlok (Chapter 3), for example, argues that practices associated with the sharing economy represent a “crowd-based capitalism” that goes beyond the duality of non-commercial gift-exchange versus commercial capitalist transactions. He conceptualizes such practices as forms of communal redistribution, pooling, and sharing that are neither mainstream market transactions nor instances of gift-exchange relationships. He argues that when cultural practices are transferred into digital environments, they rely on social practices that are already established but are constantly in danger of being undermined. Dalli and Fortezza (Chapter 10) examine moneyless market exchanges of bartering and swapping that have proliferated via digital platforms in Italy. They argue that bartering represents a hybrid practice integrating market transactions with social exchange (see also Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992). Valor and Papaoikonomou (Chapter 11) study another moneyless practice: of timebanks, where time becomes an alternative currency for the exchange of services in Spain and Greece. However, they find that timebanks are not successful because they fail to institutionalize the hybrid logics of social and market exchange, as well as to move their participants away from the balanced or negative market reciprocity they are socialized in (Sahlins 1972). This hybrid logic can also be construed as reflecting the liminal nature of the market economy, caught halfway between market and moral economies (Scaraboto 2015). A further treatment of the liminal nature of the sharing economy is found in Chapter 8 by Gruen and Mimoun who examine how the access-based workplace and the gig economy are transforming the practice of work. Their chapter is based on ethnographies of two new emerging workspaces: the contexts of coworking and cohoming in Paris and London. They find that the collaborative and informal design of such workplaces fosters

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Introduction  3 intimate and informal relationships that often lead to personal friendships as well as professional collaborations. Further, they find that the logic of hospitality, that shapes cohoming (in which strangers pay to work in someone’s home), does not inhibit but rather supports personal interactions and relationships. Through the study of a variety of practices and contexts, these chapters show the diversity of sharing economy practices and interactions.

THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS

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One of the theoretical orientations that is best able to illuminate the paradoxes of the sharing economy is institutional theory and institutional logics (Thornton et al. 2012). The chapters in this Handbook that take this approach explore how platforms and individual prosumers (Toffler 1980) deal with the paradoxical nature of the sharing practices. Geissinger et al. (Chapter 14) identify six logics of the sharing economy via social media analytics: abundance, scarcity, profit, sustainability, global, and local. It is through these logics that participants in the sharing economy seek to balance the underlying tensions among access, community, and platforms. The tensions between institutional logics in the field of sharing are also seen as opportunities, which are explored by platform firms such as Airbnb, as seen in Chapter 15 by von Richthofen and Fischer. The sustainability and success of sharing economy platforms depends on the successful navigation of conflicting logics, such as the logics of commerce and hospitality in the case of Airbnb’s peer-to-peer rental market. As Valor and Papaoikonomou (Chapter 11) find, failure to incorporate, balance, and manage the hybrid nature of sharing leads to the collapse of the platforms and practices. In sum, all of these chapters highlight how platforms shape the behavior of users through governance mechanisms.

HISTORY As many chapters in the Handbook detail, sharing is an ancient and widespread practice anchored in cultural and religious practices. Arvidsson (Chapter 2), for example, taking a historical sociology approach in his chapter, situates the contemporary sharing economy between the market, the commons, and capital. Drawing on Polanyi, he traces the developments and relationships among these institutions during various economic systems and major transformations. Arvidsson argues that the sharing economy is a manifestation of a more general tendency of late capitalism where capital accumulation depends on new forms of commons (specifically, what he calls commodity production in manufacturing and data commons in social media) supported by digital technology. In other words, the monopolistic rent-seeking that characterizes the sharing and digital economy is an indicator of the re-feudalizing logic of digital capitalism. Several communal movements are neglected by the research historicizing the sharing economy, including communes, communitarians, communist and socialist communism, kibbutzim, the hippie movement, and various other religious, governmental, and social groups brought together through the ideal of sharing (e.g., Belk 1994; Cova et al. 2013;

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4  Handbook of the sharing economy Kanter 1972; Smith 1999, 2016; Webb 2016). What is striking about such communities is that, with the rare exceptions of certain religious communities, most have dissolved after their first few years; a finding consistent with several of the chapters here in the context of contemporary sharing. Gardner (1978) found that when the largely rural communes that he studied relied on sharing personal property, it hastened their demise. Besides a tendency to be short-lived, there is a tendency to move from equal sharing to unequal sharing, and from shared property to private property (Abramitsky 2018). In sum, voluntary non-market-mediated platforms tend not to be successful in the long term within the sharing economy.

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WHY AND HOW THE SHARING ECONOMY WORKS The goals and benefits of non-profit and for-profit sharing economy platforms overlap in several ways that are quite laudable. They include a reduced carbon footprint, reduced redundant and unnecessary consumer ownership of major durables, and sociability and friendships, as the chapters in this Handbook attest. But at a deeper level, as Adam Parsons (2014) argues, what we are seeking is the good society, one where human kindness matters, where we can learn to trust one another, and where we sacrifice some of our individualism and materialism for the collective good. For example, Ozanne’s Chapter 20 describes how sharing platforms can be utilized in times of disaster to link consumers and resources, with the result of facilitating value in affected communities. Blockchain also has the potential to move us toward increased trust. Möhlmann, Teubner, and Graul (Chapter 23) point out that blockchain can facilitate the decentralization of control, allowing for true peer-to-peer exchange without the need for a third-party intermediary to control the exchange. Rocas-Royo (Chapter 17) reinforces the view that blockchain can provide for a sense of real community among platform members in a way that highly market-mediated exchanges cannot. And Laamanen and Wahlen (Chapter 5) outline the emancipatory potential of the sharing economy via lifestyle movements, explicating the ways that communities can use platforms to resist the “neoliberalism on steroids” character that the behemoth platforms in the sharing economy tend to display (Murillo et al. 2017). A mechanism that highlights the paradoxical nature of the sharing economy is how reputation and trust are engendered within the platforms and communities of sharing, and how surveillance is enacted. For example, Pitt, Eriksson, and Plangger (Chapter 25) demonstrate the role of electronic word of mouth in engendering trust in accessbased consumption platforms, highlighting how goodwill influences rating inflation, with ratings being the main proxy for trust in sharing economy platforms. Gandini (Chapter 29) argues that reputation, as garnered via ratings systems in the sharing economy, is the basis for trust among strangers and, further, serves as the mechanism for the economic becoming re-embedded into the social (Arvidsson 2018). In this way, Gandini provides a framework for understanding the paradox of the sharing economy: that is, that it embraces both market and social characteristics; that it is a space that allows them both to exist, in a hybrid form, via the reputations mechanisms embedded within the system. Furthermore, as Gandini also notes in his chapter, China is already experimenting with a controversial system designed to bring about “better citizens” and a “better society”:

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Introduction  5 its social credit system. This system gives everyone a single three-digit score that reflects how good a citizen they are. The ideology behind this system is that “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful” (Ma 2018). In this model, we can see how the ratings systems so ubiquitous within sharing economy platforms can be used in the future: as instruments of the government, with your score determining such outcomes as your ability to travel via bus, train, or plane, or to get a date. Ratings are based not only on satisfactory performance within sharing economy platforms, but also on how much alcohol you purchase and whether you jaywalk across intersections (Botsman 2017). By surveilling consumers both online and via 200 million closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras equipped with facial recognition software, China is experimenting with a currently voluntary system that will become mandatory in 2020. The plan has been described as “Straight Out of Dystopian Sci-Fi,” “a gigantic social engineering experiment,” “a digital dictatorship,” and “the gamification of trust” (Dockrill 2018). It has also been greeted as more complex and sinister than the TV series Black Mirror (Jefferson 2018), a “futuristic dystopian nightmare” (Rollet 2018), “a modern day Orwellian social control mechanism” (Cheung 2018), “an Orwellian tool of mass surveillance” (Munro 2018), and “Orwell’s 1984 meets Pavlov’s dogs” (Botsman 2017). Others point to the eerie similarity to an episode of Black Mirror in which consumers desperately seek to have others award them points lest they are excluded from all public life or even imprisoned (DuFault and Schouten forthcoming). While all of this may seem far removed from the sharing economy, the reputation economy on which much of the sharing economy is based uses a similar sort of calculus, if based on fewer types of data. Rather than having separate scores for Airbnb hosts and guests, eBay buyers and sellers, Amazon merchants and customers, and so forth, there are several companies that are working on computing an aggregate portable score that could be used across platforms (Sipp 2017). To deal with the challenges of privacy and surveillance, regulatory measures and related public policy will become more prevalent as the sharing economy matures, as also discussed by Bartling (Chapter 18) regarding urban transportation challenges, and Hawley (Chapter 19) regarding the European labor laws.

FINAL WORDS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS In sum, in thinking about the paradox of the sharing economy, we can reflect on the fact that in many ways, while it has the characteristics of a hyper-capitalist marketplace (Murillo et al. 2017), the participants within it want to believe that they are participating in something better for the world. This is even reflected in the use of the word “sharing” to describe the sharing economy, even when little sharing is going on (John 2016). While it may be a nostalgic exaggeration, many of those participating in the sharing economy describe it as being reminiscent of an earlier time when people really did help one another and share hospitality and favors. In making such a claim, they ignore the prices paid, rules imposed, mutual judgments of the reputation economy, and all the smiles, conversations, and emotional labor that are offered primarily in order to get good ratings and thereby enhance future bookings. Indeed, Ryan and Avram (Chapter 26) demonstrate how participants in the Airbnb platform perform as largely social actors even while acting out market exchanges. It is easy to see how some people today accept the “sharing economy”

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6  Handbook of the sharing economy label in order to feel better about their consumption. It is not only corporations but also consumers who engage in “sharewashing” (Belk 2017). This is not to deny that the sharing economy can have very real positive impacts on the environment, our sense of community, the reduction of consumption, and perhaps the beneficial redistribution of wealth and jobs. However, as Schor (2014) finds, these benefits are sometimes illusory, and the net impact of sharing within the sharing economy can sometimes be negative. For example, a recent study (Martin and Shaheen 2010) found that for most car sharers there was actually an increase in emissions. Schor (2014) also suggests that for a full accounting we also need to look at what Airbnb hosts do with the extra money they earn, suggesting that they may use it to buy high-impact products such as yard tractors and cars. In Chapter 27 of this volume, Van den Bussche and Morales illustrate how accounting practices within the sharing economy are a form of biopower, incentivizing platform users to marketize aspects of their private lives and authenticity in order to be a part of a “community.” Relatedly, Mikołajewska-Zając (Chapter 28) maps the rhetorical strategies at play in sharing economy discourses of legitimation. That is, how popular books about the sharing economy contribute to the blurring of boundaries between various types of organizations and behaviors. Thus, while the total impact of the sharing economy is not as negative as the social engineering model from China would suggest, it may also not be as positive as the performances of sociality identified by Ryan and Avram imply. That is, the paradox of the sharing economy is that elements of both will always exist within the system; and many of the chapters in this Handbook provide novel ways of both illustrating and suggesting ways to deal with that. We hope that this rich set of chapters will stimulate future sharing economy scholarship, with readers coming away with an expanded sense of the benefits and dilemmas of the sharing economy. These benefits and problems are not distributed equally among participants. Still, this mixed set of outcomes is more complex than the simple conclusion that this is just one more realm of once private and personal engagements which has been commoditized and commercialized by big business. Just as there is still more to dating and mating than dating and hook-up apps, there is still more to sharing and caring than the sharing economy. This also allows us to consider what appears to cause some segments of the sharing economy to flourish and others to fail. We also would like to step back from this ten-year-old anniversary of the sharing economy and ask what its ultimate impact might be. Will we be better people? A better society? A more sustainable planet? Less economically and socially divided? Freer? Or will the opposite of these desirable conditions emerge as a result of the sharing economy?

REFERENCES Abramitsky, Ran (2018), The Mystery of the Kibbutz: Egalitarian Principles in a Capitalist World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Arvidsson, Adam (2018), “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy,” Sociological Review, 66 (2), 289‒301. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana Eckhardt (2012), “Access Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 381‒98. Belk, Russell W. (1994), “Battling Worldliness in the New Zion: Mercantilism Versus Homespun in 19th Century Utah,” Journal of Macromarketing, 14 (Spring), 9‒22. Belk, Russell W. (2007), “Why Not Share Rather than Own?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611 (May), 126‒40.

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Introduction  7 Belk, Russell W. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 715‒34. Belk, Russell W. (2017), “Sharing without Caring,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society, 10 (2), 249‒61. Botsman, Rachel (2017), “Big Data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens,” Wired, October 21, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion. Cheung, Man-Chung (2018), “Understanding China’s Credit System: Did the Negative Media Hype Get It Wrong?” eMarketer, September 28, https://www.emarketer.com/content/understanding-chinas-social-credit-system. Cova, Bernard, Pauline Mclaren, and Alan Bradshaw (2013), “Rethinking Consumer Culture Theory: From Postmodernism to the Communist Horizon,” Marketing Theory, 13 (2), 213‒25. De Filippi, Primavera (2017), “What blockchain means for the sharing economy,” Harvard Business Review, March 15, https://hbr.org/2017/03/what-blockchain-means-for-the-sharing-economy. Dockrill, Peter (2018), “China’s Chilling ‘Social Credit System’ Is Straight Out of Dystopian Sci-Fi, and It’s Already Switched On,” September 20, Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/china-s-dystopian-socialcredit-sys​tem-science-fiction-black-mirror-mass-surveillance-digital-dictatorship. DuFault, Beth and John Schouten (forthcoming), “Self-quantification and the Datapreneurial Consumer Identity,” Consumption, Markets and Culture. Eckhardt, Giana M. and Fleura Bardhi (2016), “The Relationship Between Access Practices and Economic Systems,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 210‒25. Eckhardt, Giana M., Mark Houston, Baojun Jiang, et al. (forthcoming), “Marketing and the Sharing Economy,” Journal of Marketing. Fontaine, Laurence (2014), The Moral Economy: Poverty, Credit, and Trust in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, Hugh (1978), The Children of Prosperity: Thirteen Modern American Communes, New York: St Martin’s Press. Humphrey, Caroline and Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds) (1992), Barter, Exchange and Value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, Ed (2018), “No, China isn’t Black Mirror—Social Credit Scores are More Complex and Sinister than That,” New Statesman, April 27, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2018/04/no-china-isn-t-black-mi​ rror-social-credit-scores-are-more-complex-and-sinister. John, Nicholas (2016), The Age of Sharing, London: Polity. Kanter, Rosabeth (1972), Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ma, Alexander (2018), “China has Started Ranking Citizens with a Creepy ‘Social Credit’ System—Here’s What You can do Wrong, and the Embarrassing, Demeaning Ways They can Punish You,” Business Insider, April 8, https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4. Martin, Elliott and Susan Shaheen (2010), “Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Car Sharing in North America,” Mineta Transportation Institute Report 09-11, San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute, https://transweb.sjsu. edu/research/greenhouse-gas-emission-impacts-carsharing-north-america. Munro, Kelsey (2018), “China’s Social Credit System ‘Could Interfere in Other Nations’ Sovereignty’,” Guardian, June 27, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/chinas-social-credit-system-could-interfere-in-othernat​ions-sovereignty. Murillo, David, Heloise Buckland, and Esther Val (2017), “When the Sharing Economy becomes Neoliberalism on Steroids: Unravelling the Controversies,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125 (December), 66–76. Parsons, Adam (2014), “The Sharing Economy: A Short Introduction to its Political Evolution,” January 21, Share the World’s Resources, https://www.sharing.org/information-centre/articles/sharing-economy-shortintrodu​ction-its-political-evolution. Rollet, Charles (2018), “The Odd Reality of Life Under China’s All-Seeing Credit Score System,” Wired UK, June 5, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit. Sahlins, Marshall (1972), Stone Age Economics, Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton. Scaraboto, Daiane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything In Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (1), 152‒76. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” The Great Transition Initiative, October, https://www. greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy. Sipp, Kati (2017), “Ratings in the gig economy are a mess: Here’s how to fix them,” Wired, December 27, https:// www.wired.com/story/how-to-fix-ratings-in-the-gig-economy/. Smith, William (1999), Families and Communes: An Examination of Nontraditional Lifestyles, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Smith, William (ed.) (2016), Religion and Politics in America: An Encyclopedia of Church and State in American Life, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Sobh, Rana, Russell W. Belk, and Jon Wilson (2013), “Islamic Arab Hospitality and Multiculturalism,” Marketing Theory, 13 (4), 442‒63.

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8  Handbook of the sharing economy

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Thornton, Patricia H., William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury (2012), The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toffler, Alvin (1980), The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow, New York: Bantam. Webb, Catherine (2016), Industrial Co-Operation, the Story of a Peaceful Revolution: Being the Account of the History, Theory, and Practice of the Co-operative Movement in Great Britain and Ireland, South Yarra, VIC: Leopold Classic Library.

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PART I

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THE NATURE OF SHARING AND THE SHARING ECONOMY

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2.  Situating the sharing economy: between markets, commons and capital Adam Arvidsson

INTRODUCTION

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The “sharing economy” constitutes a new combination of market exchange, commonsbased sharing and capitalist profit-seeking. Most observers have focused on one of these components, seeing the sharing economy either as a new commons-based alternative to markets and capitalism (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2004), or as a new more intensified and far-reaching form of capitalist exploitation of the commons (Belk 2014). In this chapter, I will take the perspective of historical sociology to suggest that the articulation of these four elements—sharing, markets, commons and capitalism—could be viewed differently. Indeed, today’s sharing economy can be understood as manifestation of a more general tendency whereby capital accumulation has come to depend on new kinds of commons that are embedded in the communicative flows of everyday life processes and supported by digital technologies, and where, at the same time, commons-based markets are emerging as an alternative to capitalism. A similar articulation of commons-based markets developed at the turn of the last millennium, as the European “commercial revolution” (Lopez 1975) laid the foundations for a developing market society. Seen this way, today’s sharing economy might not be a historical novelty or anomaly, but rather a symptom of a recurrence of an older institutional articulation that, 1000 years ago, was fundamental to the emergence of modernity in the West.

CAPITALISM, COMMONS, SHARING AND MARKETS The notion of an inherent opposition between sharing and common resources on the one hand, and market exchange and capitalism on the other, is heavily influenced by the historical experience of the industrial revolution in Northern Europe. Indeed, the 19th century was a time when capitalism advanced though the expansion of markets, and where inter-capitalist market competition was intense. The English industrial revolution that provided the context for Marx’s analysis of capitalism was based on relatively small companies (by today’s standards), which engaged in intense competition (Mokyr 2010). With this example in mind, it is easy to equate capitalism with markets, a view that has become even more plausible over recent decades of neoliberal reforms whereby marketization has invested public services as well as growing areas of everyday practice. At the same time, contemporary capitalism is increasingly organized around large and powerful corporations and financial actors and, lately, platform unicorns such as Uber and Amazon. They do not engage in market competition as much as they seek to sit on and extract monopoly rent from markets that they own, in whole or in part. In this 10

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Situating the sharing economy  11 s­ ituation, a Braudelian perspective seems more plausible. To Braudel, capitalism is not the same thing as markets. Instead, capitalism developed historically as a series of attempts to control and regulate markets on the part of small cliques of powerful interests, often mobilizing state power in some form. Markets, on the other hand are well-nigh universal, at least in the history of urban civilization, and possibly even further back. To put it in Giovanni Arrighi’s terms:

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The capitalist character of market-based development is not determined by the presence of capitalist institutions and dispositions but by the relation of state power to capital. Add as many capitalists as you like to a market economy, but unless the state has been subordinated to their class interest, the market economy remains non-capitalist. (Arrighi 2007, 331‒2; cf. Braudel 1977)

At the same time, capitalism is a concept that, particularly given its history, is difficult to define. I will attempt a rather simple definition. Drawing on the recent focus on value and valuation in economic sociology, I suggest that we think of capitalism as a system of social action organized around the drive to maximize the accumulation of capital. This can proceed through the expansion of markets, or by means of controlling markets and erecting powerful barriers to entry. The important thing is that things can be transformed into capital, and thereby function as assets that can be a source of profit. We can define capitalism simply as a system that transforms things into capital, that is, into assets that are valuable from the point of view of continuous capital accumulation (cf. Muniesa et al. 2017). What about the commons? Applying the same perspective, the commons can be understood as an alternative way in which things can operate as assets. Commons are thus not simply natural givens or resources that are free to all, but they are based on social systems, usually systems of production that define and regulate them. As Elinor Ostrom argued, such social systems, or “communities” regulate the commons; they define rules of access and norms of common property, and enforce these rules and norms through collective sanctions. They distinguish commons from the kinds of open access to which, instead, Hardin’s famous argument of the “tragedy of the commons” might more plausibly apply (Ostrom 1990). However, such processes of commoning are not simply ways of regulating commons, they also define the commons: they provide a network of symbolic meanings and social relations that define the value of common goods and enable them to function as assets in relation to some kind of productive goal. Seen this way, the commons do not simply represent a form of property or governance alternative to that of capitalism (or the state). They also come with a distinct logic of value. In capitalism, things become valuable, they become assets to the extent to which they can contribute to the process of capitalist accumulation. This presupposes that they can be rendered commensurate with other things, either through market exchange or through the administrative logic of the corporation (or, for that matter, the algorithmic logic of the platform: an expression of appreciation becomes valuable as an asset when, expressed as a “like” it can enter a relation of algorithmic commensuration on the Facebook platform). On the commons things become valuable, they become assets to the extent to which they can contribute to the distinct goals and aims that are inherent in the process of commoning that sustains them. These might be very different from the goals and aims that inform other kinds of

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12  Handbook of the sharing economy commoning. The logic of value of the commons is thus based on singularity rather than equivalence. Indeed the creation of a symbolic and affective framework that is able to support such singularity (often in the form of an “experience”) is an important aspect of practices of commoning in the contemporary context. Indeed, as Peter Linebaugh summarizes a perspective that has been prevalent among many cultural historians of the Polanyian great transformation, starting with E.P Thompson:

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The enclosures were not only a force in the creation of the land market but they destroyed the spiritual claim on the soil and prepared for proletarization of the common people, subjecting them to multifaceted labor disicpline, the elimination of cakes and ale, the limitation of sports, the shunning of dance[,] the abolition of festivals and the strict discipline over the male and female bodies. The land and the body lost their magic. (Linebaugh 2008, 51)

The commons are thus not simply a form of property or governance. They are also a way of making something valuable, by singularizing it or, which is the same thing, giving it magic. (This is an important point as it suggests that the predominance of singularization or “enrichment” in the contemporary economy—capitalist and not—can somehow be related to the prevalence of the commons as a productive force; cf. Boltanski and Esquerre 2017.) If we take this perspective on capitalism and commons—as systems of valuation, as processes by means of which things become valuable—we can relate the commons to Braudel’s concept of the longue durée of everyday life. The commons are the ways in which the relational and affective framework of everyday life—not necessarily moving at a glacial speed, as for Braudel, but perhaps changing quickly in a time of digitally enhanced “social acceleration” (Rosa 2013)—enter into economic processes (not necessarily capitalist ones). The post-traditional commons, distinct from the commons that Ostrom studied, are the institutional form in which life becomes valuable as it is put to work in a time of what Andrea Fumagalli (2017) has called biocapitalism. Such valuable life in common can be directly subsumed by capital, as is often the case in the contemporary app economy; or it can be out of its reach, as in the case of the anti-capitalist commons that Massimo De Angelis (2017) describes. Or the relation can be somewhere in between. Returning thus to Braudel, we can revisit his famous tri-partition between capitalism as the “great exchange” that moves above ordinary markets (or the level of “small exchange”), which in turn sit upon a longue durée of everyday life made up of material culture and social beliefs and practices that change only very slowly. Capitalism remains “at the top” as it (more or less successfully) imposes its logic of value on markets and the commons, making things into assets for capital accumulation. The commons remain “at the bottom” they define the value of things—make them assets—in relation to relational life processes that have “lost their magic,” lost their natural and obvious roots in a genuine longue durée, that have become reflexive and “liquid” in radically new ways, as the sociologists would say. At the same time, the commons confer new magic on these processes as they have been reflexively reconstituted as forms of commoning endowed with aims and goals. Markets stay in the middle. They mediate between but also within the two levels: markets can be spaces of exchange between capital and the commons, as well as between capitalist actors and between individuals or communities defined by singular processes of “commoning.” What about sharing? In its “pure” form, sharing is a form of distribution that does not presuppose reciprocity, and that reinforces and reproduces social relations with their

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Situating the sharing economy  13 accompanying norms and values. According to Yochlai Benkler such “social sharing” or “sharing nicely” is an economically disinterested practice. Rather, it is oriented towards “building social relations of mutual interest and fulfilling our emotional and psychological needs of companionship and mutual recognition” (Benkler 2006, 92). He goes on to suggest that such social sharing has become a key feature of new, often digitally mediated communities of commons-based peer production, including non-commercial aspects of the sharing economy (such as tool libraries or communitarian car-pooling schemes). In its pure version, sharing would thus be strictly linked to the commons. The practice of “pure sharing” unfolds against the backdrop of a common set of resources that can be shared, as well as a common lifeworld made up of norms and values that structure the practice of sharing. At the same time, such sharing reinforces the values and norms that keep the commons together; it becomes an essential part of what Massimo De Angelis describes as commoning: the construction and maintenance of social systems that govern, define and, essentially, constitute the commons. Historically such sharing has been the main principle of distribution in the parts of economic life that have unfolded outside of markets. The family or the village economy have traditionally built on such forms of normatively sanctioned—and often highly inequitable—forms of sharing. As have the commons. The commons are by definition a shared resource, endowed with norms and values that structure such practices of sharing. But is sharing a feature of the commons, as Benkler seems to suggest, and vice versa? Recent developments seem to indicate that things are more complicated. As Russell Belk has suggested, much of the contemporary sharing economy is, in fact, a matter of what he calls pseudo-sharing: practices of sharing that do not reproduce social relations or a common lifeworld, but rather are distinguished by “the presence of profit motives, the absence of feelings of community, and expectations of reciprocity” (Belk 2014, 7). Such pseudo-sharing seems to be a feature of those aspects of the sharing economy that have been commercialized or otherwise subjected to impersonal managerial forms of governance. Bardhi and Eckhardt’s research on the commercial Zipcar car-sharing network, for example, emphasize how, instead of communal relations, participants tend to foster the opposite: a “lack of identifications, negative reciprocity resulting in a big-brother model of governance, and a deterrence of brand community” (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012, 1). Alternatively, algorithmic forms of governance also tend to de-socialize practices of sharing. Parigi and Cook (2015) show how members of hospitality sharing networks such as Couchsurfing rely on digitally mediated reputation mechanisms in order to create interpersonal trust. They also show how this, at the same time, makes it harder to establish strong interpersonal ties. Similarly, research on commons-based peer production communities suggest that rather than social sharing, participants rely on quantifiable measurements of impact which, in turn, translate into individual endowments of reputation. Participants see collaboration in these communities not only as a form of sharing, but also as a way to accumulate transferable social capital in the form of a reputation (Arvidsson et al. 2016). Arguably, something similar happens when sharing is mediated through the state and transformed into—often impersonal—forms of welfare redistribution (Polanyi 1957). Similarly, capitalist organizations inevitably rely on practices of sharing. Every organization that has reached a certain degree of complexity runs on informal rules and practices, or tacit knowledge, which are shared and reproduced in social interaction among

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14  Handbook of the sharing economy its members (Roy 1954; Polanyi 1958). Such tacit knowledge has become more important in knowledge-intensive organizations where the “collective intelligence” embodied in the unstructured social relations that make up the organization has become an important source of value and profitability. To some, such “collaborative communities” that inevitably arise in complex organizations—capitalist or not—constitute a negation of the power of capital and point on towards a sort of “stumbling into socialism” (Mason 2016; see also Adler and Heckscher 2006). However, Marx saw the constitution of such a “general intellect” as an inevitable consequence of the consolidation of the capitalist economy and a source of its further development as well as its potential negation (see below). In conclusion, rather than seeing commons and sharing on the one hand, and markets and capital on the other, as intrinsically linked opposite models of social relations it is probably more productive to view these four elements—markets and sharing, capitalism and commons—as four distinct institutional logics that can combine in different ways in different historical moments and social contexts. In what follows, I will (very briefly) examine the evolving relations between these institutional logics in the long history of the modern capitalist economy.

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THE COMMONS IN EARLY MARKET SOCIETY This reflexive nature of the commons comes out clearly if we look at their emergence in Europe during the “commercial revolution” of the Middle Ages (Reynolds 1997; see also Lopez 1976). In earlier scholarship, the origin of the commons, when discussed at all, was often attributed to tradition or custom; sometimes the ancient traditions of Germanic tribes who, as E.A. Thompson suggested, lived in a society where “the private ownership of land was unknown” and where the soil was worked collectively (Thompson 1966, 74). In this tradition the commons are understood as residuals of earlier, more “primitive” forms of property that have survived into the modern age; a view that was shared by liberal promoters of the 18th century enclosures, as well as by some of their critics such as, notably, Friedrich Engels (cf. Bravo and De Moor 2008). An alternative view sees the commons not simply as residues of a more primitive past, but as distinct institutions that rise into prominence in specific historical periods as the result of particular forces and contradictions. Perry Anderson noted (in passing) something of the sort, attributing the rise of the commons in rural England to the origins of feudalism in which “scattered Celtic hamlets gave way to nucleated villages in which the individual property of peasant households was combined with the collective coaration of open fields” (Anderson 1974, 124). More recently, historians such as Avner Grief (2006) and Tine De Moor (2008) have suggested that the rise of the kinds of commons that were to figure as the nemesis of liberal market society in the modern age be understood in the context of the commercial revolution of the 11th to 14th centuries. To put this argument extremely schematically: the demographic upswing and the return of viable communications that marked the European 11th and 12th centuries led to a repopulation of Europe. The face of the countryside changed, cities grew, and the social fabric became denser and interaction more frequent and intense. This new density of people and communication led to a series of mutually reinforcing processes. First, and most simply, this created an increased pressure on land and other natural resources.

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Situating the sharing economy  15 Arable land became scarce, and as a consequence the pressure to convert forest and pasture increased. Second, there was an intensification of commerce and a growing centrality of towns’ markets and commercial culture more generally, along with areas of early “industrious development” centered on wool manufacture in Flanders, Picardy and Lombardy. Third, there was a centralization of power as kings affirmed themselves against lesser feudal seigneurs. Fourth, there was a growing crisis of feudalism, which was related to all of these preceding factors as well as to inherent limitations in the productivity of agriculture, thus reinforcing the first tendency of increasing pressure on land use. Fourth, and finally, there was a shift in the relational modality, a sort of social modernization if you like, expressed in the emergence of new institutions, such as the monastic orders, based on free association rather than kinship (Moore 2000). These factors all interacted to favor the emergence and institutionalization of new forms of commons. In the countryside, population increase coincided with the rising levels of exploitation that derived from new forms of royal taxation, together with more intense seigneurial rent extraction. (This was in turn an expression of the crisis of feudalism. It was linked to the declining relative value of land rents vis-à-vis profits from expanding commercial activity, and more costly seigneurial habits deriving from their courtly presence and new forms of conspicuous consumption.) As Jean Birrell saw the process, in his study of the English forest commons in the 13th century:

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Increased population pressure in the 13th century, the growth of towns and increase in demand and in trade produced a pressure on resources, which was sometimes acute. In particular, shortage of arable land led to the [assarting] of marginal land often at the expense of pastures and clearance of woodland. At the same time seigneurial pressure on the peasantry was stepped up, as lords of manors attempted to maintain their incomes in the face of rising prices and the attractions of a higher standard of living  and in doing so took advantage of their power over a numerous and often impoverished peasantry. (Birrell 1987, 22)

This and similar processes led to a cycle of peasant struggles where traditional common rights were defended, and, when successful, codified and made explicit in new ways, and where new ones were introduced. The resulting commons, often highly complicated arrangements of varying rights of access, should be seen as settlements of conflicts that arose between the lords and the inhabitants of a village in the context of the great European reclamations that took place during the 10th to the 12th centuries. Sometimes this process included the inscription of some of these settlements into law, as in the case of the English Magna Carta and the accompanying Charter of the Forest of 1215. The social struggles unleashed in this period as a consequence of the growing crisis of feudalism and the rise of manufacture and commerce institutionalized and codified specific commons as settlement of conflicts. But even when these struggles were unsuccessful, they contributed to a value shift. As Norman Cohn (1961) suggested long ago, the crusades of the 11th century and onwards served in part to defuse a situation of widespread popular unrest, but they also centralized dispersed struggles into a united multitude that, informed by ideas such as those of the Waldensians, the Fraticielli or the followers of Joachim of Fiore, was informed by a new mentality in which the notion of having things in common could emerge as a common idea. These ideas would persist as a radical undercurrent throughout European history, to resurface in many forms. Among them was the English revolution where they guided the defence against g­ rowing

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16  Handbook of the sharing economy

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e­ nclosures on the part of movements such as the Levellers and the Diggers, who would invoke, among other things, the Magna Carta as a bulwark against new forms of appropriation and exploitation (Rees 2017). The story of the rural commons can thus be read as one where traditional rights and practices were recodified as explicit claims, sometimes as in England acquiring the force of law. At the same time the struggles that drove these processes created a new common imaginary that would inform present and future struggles against appropriation and exploitation, in particular in the period of “primitive accumulation” that would ensue. The urban guilds that flourished in the same period can also be understood to have antecedents in classical institutions such as the Roman collegia. However, the flowering of guilds in the 11th to 14th centuries is notable, leading to the proliferation of “hundreds of thousands” of such organizations by the year 1300 (De Moor 2008, 191). The flourishing of guilds was of course linked to the new social environment of the growing cities. Populated to a large extent by serfs who had fled or somehow been purged from a countryside facing intensified seigneurial pressure, or other “masterless men” who sought to make their fortune as traders or craftsmen, the cities exemplified the new prevalence of free association over kinship that Moore (2000) puts at the basis of the “First European revolution.” Along with fraternities and religious orders, guilds provided a space where new identities and rule systems could be articulated. This would serve both to regulate and improve productive and commercial activates and, importantly, to reduce insecurity. This applied in an economic sense, as guilds were able to fix prices, set the rules of market exchange and, importantly, provide a number of welfare services for their members. It also applied in an existential sense as, like the new monastic orders, guilds provided a meaningful framework for life, endowing it with goals and aims, along with the secrets and rituals that were able to enforce them. As De Moor writes: [the guilds and commons] developed a sytsem of market regulation in order to protect their “own little world”. Measures were taken by both guilds and commons to achieve a reasonable income for their members and to eliminate the disruptive effects of the market, which was still at an early stage of development, when commons and guilds were set up in Europe. Institutions such as guilds could make functioning in this setting less risky, though without losing too many of the advantages that the market offered. (De Moor 2008, 197)

And while the guilds certainly functioned to protect against the risks of the market, they also supported the development of a new market society. They did this by regulating market transactions, but also by providing a source of social capital and class identity for merchants and artisans, thus contributing to altering their status. Importantly, they also functioned as source of significant legal development. Among other things, the guilds, along with the universities to which they were sometimes closely linked, drove the rediscovery of Roman law and its development into a new lex mercatorioum, design to regulate commerce. The guilds would play a vital part in supporting innovation and promoting economic recovery as the ecological disasters of the 14th century broke the backbone of European feudalism (Pamuk 2007; Moore 2002). It might be justified to distinguish between the emergence of the rural commons mainly as reactions to intensified exploitation, and the emergence of the urban guilds as institutionalizations of a new more “modern” relational modality typical of an early market society. However, the picture is not that simple. The urban guilds rose many times

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Situating the sharing economy  17 to defend petty producers from both seigneurial pressure and the pressure from city governments and other more powerful guilds. They often took the side of the oppressed in important social struggles, such as the revolt of the artisan guilds in Ghent, and the Ciompi revolt in Florence in 1381. (Only later would the guilds instead come to figure as an object of popular rebellion and discontent, as in the English Revolution, the Civil War of the 1650s.) Conversely, the rural commons were also to some extent an effect of the marketization of rural society. This applied in the sense of the penetration of market relations into the countryside that favoured new forms of free association and facilitated the cooperation between village communities. It also applied in the sense of the emergence of a new “rural middle class” who used the commons as a resource for market participation and in affirming their position against that of feudal lords. As Maddicott describes the role of the new English gentry in enforcing the Magna Carta in the 13th century:

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[In this period] we for the first time see the emergence of the gentry of the shires as a political force . . . In the thirteenth century their authority and cohesion was enhanced by  a nexus of more recent social and legal changes. The rise of the knights as an administrative class, the growth of the freedom to alienate and inherit land, which gradually emancipated them together with their tenants from the bonds of feudal lordship, the permeability of the boundary between knights and freeholders, which maintained the privileged positon of the freeholder, once the villein had lost access to the royal courts. These changes worked to produce a society in which the ties of neighbourhood mattered as much as those of lordship. They helped create the gentry, which embraced more than the relatively small elite of knights who headed it and which was sharply sensitive to local needs and interests. (Maddicott 1984, 25)

In the European commercial revolution of the 10th to 14th centuries the relation between commons and markets was thus an ambivalent one. On the one hand, guilds and, particularly, commons emerged as a consequence of resistance to marketization, and for rural commons in particular, resistance to the intensified seigneurial exploitation that resulted from this. As De Moor suggests, these institutions served, overall, to protect their members from the new risks that came with the expansion of market relations. On the other hand, the commons and, in particular, the guilds enabled the expansion of a new market society, both by offering the kinds of protection that enabled market participation and by providing the legal and institutional framework necessary for the expansion of commerce and manufacture. Indeed, as Grief has argued, these new organizations were fundamental for the formation of an infrastructure for a modern market economy. As virtually all contributions to the complicated “transition debates” agreed, the petty producers, both urban and rural, who relied on these new institutions for support and strength would pay a vital role in undermining the feudal system, and prepare the way for the transition towards capitalism (cf. Wallerstein 1976). However, initially some of these petty producers also supported and were mobilized by a vision of a more egalitarian commons-based market society, a society marked by what Marx would later call “petty commodity exchange.” This vision of the market as an integral component of a new civil society founded on reciprocity, freedom and a new kind of secular individualism informed the economic thought of the Italian manisti civili of the 12th to 14th centuries. It was supported by the guilds and new universities that acted as sources of legal and institutional innovation. It also affected the development of Franciscan economic thought and inspired innovations such as the Monti di Pieta and the rural monti frummentari, which combined an embrace of markets with new kinds of solidarity and reciprocity. Arguably it

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18  Handbook of the sharing economy also remained influential for 18th century thinkers such as Genovesi, Ferguson and Smith, who envisioned a kind of market society that was radically different from the capitalist one that would emerge from the great transformation of the 19th century (Nuccio 2008; Bruni and Zamagni 2004; cf. McCloskey 2010).

CAPITALISM AND THE COMMONS

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That guilds and commons stood in the way of an emerging industrialization and were eventually swept away by it, to the extent that “most historical commons—at least in the Northwest of the European continent—had been largely eliminated by the end of the 19th century,” is a well-known fact (Bravo and De Moor 2008, 160). It is generally understood that the defeat of the commons, in the form that they had assumed during the European Middle Ages, was a precondition for the development of modern, industrial capitalism. This great transformation, to use Karl Polanyi’s term, did not only entail the material enclosure of the rural commons and the legal dismantling of the urban guilds. The triumph of industrial production rested on the defeat of a popularly rooted moral economy where market exchange was to be based on skilled labour deploying common skills and shared practices, and rooted in a common morality. As Bonneuil and Fressoz describe what they understand to be a decisive moment in this conquest—so decisive in fact that they see it as a key factor behind our entry into the “Anthropocene” (or “Capitaloscene”)—the defeat of the “machine-breaking movement” of the late 18th century: The machine breaking movement was made up of urban artisans (typographers, textile workers) and rural labourers (peasants who spun, wove and knotted by hand, seasonal cereal threshers etc.). They expressed their refusal to see themselves dispossessed of their skills, their livelihood and a way of life that combined agriculture with manufacture. They rejected poor quality industrial products and championed the idea of a fair price for their labour against the machines that were the cause of imbalance and inequality. (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017, 258)

To put it briefly, Karl Polanyi’s great transformation was a process in which the commons became capital. Things ceased to function as assets in relation to production processes that were rooted in communitarian life forms and oriented towards the singular values that they embodied. Instead, the very same things—land, human bodies, culturally embedded skills and shared social relations—began to function as assets in relation to a unified process of capital accumulation that expanded to embrace the whole world market. As the rural commons were enclosed, they became capital to be exploited in new kinds of commercial agriculture. As the commoners left the land and entered factories, their bodies were transformed into variable capital, embodiments of a new social force, generic and abstract labor. In their free time their needs and desires were mobilized by an expanding culture industry and shaped into a similarly abstract “audience labor,” the source of a new and more predictable consumer demand. This process of capitalist appropriation of the commons still goes on, particularly in the Global South where land-grabbing along with military force masked under slogans such as the “War on Drugs” is repeating the process of primitive accumulation of the early modern European countryside. At the same time, however, capitalist development has created new kinds of commons.

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Situating the sharing economy  19 The idea that capitalism not only appropriates and eliminates the commons, but also creates new ones, is shared by at least two traditions of thought within the field of political economy, broadly defined. I will draw on both of them in attempting to flesh out an analysis of the role of the commons in the contemporary crisis of capitalism. Most famously, perhaps, Antonio Negri, Micheal Hardt, Massimo De Angelis and other exponents of the Italian school of autonomist Marxism have made this a key argument in their analysis of contemporary capitalism. To them, contemporary informational or “cognitive” capitalism mainly builds on the commons, in the form of everyday linguistic and affective relations as its main productive force. In processes of “vital subsumtion” (sussunzione vitale) these lived commons are mobilized into immaterial labor that produces the cognitive or immaterial assets such as innovation, flexibility and brand (cf. Negri 2016; Hardt and Negri 2000; De Angelis 2007; Fumagalli 2017). Capitalist accumulation builds on forms of social cooperation that are embedded in ordinary life processes and, therefore, not fully controlled by the wage relation. This argument builds on the famous passage from the Grundrisse retrospectively entitled the “Fragment on Machinery.” There Marx develops his analysis into seemingly contradictory conclusions. To simplify the argument: the more complex productive cooperation becomes—and the virtue of the factory system is precisely that of making new, more complex productive cooperation possible—the more it depends on skills and competences that are shared within the factory itself. How to operate a machine, how to relate to fellow workers and bosses, along with mastery of informal tricks of the trade, are necessary to function productively in a factory environment. Such tacit knowledge—to use a term that has since become popular with management consultants—comprises things that one only apprehends by entering the factory and becoming part of its productive community; the worker acquires it “by virtue of his presence as a social body” (Marx 1973, 705). This shared social knowledge that enables productive cooperation is subsequently embodied in machinery, which in turn mediates cooperation in new ways and thus generates new kinds of knowledge. The important thing is that the common knowledge, or general intellect, thus generated is embedded in social relations that unfold beyond the direct control of capital and the wage relation; “it is in a word the development of the social individual which [now] appears as the great foundation-stone of production and wealth”: The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process. (Ibid.)

To Marx the development of the factory system thus also entails a process of remediation of cooperation, whereby new social relations, new forms of “commoning,” are created and these in turn come to generate and embody new kinds of commonly available knowledge, of general intellect. At a certain point, this general intellect becomes the most important force of production, surpassing the “theft of labour time,” and here it is as if we stumble directly into “post capitalism”; not with a bang but with a whimper, as it were: The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in the face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct

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20  Handbook of the sharing economy

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form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value . . . With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities and hence not the reduction of the necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. Capital itself is the moving contradiction. (Marx 1973, 705‒6)

This stumbling into communism, through a process put in motion by the “moving contradiction” of capital itself, whereby the new commons that it generates somehow become its negation, is the cornerstone of the political analysis of Italian autonomist Marxists, as well as of more popular and influential analyses that this tradition has inspired. Something of the sort does indeed happen as this “communism of capital”—to use Negri’s term—is institutionalized in the corporation (indeed the term “socialism of capital” was used by late 19th century observers in relation to the rise of corporations; Bevergungen et al. 2013). Substituting exchange value and the market for bureaucratic control of the “visible hand,” the corporation becomes organized around the protection and cultivation of its proprietary intellectual capital. As becomes gradually more evident for economists and management scholars during the 20th century, starting with the path-breaking work of Fritz Machlup (1973), the nurture of the corporate knowledge commons through managerial tactics that support continuous innovation, creativity or even collaborative communities, along with their legal protection through intellectual property law, becomes the secret to success in the capitalist game in what has become known as the “knowledge economy.” A second perspective takes the opposite point of view. Rather than focusing on capital concentration, this view argues for the persistence of small-scale, flexible and relatively capital-poor producers within industrial capitalism. Departing from Alfred Marshall’s (1922) theory of industrial districts, as well as more recent “revisionist” historiography of the industrial revolution that has redefined the importance of large-scale factories in that process, this approach suggests that networked small-scale companies can in some cases compete successfully with large-scale mass production. They do this by cultivating flexibility, innovation and skilled labor. In order to achieve this, industrial districts need to invest in the cultivation of common knowledge and skills through education, training and research. They need to cultivate a “general intellect,” which then becomes the “immaterial” secret to their success; as Marshall (1922) observed on English industrial districts “the mysteries of the trade become no mysteries, but are as it were in the air, and children learn many of them unconsciously.” This tradition posits a continuation of the balance between commons and market orientation that characterized pre-modern “industrious” petty commodity production. Indeed as an ideal-typical end-point to the political scale, Sabel and Zetlin (1985) envision a “guild or yeoman industrialization” building on a “communitarian world of petty producers.” While post-war policies that favored Fordist mass production made the “communitarian world of petty producers” of Marshall’s industrial districts seem less attractive, this view has reappeared in analyses of contemporary capitalism. The main driver of this development was the revitalization of European industrial districts, as a consequence of post-Fordist restructuring and the availability of more advanced forms of automation

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Situating the sharing economy  21 and control technologies. To some extent this model has resurfaced in contemporary debates on the “fourth industrial revolution” (Schwab 2016). At the same time, however, a host of recent scholarship has pointed at the decline of industrial districts and, more importantly, their subsumption under global supply chains where control remains firmly in the hand of large industrial players (Harrison 1994; Foster 2011). Both of these approaches have provided insights on the contemporary relation between capital and the commons. Indeed, most analysis of contemporary capitalism, whether Marxist or managerial (or, as is sometimes the case, both), builds on a combination of the two perspectives. Let me now attempt a summary. Contemporary informational capitalism is marked by the twin tendencies towards the outsourcing of production, often in the form of global value chains, and the financialization of value (indeed, Marx saw the establishment of “surplus value commons” and the shift to financial rent as consequences of the networking of capitalist production). The development of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs), starting with corporate intranets in the 1970s, can be understood as driven in part by the need to integrate a large number of actors, inside as well as outside of corporate organizations within extended forms of commoning, where knowledge and skills are shared. This happens implicitly, such as when digitized instructions for how to create a specific component (such as a touch screen for an iPhone) are sent to a subcontractor. It also happens explicitly, such as when subcontractors are often contractually obliged to contribute to innovation processes (Arvidsson and Peitersen 2013, 27‒33). However, the digitalization of the capitalist commons introduces a particular dialectic. ICTs and technologies such as computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) make possible the outsourcing of production to third parties. This process started in the late 1970s under the heading of “Toyotism” as car manufacturers, facing stiff competition and having learned from recent waves of labor unrest, began to make use of small factories—in the Philippines for Toyota, in the Italian industrial districts for Fiat—to produce some of the things that they had manufactured in-house before. With the successive opening up of the Chinese market after Deng Zhiao Ping’s reforms of 1979, the process accelerated and China along with some of the “Asian Tigers” became the manufacturing powerhouses of the world, the places to which the production of car parts, computers, cell phones, toasters and refrigerators were located. Production no longer unfolded in a single factory or a single corporation, as was the case for the Ford Motor Company that controlled every part of the automobile production process, from glass and rubber works to retail and distribution. Instead, outsourcing located production to hundreds of factories, organized in hierarchies with assemblers such as Foxconn employing millions of workers at the top, and small family operations churning out plastic cell phone casings in a Shenzhen garage at the bottom. This meant that productive cooperation was extended far outside the factory walls to invest complex value chains or value networks that spanned the globe. This also meant that that the technical solutions, skills and competences necessary to make a decently working washing machine became common in new and radically extended ways. The result, as management scholars Paul Adler and Charles Heckscher put it: “the ‘mysteries’ of effective commodity production have become common knowledge; they are now merely tickets for entry rather than keys to winning in competition” (Adler and Heckscher 2006, 28). To use management speak, production, even advanced commodity production, has become commoditized: that is,

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22  Handbook of the sharing economy reduced to an undifferentiated good produced under conditions of intense competition where profits levels are heavily restricted. Commodity production has become a common skill that millions of factories around the world, and maybe billions of workers, are able to engage in. It is possible that the coming new wave of automation, along with new digital infrastructures (what is known as “the fourth industrial revolution”) will strengthen this tendency, to the extent that many now speak of “on tap” manufacturing: the possibility to make even technically advanced things as an instantly available resource at low cost (cf. Schwab 2016). As a consequence of the skills and solutions involved in manufacturing becoming common and generic, most commercial products have become similar to an unprecedented degree. In a similar way, the globalization of culture following the deregulation of the media market in the 1980s, and its subsequent networking via the internet, has entailed a similar process. Nationally or locally, specific traditions or lifestyles have been transformed into elements of a new global commons of planetary dimensions. With social media, the details of the everyday life of billions of people—the Braudellian longue duree at its most intimate level—have been transformed into a gigantic data commons, albeit almost completely enclosed and controlled by a handful of corporations. Capitalist success builds on mining and appropriating these commons. Branding is about combining specific forms of (in itself commonly available) productive knowledge, with specific cultural features (in themselves commonly known), and using the (proprietary) data commons to insert the resulting hybrid into the daily life of the right people at the right moment. Logistics—of goods, of knowledge of aesthetics and affect—has become the key to success. Consequently, knowledge and managerial work has become a matter of creating singular combinations of such flows: it has become a matter of exercising “creativity” or “excellence” in ways that cannot be prescribed by a job description. This, at any rate, has been the key suggestion of management thought since the 1980s and the publication of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence in 1982. One way of seeing this process is that capital has reached deep into the intimacy of the lifeworld, subsuming life itself and transforming it into capital that can potentially be exploited in all of its moments. Nothing is safe any more: love, friendship, sex, hunger, everything, can be transformed into an asset that contributes to the capitalist accumulation process. However, this complete transformation of the common lifeworld into capital also means that capital itself, as a productive asset at least, has become common in new and radical ways. Indeed, one of the most tangible consequences of the “second great transformation” put in motion by digital technologies is that capital has begun to retreat from commodity production. This is true for material production: across most industries we have witnessed a shift in productive activity from large capital-intensive corporations to small and mediumsized factories integrated in supply chains. The outsourcing of production to small and medium-sized enterprises has in part been made possible by the decline in the capital requirements for engaging in commodity production. This is visible at the bottom end of global supply chains, where the cost of machinery necessary to participate is well within the reach of an extended family budget (cf. Joonkoo et al. 2016). It is manifest in a perhaps extreme way in contemporary platform labor, where the capital deployed is composed of already available yet underutilized resources: the bike and the smartphone for the Deliveroo

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Situating the sharing economy  23 driver, the empty room or second house for the Airbnb host. Indeed the platform model, as Srnicek (2017) suggests, first developed as a technology for integrating and controlling corporate supply chains, populated by a multitude of relatively small actors. Only later, with the generalization of mobile connectivity, did it extend to coordinate a multitude of “gig workers” who put up their own cars, bikes and smartphones as capital. Mostly the markets that these capital-poor actors operate on are controlled by corporate capital, as in the case of corporate value chains, or the “unicorn” platforms of the gig economy. But these actors are not in themselves capitalist in any meaningful sense of the term: like the petty producers of the late Middle Ages they engage in market competition based, mostly, on their use of common assets. Indeed, as Andrea Fumagalli (2017) argues, capitalist accumulation rests less on the direct exploitation of productive activity, and more on the control of complex flows of money, knowledge, goods and affects that coordinate such activity. This is reflected in two significant tendencies: the rise of financial rent as a percentage of corporate profits and the rise of intangible assets as a percentage of the market value of corporations. The two are, in fact, intrinsically linked. Intangible assets essentially represent the ability to exercise such control: the ability to put all components of a value chain to work in generating continuous innovation, or the ability to coordinate complex logistics; most importantly, the ability to make everything come together in a brand that both justifies and underpins up to 60 percent of the value of corporations. The creation and maintanance of such a valuable fiction rests on both seduction and control: on the ability to control complex flows of logistics, and on the ability to attract and create intensities of affect (Arvidsson and Peitersen 2013). Essentially, the creation of brands entails the construction of an artificial commons (marketing pundits speak of “brand communities”) whereby a product that is technically and often aesthetically similar to other products, themselves made by the same people deploying the same commonly available skills and solutions, can be understood to embody singular values that confer unique qualities on it. Such processes of singularization, or enrichement, represent an important principle of value creation in contemporary consumer capitalism, and they are a direct outcome of the prevalence of common resources as the most important productive resource (Boltanski and Esquerre 2017).

CONCLUSION In the “First European Revolution” of the high Middle Ages the commons worked to support the development of a market society. Rather than opposites, markets and commons were, for some time, complementary institutions that enabled a social development that both gave rise to feudalism, and pointed beyond it. The commons themselves arose as a consequence of the remediation of the medieval social fabric. Improved communications, the rise of towns and the intensification of commerce led to intensified social interaction—a social acceleration perhaps—which made possible the commons as a new institutional form. Today, we are in the midst of a similar remediation of social interaction. Digital technologies have made possible social cooperation at an unprecedented global scale and substantially accelerated the pace of communication and information transfer. These technical affordances have been deployed to extend the realm of the capitalist valorization

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24  Handbook of the sharing economy process, both formally and substantially, to encompass an unprecedented range of human action on a global scale. Our new digital commons are a result of this. They have become crucial to capitalist accumulation, just as the commons were central to the feudal economy and the seigniorial accumulation of rent. But, just as then, they have also given rise to new forms of market-oriented industrious development that cannot easily be contained within the institutional framework of post-industrial capitalism. The sharing economy is a manifestation of this deeper structural tendency towards the growing centrality of commons and sharing to value creation. This applies to capitalist processes of value creation proper, as well as increasingly to less capital-intense industrious processes whereby small-scale actors draw on common resources to engage in marketoriented petty commodity production. Like the feudal lords of yesteryear, contemporary capitalist corporations seek to subsume such market-oriented commons-based industrious activity, chiefly by monopolizing the platforms on which it can come to market. The re-feudalizing logic of digital capitalism is based on such a retreat from direct commodity production in favor of monopolisitic rent-seeking, in the form of the platform economy as well as an increasing financialization of everyday life. Starting in the 14th century, European feudalism ran into increasing difficulties in controlling and subsuming market-based petty production, in particular when confronted with an ecological crisis—soil exhaustion, with an ensuing decline in agricultural productivity—and the subsequent arrival of the Black Death in 1348. This ecological crisis broke the backbone of a European feudal system already in crisis, and opened up for the social forces and conflicts that would eventually coalesce into capitalism on the one hand, and modernity on the other. To use Marxist language, the crisis of feudalism unleashed a development in the relations of production that would eventually, after centuries of conflict and turmoil, coalesce into a new mode of production. Whether the contemporary “sharing economy” is equally pregnant with future potential remains an open question. However, the return of the commons as a fundamental component of economic activity testifies to a transformation in the relations of production that cannot be entirely accommodated within the capitalist mode of production, at least not in its present version.

REFERENCES Adam A. and N. Peitersen (2013), The Ethical Economy: Rebuilding Value after the Crisis, New York: Columbia University Press. Adler, P. and C. Heckscher (2006), “Towards Collaborative Community,” in The Firm as Collaborative Community, ed. C. Heckscher and P. Adler, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 11‒105. Anderson, P. (1974), Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, London: New Left Books. Arrighi, G. (2007), Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London: Verso. Arvidsson, A., A. Caliandro, A. Cossu, et al. (2016), “Commons Based Peer Production in the Information Economy,” Research Report, P2PValuehttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alessandro_Caliandro/publica​ tion/310624903_Commons_Based_Peer_Production_in_the_Information_Economy/links/5834403108ae004f​ 74c85030.pdf. Bardhi, F. and G.M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881‒98. Belk, R. (2014), “Sharing versus pseudo-sharing in Web 2.0,” Anthropologist, 18 (1), 7‒23. Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Benkler, Y. and H. Nissenbaum (2006), “Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 14 (4), 394–419.

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Situating the sharing economy  25 Birrell, J. (1987), “Common Rights in the Medieval Forest: Disputes and Conflicts in the Thirtheenth Century,” Past and Present, 117, 22–49. Boltanski, L. and A. Esquerre (2017), Enrichissement. Une critique de la marchandise, Paris: Gallimard. Bonneuil, C. and J.-B. Fressoz (2017), The Shock of the Anthropocene, London: Verso. Braudel, F. (1977), Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bravo, G. and T. De Moor (2008), “The Commons in Europe: From Past to Future,” International Journal of the Commons, 2 (2), 155‒61. Bruni, L. and S. Zamagni (2004), Economia civile. Efficienza, equità, felicità pubblica, Bologna: il Mulino. Cohn, N. (1961), The Pursuit of the Millennium, Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Angelis, M. (2007), The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital, London; Pluto Press. De Angelis, M. (2017), Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Post-Capitalism, London: ZED Books. De Moor, T. (2008), “The Silent Revolution: A New Perspective on the Emergence of Commons, Guilds and other Forms of Corporate Collective Action in Western Europe,” Supplement. Internationaal Instituut Voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 53, 179–212. Foster, J.B. (2011), “Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Captialism,” Monthly Review, 62 (11), 1–43. Fumagalli, A. (2017), Per Un’economia politica del Comune. Sfruttamento e sussunzione nel capitlaismo biocognitivo, Rome: DeriveAprodi. Grief, A. (2006), Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000), Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harrison, B. (1994) Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility, New York: Basic Books. Joonkoo, L., K. Jong-Cheol, and J. Lim (2016), “Globalization and Divergent Paths of Industrial Development: Mobile Phone Manufacturing in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46 (2), 222–46. Linebaugh, P. (2008), The Magna Carta Manifesto, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lopez, R. (1975), La rivoluzione commerciale del medioevo, Turin: Einaudi. Lopez, R. (1976), The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machlup, F. (1973), The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McCloskey, D. (2010), Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Maddicott, J.R. (1984), “Magna Carta and the Local Community 1215‒1259,” Past and Present, 102, 25–65. Marshall, A. (1922), Principles of Economics, London: Macmillan. Marx, K. (1973), Grundrisse, London: Penguin. Mason, P. (2016), Postcapitalism, London: Penguin. Mokyr, J. (2010), “Entrepreneurship and the Industrial Revolution in Britain,” in The Invention of Enterprise. Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotania to Modern Times, ed. D. Landes, J. Mokyr, and W. Baumol, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 183‒210. Moore, J. (2002), “The Crisis of Feudalism: An Environmental History,” Organization and Environment, 15 (3), 301‒22. Moore, R. (2000), The First European Revolution, c. 970–1215, Oxford: Blackwell. Muniesa, F., L. Doganova, H. Ortiz, et al. (2017), Capitalization: A Cultural Guide, Paris: Presses des Mines. Negri, A. (2016), “Il comune come modo di produzione,” UniNomade, June 10, http://www.euronomade.info/?​ p=7331 (accessed September 6, 2017). Nuccio, O. (2008), La storia del pensiero economico italiano, Rome: Luiss University Press. Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pamuk, S. (2007), “The Black Death and the Origins of the ‘Great Divergence’ across Europe, 1300‒1600,” European Review of Economic History, 11 (3), 289–317. Parigi, P. and K. Cook (2015), “Trust and Relationships in the Sharing Economy,” Contexts, 14 (1), 18‒19. Peters, T. and C. Waterman (1982), In Search of Excellence. Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, Cambridge, MA: Harper & Row. Polanyi, K. (1957), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origin of Our Time, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Polanyi, M. (1958), Personal Knowledge, Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rees, J. (2017), The Leveller Revolution: Political Organization in England, 1640–1650, Verso: London.

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26  Handbook of the sharing economy

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Reynolds, S. (1997), Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosa, H. (2013), Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, New York: Columbia University Press. Roy, D. (1954), “Efficiency and the ‘Fix’: Informal Intergroup Relations in a Piecework Machne Shop,” American Journal of Sociology, 60 (3), 255–66. Sabel, C. and J. Zetlin (1985), “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization,” Past and Present, 108, 133‒76. Schwab, K. (2016), The Fourth Industrial Revolution, New York: Crown Publishing. Srnicek, N. (2017), Platform Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity. Thompson, E.A. (1966), The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila, Oxford; Oxford University Press. Wallerstein, I. (1976), “From Feudalism to Capitalism: Transition or Transitions?,” Social Forces, 55 (2), 273‒83.

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3.  Sharing as an alternative economy activity Thomas Widlok

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INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS NEW ABOUT THE SHARING ECONOMY? The “sharing economy” comes with labels such as “new” and “disruptive,” but sharing and exchange have been long-standing topics in anthropology, where they are considered part of the human condition. How different are the phenomena related to the sharing economy via digital platforms from long-established modes of sharing amongst humans? Marcel Mauss (2002) and Karl Polanyi (1957) pointed at the disruptions caused by deregulated markets and sought to outline alternative ways of organizing the economy by invoking the principles of gift exchanges, of reciprocity and redistribution. Only more recently has “sharing” become an independent analytic category. Cross-culturally, sharing practices neither typically created the same kind of obligations as gifts (Woodburn 1998), nor were they necessarily reciprocal (Hunt 2000) or organized around a redistributive center (Price 1975). The new anthropology of sharing (Widlok 2017) therefore treats sharing as a mode of transfer of its own right. Hallmarks of sharing in this comparative anthropological sense are, above all, the tolerance towards imbalances in reciprocity in transfers, the widespread expectation that the potential recipient would initiate sharing through (largely indirect) demands, the downplaying of the act of giving through practices of “allowing others to take” (Widlok 2013), an emphasis of the kin-like relationship created through sharing paired with an emphasis on personal autonomy, the skill of dealing with unwarranted demands and the tendency to see sharing as a situational opportunity to engage with an open set of others rather than as a contractual obligation towards a fixed set of partners. Belk (2010) and others have found this a useful set of criteria to distinguish sharing from exchange and other forms of transfer, not only in the anthropological record but also in the current economy in which the so-called sharing economy has established itself. However, the most recent debates about the sharing economy (see Schor 2010; Belk 2014; Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016; Arnould and Rose 2016) also highlight some differences. Nicolas John (2017, 60) has pointed out that in discourse about the sharing economy an older redistributive meaning of the English term “sharing” is fused with a fairly recent meaning of “sharing” as shorthand for “participating in this site,” that is, typically the activity of posting text or other media onto the internet or social media. Fusing these two meanings increasingly occurred when platform-based commercial forms of transfer became infused with a sense of generosity and warmth that many people who are using “urban technology” associate with “sharing” (John 2017). As I shall argue below, fusing disparate meanings may be good for some business and marketing purposes, but is not generally good for our analysis and a critical understanding of the phenomena in question. As Sundararajan (2017, 26) recently observed: “Looking at the sharing economy as I write this book in 2015, I see commercial activity resembling that of a fairly standard market economy.” Analytically speaking, therefore, despite the rhetoric much of the 27

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28  Handbook of the sharing economy sharing economy has little to do with what the technical anthropological terms “sharing” and “exchange” describe. Labelling it “crowd-based capitalism” instead (Sundararajan 2017, 26) would prevent a lot of confusion and misleading equations, and it would help to critically diffuse some of the hubris involved in stylizing established market relations as new simply because they rely on digital platforms. Nevertheless, the anthropological perspective can still shed new light on some aspects of the sharing economy. Comparing sharing practices of today with sharing practices in other contexts, other places and other times reveals some instructive parallels but also invites rethinking about assumed certainties: about sharing, but also about the dichotomy of sharing and market behavior.

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WHY SHARING? Major works devoted to the sharing economy have recently (re)discovered some classic texts from economic anthropology. Sundararajan (2017), for instance, extensively refers to the ethnography by Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) on the Melanesian Kula exchange and to Marcel Mauss’s comparative study of gift-exchange phenomena (Mauss 2002). He suggests that much of what we see today are hybrids between the capitalist market economy and the gift-economies that Malinowski and Mauss described. The largest part of the transfers via internet platforms is primarily constituted through a very large number of connected market-type exchanges based on an unprecedented scale of a group of peers who are not personally known to one another, and who do not unite as members of companies or corporations, but who are connected directly through hand-held media devices. However, Sundararajan then goes on to suggest that the phenomena of the emerging new peer-to-peer economy are best understood as hybrids, being either closer to commercial market exchange (for example, Airbnb) or to gift-exchange (for example, Couchsurfing). In digital anthropology, Boellstorff (2012) has identified this as a perspective of “blurring” or “fusion” which, in this case, suggests that there are two original “pure” types of economic activity, namely maximizing market behaviour and moral exchange, that now get disruptively fused or blurred. However, there are empirical and theoretical reasons to doubt that the commercialized versus non-commercialized dichotomy is the main (or sole) distinctive parameter. In terms of empirical ethnography it appears that practices such as Couchsurfing are not adequately described simply as providing services without a money transaction: Bialski (2012, 72) reports that overnight visitors in this scheme engage in reciprocal exchange of a very particular type as they trade their time and their preparedness to listen to the stories and the advice of their hosts for the bed that they are being offered. To some extent this may be true with those receiving lifts in cars (Bialski 2012, 73). It is worthwhile to look at the cases more closely. Even though no money is involved, many of these cases differ considerably from what we know about sharing in other societies and other contexts of life. In terms of ethnographic theory it appears that instead of blurred hybrids we are dealing with of what Boellsdorff calls “dubbing,” making established modes of transfer (sharing, gift-exchange, trading) fit a host of new conditions in the platform-based crowd economy and thereby creating genuinely new economies as a result (Boellstorff 2012, 43; see also Arvidsson and Peitersen 2013). Maybe the main insight that anthropological theory provides for a better understanding of the sharing economy is that instead of

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Sharing as an alternative economy activity  29 a single dichotomy between capitalist market and moral exchange, humans are in fact involved in processes of multiple dubbing between several modes of transfer and access (see Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016). Market-type barter and gift-exchange are two such modes, but there are others that can variously be named as pooling, redistributing, sharing, and so forth. In this chapter I am particularly concerned with the ways in which sharing gets dubbed into market transactions (and vice versa) but before investigating this in more detail it is important to show that gift-exchange and sharing are very different modes to begin with. Researchers interested in the sharing economy, I suggest, have been ill advised to look primarily at gift-exchange theory following the writings of Malinowski and Mauss, while they may find more clues by focusing on the emergent anthropological theory of sharing instead.

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHARING AND GIFT-EXCHANGE For his study of gift-exchange systems around the world, Mauss suggested a well-known tripartite sequence made up of the obligation to give, to receive and to return (see Mauss 2002). The aspects of the voluntariness and generosity of gifts that many may today feel to be characteristic of gifts at birthdays, for instance, are comparatively speaking a marginal case. A more typical case would be those practices of gift-giving that we find amongst heads of state on their diplomatic visits. Here we do find the expectation to give a present, but also that of accepting it and of returning a gift at the opportunity of a counter-visit. These kinds of transactions, Mauss argued, were neither well described in terms of market transactions nor in terms of “pure gifts” as in the Euro-American vernacular. Rather, one could take a lead from how people in Melanesia and elsewhere thought about these gifts: namely as creating binding obligations and social ties between people, instead of just defining a value relation between objects transacted in a marketplace. Ever since Mauss formulated the theory of gift-exchange, ethnographers have found instances of such transactions in all parts of the world, and they have also used this evidence to criticize the Western economy as being biased towards objects while losing sight of the social ties of people interacting with one another. Since gift-exchange theory has been formulated by Mauss and others, there has also been an interest in yet other alternative modes of organizing the economy that are neither commercial market transfers nor gift-exchanges. Some alternatives are best described as forms of redistribution (Polanyi 1957) or pooling (Price 1975), others as commons (Arvidsson et al. 2016). But what about those many cases in which there is no centralized social institution, for example a tax-collecting state or some other form of centrality that Polanyi saw as critical for redistribution; and what about those in which there is no fixed membership with obligations to a group, as in co-operatives or common-property regimes? Based on ethnography from all regions of the world, these are now considered to be prototypical forms of sharing, and not of gift-exchange (see Woodburn 1998; Widlok 2017). In practice, one of the main differences is that sharing does not create the specific personal obligations and forms of indebtedness that are characteristic of gift-giving. When practicing sharing, people feel eligible to receive a share even if they cannot invoke past exchanges with particular others for which they could now claim compensation

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30  Handbook of the sharing economy in terms of a counter-gift. Typically, amongst hunter-gather groups where sharing can provide 80 percent of everything that people consume, shares have to be extended to whoever is present, and social mechanisms are in force that prevent these transactions from allowing the giver to transform their ability to share into political or economic power towards those who have received something. In other words, independently of what people may call these modes of transfer, the social function of sharing seems to be quite different from that of gift-exchange (or market exchange, for that matter). At the center is not the contract-like obligation created between giver and receiver, but rather the opportunities for accessing a resource that sharing provides. Moreover, as a practice, a sharing transaction looks very different from a gift-exchange. Sharing transfers create opportunities, more specifically the opportunity to ask (others), the opportunity to respond (to others) and the opportunity to let go (for others). Unlike gift-exchange, sharing is typically initiated by a demand: people ask for things either explicitly or implicitly by just hanging around waiting for a share (see Peterson 1993; Madonald 2000). As humans, we know that other humans too need to eat, and have demands that we share with them. Their mere presence is therefore a “silent demand” on us (Løgstrup 1997). The sharing sequence, as it were, does not start with the problem of distribution, but rather with being constantly faced by endless demands made by others; more specifically, by simply being with others. The second aspect of sharing is therefore not a concern about “How can I (or should I) return this gift?” but rather, “How do I deal with these demands?” Hunter-gatherers, like humans elsewhere, develop skills not only of hiding things from one another to avoid being pestered, but primarily of judging what a reasonable demand is as opposed to an unreasonable demand. Since the giver is not contractually obliged to the taker (and vice versa) there are conventional ways of not engaging in sharing, of fending off unreasonable demands and of distancing oneself from notorious free-riders and from “leeching” practices (see Geisler 2006, 287). Those demanding, in turn, have learned a skill of making their demands in an appropriate and effective way. The practical skills of sharing involve yet another aspect, namely the skill of letting go of things. In gift-exchange people let go of things because they count on future gifts; they count on the fact that sacrificing something today is the prerequisite of receiving something in return tomorrow. In sharing, by contrast, those who let go realize that the ways in which humans are positioned towards one another makes it very unlikely that they will get a corresponding return for what they give up. Some hunters are better than others and will be net providers; in some life-stages individuals are likely to give more than what they receive; in other life-stages this is reversed. However, just as there are possibilities for sharing within market economies, the opposite also holds, as even in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies individuals may want to keep things for themselves, but also keep items for particular exchange partners (Wiessner 1982), to capitalize on items that are given or to trade them with members of other ethnic groups (Widlok 2017). Sharing relations therefore have to be actively maintained and sharing opportunities have to be created through a host of enabling devices such as creating spatial and social closeness, cultivating acceptable forms of demand (Peterson 1993) or tolerated scrounging, and by highlighting mutuality and cooperation instead of competition. Conversely, making built and social space less permeable, creating fixed membership structures, and establishing gifting instead of sharing as an ethical and

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Sharing as an alternative economy activity  31 discoursive strategy, can easily lead to the loss of sharing, even as an unintended consequence. An example is the changes to the prevalent notion of personhood which is tied to various modes of transfer (see Macdonald 2000; Belk 2010; Widlok 2017). If sharing is all about “extending the circle of people who can enjoy the benefits of the share resource,” as I have put it elsewhere (Widlok 2004, 61), then practices of “extending the self ” are key. As Belk has pointed out, we share with those who we treat as “part of our extended self ” so that “sharing with them is like sharing with self ” (Belk 2010, 724). This is why sharing takes place, above all, within the immediate family circle even in highly commercialized contemporary societies. It is important to note that people who share their home and their resources need not be genetically related, nor do they necessarily consider one another to be kin. An “aggregate extended self ” (Belk 2010, 725) can be constituted through numerous habitualized activities, as the cultural training that leads people to develop sharing as a skill is based on the many everyday activities in which people extend their selves. As Belk notes, what works most readily in many immediate families can also work more or less effectively among peers in an age-set, such as student hostels or flat-shares (see Widlok 2017, 104‒5). While some core notion of self, as a sentient centre of experiencing the world, is a good candidate for a cultural universal among humans, the various forms of establishing personhood as extended self are culturally very diverse. Those who use an electronic sharing or exchange platform may be persons of very different sorts. Those classified as “peers” and “providers” are not only treated differently by the law, but they also have very different powers in accessing the platform as a whole (its generic code, the information accumulated in the background, and so on).

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SHARING IN THE CONTEMPORARY ECONOMY Having sketched some aspects of the anthropology of sharing (as distinct from a wider anthropology of exchange) we can now begin to see what the analytical purchase of the anthropology of sharing is with regard to the sharing economy. I shall look at the three main “ingredients” of the sharing economy (Sundararajan 2017): namely the use of handheld social media devices, freeware software in the form of apps, and powerful internet platforms with regard to the theory of sharing. One of the points at which digital technology started to radically change the economy into a crowd-based economy (or sharing economy) was when personal computers (PCs) in themselves became a driving force, the infrastructure that invited further uses, rather than being the afterthoughts of business and mainframe computers as they had been for decades. However, it is noteworthy that although hand-held or otherwise personalized computers may feel like bodily extensions, this is not to be confused with extensions of the self. In fact, these devices underline the boundaries between selves, since they are so personalized. Even if not protected by thumb-print or iris-scan technology these devices are not supposed to be shared, as this would prevent recommendations in the vicinity or according to a personal profile. In a sense there was more sharing when computing power was still limited, so that several users had to share disks and computing time on a computer (John 2017, 127). What we now call pirating (illegally sharing software) followed the introduction of purchasable software packages for PCs which post-dates the practice of sharing computer

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32  Handbook of the sharing economy power, namely through a shared mainframe computer (John 2017, 129). The former teams working with one mainframe computer seem to be much closer to Belk’s notion of extended selves than the crowd of isolated peer-to-peer users of more recent times. The same could be said about the demands made through internet platforms. While older internet projects such as Wikipedia formulate a general standing demand to share information (“Help improve this article by . . .”) the more recent internet services have sophisticated algorithms that not only allow for personalized consumer offers (“Other people like you have also bought . . .”) but also identification (“Welcome back, we noticed that you have not been on this page for some time”). In an attempt to create trust between peers who are strangers and distant from one another, digital environments have created numerous strategies of selecting participants (see also Gandini et al. 2016). People need to register, they may need a Facebook, Paypal or Google account as a verification before engaging in the networks of the sharing economy. Often they also need to build up trust by showing that they have a track record of positive ratings and likes from others. They are, in a word, based on quasi-membership regulations as in many redistributive systems (such as pension funds), but very unlike sharing with its permeable boundaries. Maybe the best-known example in this respect are the so-called LETS platforms. Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS) often emphasize that the goal of transfers is not accumulation, but a high number of transactions. In these systems the total gains and losses of all members is always zero (whatever one person gains, another spends): “The more members trade with one another, the bigger (and warmer) is our circle” says the homepage of noppes.nl (which is colloquial Dutch for “costless”). Hence, group formation is an important factor; in this case, the online members also meet regularly in person for evening meals. “Join us and become a member of this unique network of special people” is not only the motto of this platform, but it can be seen to be more generally true for many platforms of crowd-based capitalism that operate on the basis of large numbers of people with large numbers of exchanges, but which at the same time need to create the trust and the sense of homeliness that motivates people to join. The main point that sharing theory alerts us to in this context, though, is that peerto-peer transfers through personal computing devices is largely driven by people making offers; while face-to-face sharing is largely driven by people making demands (see above). Even if parties search (items, workforce, and so on) on these platforms they do it in terms of offers (offering things, work contracts, and so on). A platform like Uber or Grab brings together people who offer space in their cars with people who offer to pay for a particular ride; there is little or no room for demanding here, as we have seen it in sharing elsewhere. There are several implications of this. One is that these platforms lend themselves to, and inherently tend towards, commercialization even if they did not start out like that (see Airbnb), since making offers in the digital environment is very similar to making offers in any marketplace. Another implication is that even among peers this tends towards unequal power relations. While those who demand a share (say, in a forager setting) do that on the understanding that they have a right to a share if the other person has the extra means to give up something, the peer in the digital social media network has to wait for an offer (or make an offer). In the digital world there is no sense of presence being a first step towards a demand, since my offer or my participation more generally can simply be ignored. In fact, given the sheer size of the network and the ease to try someone else, blocking an eBay bidder or refusing a particular Grab driver is much easier than ignoring

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Sharing as an alternative economy activity  33 someone in a face-to-face setting. In sum, it is not that new technologies are necessarily destroying sharing, but nor are they inevitably supporting or enabling it. In Africa (and elsewhere) it has become customary to share (and demand) money as airtime using a mobile phone, which is now in many ways like a bank account, especially for people who actually do not have a bank account. But this use of ordinary mobile phones, just like the collective use of a shared mainframe computer in the past or of the old-fashioned shared printer in the corridor of workplaces, seems to be much closer to sharing than many smartphone uses that are currently exploited by a growing crowd-based capitalism. The second aspect of the new economy to consider are apps and other so-called “freeware” that are provided to allow people to participate in the digital platforms. The theory of sharing enables a critical look at these. Take, for instance, free apps or trial software packages that are installed on your smartphone or computer but which often are hard-to-impossible to de-install, as they try to draw us into permanent dependency. Some virus protection software tries to inhibit users by exaggerating the threats, and other packages simply build on the fact that users are averse to the extra effort of de-installing or de-activating what binds them to certain programs and providers. On the basis of what was stated about sharing above, it seems that offering such a seemingly free program is in many ways not sharing at all, but rather the opposite: it is making a demand, and a fairly outrageous demand at that. Using a certain platform or software often demands registering, signing up and committing oneself to updates which in turn may demand the purchase of new hardware that complies with the set requirements. Before being able to download a free app I typically have to grant those who offer the app free access to much of my smartphone, my settings, my locations, maybe even my addressbook, and so on. Many of these apps—and this includes apps from platforms for joint car transportation, for instance—receive large amounts of data from their users in turn for providing the platform. They may not charge the users, but they can accumulate and eventually sell the big data gathered this way. For someone with sharing skills, many of these offers would be completely inacceptable demands if they occurred in a face-to-face transfer of material objects. While in the latter case those who share do give up whatever they have, in the former case it is the opposite because the main purpose of the seemingly free gift is to lure users into a relationship in which they are continually drained of information or held in dependency, including path-dependency. In the simplest cases the little programs feed a database which in turn generates an algorithm that allows providers to predict “where people click next” and, ultimately, what consumers will want next (and when). While sharing works on the assumption that there are always and inherently asymmetries, and that a continual effort is to take the sting out of these inequalities, many electronic so-called “free” gifts gloss over asymmetries by maintaining the illusion of the internet as a free exchange forum of peers while in fact accumulating large amounts of data that is not shared, but often hoarded with the goal to eventually sell it back to some of the people who provided the data in the first place (for a critique, see also Schor 2010). Minor asymmetries are part and parcel of sharing systems that never quite even out, but many software devices that are freely shared electronically establish and cement asymmetries between providers (information collectors) on the one hand, and users on the other hand. Those who offer the apparently free gift end up having accumulated much more than those who may think that they have received something for free. There

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34  Handbook of the sharing economy is simply no way that an individual peer using these platforms could accumulate or use the data that is generated in a way that the platform providers do. What makes it worse is that what may look like a peer-to-peer exchange from the users’ perspective is in fact a triadic relationship with a third party in the background that remains largely invisible and almost completely inapproachable. Providers allow peers to use the platforms but they are not peers themselves, they do not share the data that they collect in the process. This inequality becomes apparent when users try to rid themselves of “freeware” that has attached itself to their internet search machine, for instance. Often the programs cannot easily be de-installed: they may require a complete reformatting of one’s hard disk or, in turn, a cleaning software in order to delete what was given. In this sense, apps and freeware are much more like gifts than shares, because of an inbuilt ambivalence of creating lasting and indelible obligations. This leads us to the third element of the crowd-based economy that spreads so rapidly today, namely the digital platforms themselves. Clearly the earliest platforms (such as eBay) were a fairly straightforward extension of the market more than anything else. But what about Wikipedia, or platforms for collective software developments such as Linux? Again, sharing theory, as spelled out above, shows that what may look like sharing on the surface actually has many features of a gift-exchange system. As Zeitlyn (2003) and others have pointed out, software programmers involved in these collective tasks do make sure that their input to the collective project remains recognizable—and recognized—as the project continues. The early, relatively small circles of software developers may look like an example of Belk’s idea of extended self, but it is important to recall that much of what drove these systems (as Zeitlyn shows) was a sense of accumulating (status) and of creating the illusion of an eternal self through joining a large-scale collective endeavor. In other words, these collectively developed products are somewhat like an item in the Melanesian Kula ring, because there is a record of the history of transactions maintained, and individual status grows with their involvement and their input over time. Note that we are not dealing with reciprocity in the narrow sense, since some (and increasingly many) users are not, and never were, software providers. Instead, their reward in the system is of a different sort: above all, social reputation and social capital (see Arvidsson et al. 2016; Giesler 2006); and it is mutuality rather than reciprocity (Arnould and Rose 2016). In this sense they are different from other straightforward commercial or capitalist phenomena. For instance, there was an outcry in the Linux community when it was discovered that a deal had been struck with Amazon to siphon off the accumulated data of Linux users (see Widlok 2017, 159). The open software movement self-confidently chose the label “Linux ubuntu” for itself, seeking to culturally connect itself to the southern African concept of ubuntu, often rendered as expressing (in Bantu languages) the sense of “I am because you are,” that is, a sense of community, mutual support and reliance on one another. Originally the initiative of a South African multimillionaire (who invested in the Ubuntu Foundation), Linux is now used by a number of companies and associations of software people who are often highly critical towards one another, the main accusation being that some developers help themselves to free kernels and packages but without providing in equal fashion patches for others to use in return. Just as in the analogue world, the electronic platforms are pieces of infrastructure that can operate in very different regimes of transfer. They may be generated through processes of competitive gift-giving aimed at status accumulation, but they can also enable sharing once they are

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Sharing as an alternative economy activity  35 in place, or they may be appropriated into straightforward market mechanisms as the case may be.

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CONCLUSIONS: DUBBED SHARING IN CROWD-BASED CAPITALISM What happens when entrenched cultural systems of sharing get dubbed into the new digital environments of the sharing economy? The new theories of sharing emphasize that generosity or explicit altruism is not a necessary ingredient for sharing to occur. In social systems in which sharing thrives, people do not share at any price: they may try to dodge it, and they may be highly critical of unreasonable demands. It is not a superficial idea of community that makes these systems work, but deeply engrained practices that pattern the ways in which human selves that depend on one another, and in several ways limit one another, engage in transfers. These transfers do not abolish all inequalties and asymmetries, but they allow people to deal effectively with the uneven distribution of potentials and fortunes that inevitably and continually lead to humans being positioned asymmetrically to one another and to the resources that they value. Sharing systems therefore do not train people to be nicer to one another, but rather to make sure that granting access to what is valued is enabled across differences and across attitudes. In other words, any access to a resource can be subject to sharing, even if this access is in one way or another practically and socially enforced rather than voluntarily granted. A good example of a current analogue sharing phenomenon in this context is the public footpath system that operates in England and Wales. Landowners have to grant the right of way to the public on these established footpaths, whether they like it or not. Only when a footpath has not been used for considerable time (that is, when there is no longer a demand for it) may this right cease; which is why the Ramblers, the United Kingdom rambler organization, sees to it that public footpaths are regularly used in order to keep up the right, in this case through physical presence (see Widlok 2017, 112). When transposed onto the digital age we could argue that those who provide free internet access points are sharing in a very similar way. Typically, getting free access in this way requires the user to be physically present, but typically without becoming a registered member. Such a largely unintended provision of access occurs, for instance, through the provision of internet hotspots. When travelling through Europe one may enjoy free internet access. You may, for instance, sit on the platform of a train station, writing your emails, and log in for a few minutes every time a train comes in and opens its doors, that is, without buying a ticket. This modern form of scrounging uses access where no measure is undertaken to prevent those who happened to be there on the platform from using the access point. However, in some places a regime has been reintroduced that only allows people with a ticket to enter the train station, preventing people from using the analogue infrastructure (such as a warm bench to sleep on) as much as its digital counterpart (the hotspots just mentioned). In the digital and the analogue setting it is the permeability of boundaries that are decisive since it allows the have-nots to make their demands and to stand a good chance of accessing what is valued. Like the public footpaths, the new electronic footpaths or access points need not be motivated by generosity; they also do not automatically convey permanent ownership

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36  Handbook of the sharing economy rights, all they require is that users are not stopped from accessing the resource. These are instances of what has been called “tolerated taking” or “tolerated co-consumption” which is found in many sharing settings, in which the owner renounces their right to restrict access. Based on the notion of finite self, as explored above, I suggest that access providers here are willing to let go of some of their power of exclusion because those who make use of these resources are limited in number and in what they can use (up) at any one point, since they actually have to be present in a fairly narrowly circumscribed location. One of the latest phenomena related to sharing platforms are neighborhood platforms (www.nebenan.de in Germany, which translates as “next door”). Here, people in a neighborhood find specific log-in codes in their letterboxes encouraging them to log in to the part of the platform that is devoted to connecting people in their neighborhood. But as the theory of sharing indicates, presence here is not only physical presence but also about practical presence: that is, the skill of people to demand and respond to demands with their local resources. This is a far cry from earlier ideas about digital platforms which emphasized their unlimited (global) connectedness and the standardization of transactions through the platform’s templates. By relying on non-digital conventions and known forms of etiquette the internet platform is inevitably colored by the practices of the analogue social world, governed by particular ideas of status, fair play, competition and solidarity.

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REFERENCES Arnould, Eric and Alexander Rose (2016), “Mutuality: Critique and Substitute for Belk’s ‘sharing’,” Marketing Theory, 16 (1), 75‒99. Arvidsson, Adam, Alessandro Caliandro, Alberto Cossu, et al. (2016), “Commons Based Peer Production in the Information Economy,” Researchgate, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alessandro_Caliandro/publica​ tion/310624903_Commons_Based_Peer_Production_in_the_Information_Economy/links/5834403108ae004f7​ 4c85030.pdf (accessed October 4, 2018). Arvidsson, Adam and Nicolas Peitersen (2013), The Ethical Economy: Rebuilding Value After the Crisis, New York: Columbia University Press. Belk, Russell W. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 715–34. Belk, Russell W. (2014), “Sharing Versus Pseudo-Sharing in Web 2.0,” Anthropologist, 18 (1), 7‒23. Bialski, Paula (2012), Becoming Intimately Mobile, Frankfurt: Lang. Boellstorff, Tim (2012), “Rethinking Digital Anthropology,” in Digital Anthropology, ed. H. Horst and D. Miller, London: Berg, 39‒61. Eckhardt, Giana M. and Fleura Bardhi (2016), “The Relationship between Access Practices and Economic Systems,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 210‒25. Gandini, Alessandro, Ivana Pais, and Davide Beraldo (2016), “Reputation and Trust on Online Labour Markets: The Reputation Economy of Elance,” Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 10 (1), 27‒43. Giesler, Markus (2006), “Consumer Gift Systems,” Journal of Consumer Research, 33 (2), 283‒90. Hunt, Robert (2000), “Forager Food Sharing Economy: Transfers and Exchanges,” in The Social Economy of Sharing, ed. George Wenzel, Grete Hovelsrud-Broda, and Nobuhiro Kishigami, Osaka: Minpaku, 7‒26. John, Nicolas (2017), The Age of Sharing, Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA, USA: Polity. Løgstrup, Knut (1997), The Ethical Demand, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Macdonald, Gaynor (2000), “Economies and Personhood,” in The Social Economy of Sharing, ed. George Wenzel, Grete Hovelsrud-Broda, and Nobuhiro Kishigami, Osaka: Minpaku, 87–111. Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922), Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London: Routledge. Mauss, Marcel (2002), Essai sur le don, Edition électronique, classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/mauss_marcel/so​ cio_et_anthropo/2_essai_sur_le_don/essai_sur_le_don.pdf (accessed 6 May 2019). Peterson, Nicolas (1993), “Demand Sharing: Reciprocity and the Pressure for Generosity among Foragers,” American Anthropologist, 95, 860–74. Polanyi, Karl (1957), The Great Transformation, Boston, MA: Beacon.

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Sharing as an alternative economy activity  37

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Price, John (1975), “Sharing: The Integration of Intimate Economies,” Anthropologica, 17 (1), 3–27. Schor, Juliet (2010), Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, New York: Penguin Press. Sundararajan, Arjun (2017), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA, USA and London, UK: MIT Press. Widlok, Thomas (2004), “Sharing by Default? Outline of an Anthropology of Virtue,” Anthropological Theory, 4 (1), 53–70. Widlok, Thomas (2013), “Sharing: Allowing Others to Take What is Valued,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3 (2), 11–31. Widlok, Thomas (2017), Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing, London: Routledge. Wiessner, Polly (1982), “Risk, Reciprocity and Social Influences on !Kung San Economies,” in Politics and History in Band Societies, ed. E. Leacock and R. Lee, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 61–84. Woodburn, James (1998), “‘Sharing is Not a Form of Exchange’: An Analysis of Property-Sharing in Immediate-Return Hunter-Gatherer Societies,” in Property Relations, ed. C. Hann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 48–63. Zeitlyn, David (2003), “Gift Economies on the Development of Open Source Software: Anthropological Reflections,” Research Policy, 32 (7), 1287–91.

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4.  The who and what of sharing: a phenomenological view Wolfgang Suetzl

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INTRODUCTION In his 1927 Being and Time, Martin Heidegger (1927/2010, 115‒16) claimed, “The world is always already the one that I share with others”; he called this world mitwelt,1 or withworld. He found that sharing is at the very basis of our dasein, our being-there in the world. The “always already” in his sentence points to a phenomenological investigation, a philosophical style Heidegger inherited from his teacher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Phenomenology examines that which is in place before any formal and objective criteria are applied; that of which we have “no express experience” as the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty put it (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 242). With regard to sharing, this points to an effort of understanding sharing before it can be used as an adjective determining a noun (economy), asking what kind of thing sharing is, and what happens to the sharing “we” as we share. Examining the who and what of sharing in such a phenomenological way pays attention to the sharing that has always already occurred but is obscured by the unquestioning, semi-conscious perception of the world that Husserl wished to roll back in order to get “back to the things themselves” (Husserl 2001, 168). The approach to the who and what of sharing that I adopt in this chapter is that of existential phenomenology, originating in Heidegger’s ontology of “being-with,” that is, of being as originally shared. In doing so, I first briefly outline some characteristics of phenomenology. Then, I discuss the what of sharing: sharing as being in place before the formalized give-and-take characteristic of economic exchange can happen. Following this, I propose a view of sharing that starts from being in the shared world as always being-with-others: the who of sharing. The specific bond that sharing appears to create among sharers has been noted as a social characteristic of sharing (Belk 2010, 2017), and in examining the “with” in this being-with-others, the subjectivity of sharers—the who of sharing—is presented as a weakening of individuality giving rise to a commonality of “condividuals.” The relationship among such condividuals is discussed as “contiguity,” and is presented as marking the essential difference between the respective subjectivities of sharing and exchange. This weakening of individual subjectivity supports an understanding of sharing as communal rather than reciprocal or mutual. In the final section, I conclude how a phenomenological understanding of sharing may help to assess what happens in the sharing economy. Throughout the chapter, the focus is on the concept of sharing itself, while the term “sharing economy” is generally used with platform-based 1   Following convention in philosophical literature, I use the original German for this and other phenomenological terms throughout this chapter.

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The who and what of sharing  39 peer-to-peer businesses in mind, as exemplified by Airbnb and Uber. For the complexities and diversity of term “sharing economy” please refer to the other chapters in this volume, or to Albinsson and Perera (2018) and Schor (2014).

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ALWAYS ALREADY SHARED: SHARING AND PHENOMENOLOGY Edmund Husserl, considered the founder of phenomenology and the movement named after it,2 dedicated himself to developing a philosophy that aimed at letting go of any assumptions or preconceptions concerning the objects of the world, in order to overcome the positivism that he felt had entered philosophy via the quantitative methods prevalent in science and psychology. In order to accomplish this, his studies focused on how appearances (phenomena in Greek) become present in consciousness. Husserl’s phenomenology performed a suspension of the unquestioning, semi-aware experience of world (its “taken-for-grantedness”), aiming at an experience of the things as they were in themselves, rather than as the constructed objects of science. According to Husserl, phenomenology would turn philosophy into a “rigorous science,” as he claimed in a 1911 essay thus titled: removing the unspoken and unaware assumptions that underlie scientific knowledge, such a philosophy would be more exact than the exact sciences (Husserl 1969). In the process, it would restore the possibility of meaning in the face of advancing positivism. To his student Heidegger, this led to a restatement of the question of being, the question that had occupied ancient Greek philosophy and which, according to Heidegger, had been literally forgotten in the modern era, a forgetting that resulted in a limited understanding of being as mere presence. Consequently, the accurate experience of the things of the world Husserl that sought, in order to live up to its own claims, would have to take our own everyday being-in-the-world as a point of departure: Heidegger called this place dasein, literally “being-there.” Abandoning the philosophical privilege Husserl still hoped to maintain, Heidegger argued that the way in which a thing presented itself in consciousness was inseparable from the context of everyday uses and routines within which it was situated (Heidegger made a crucial distinction between an object being present, or vorhanden, and a thing being ready to hand, or zuhanden). Importantly for a phenomenological understanding of sharing, such being-in-the-world invariably involves others: dasein itself is “essentially for the sake of others” (Heidegger 1927/2010, 120). While Husserl sought to overcome the subject‒object dichotomy of Western thought (Stewart and Mickunas 1990, 9‒12), Heidegger’s phenomenology broke down the subject‒subject split that underlies the notion of the modern individual by considering dasein as originally shared. Any individual subjectivity is only possible of through such being-with-others, the very same thing that limits and questions such individuality. According to Heidegger, therefore, the world and our experience of it are shared from the very beginning. It is this shared being that makes meaning possible: meaning is tied in with sharing. As Nancy (2000, 2) wrote later, “meaning is itself the sharing of being.” This is why sharing always involves processes of communication and signification (Sturgess 2   For readable introductions to Husserl and the larger phenomenological movement see Stewart and Mickunas (1990) and Dreyfus and Wrathall (2009).

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40  Handbook of the sharing economy 2018, 5). This communicative, meaning-giving sense of sharing is invoked each time we share something about ourselves and in the process may enter an intimate bond with another person. It also explains why “sharing” as a keyword emerged in tandem with the advance of technologies that facilitate and accelerate communication (John 2012, 2017), specifically the internet on which the sharing economy also relies (Harvey et al. 2018). As this communicative concept, sharing is distinct from exchange, as it occurs before a subject can be formed that engages in reciprocal behavior. Moreover, the root of the word “communal” is the same as that of “common,” in the sense of ordinary and everyday, and phenomenology identifies sharing as mit-sein, or being-with everyday experience. This everyday is the place where we literally “are” most of the time without being fully aware of it, famously defined by Lefebvre as “whatever remains after one has eliminated all specialized activities” (Lefebvre, cited in Kaplan and Ross 1987, 2). Sharing, therefore, would not be some special event that sets itself off from the common everyday routines: rather, it would be the fabric from which such routines are created.

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THE WHAT OF SHARING: SHARING AS A LIMIT OF EXCHANGE As an unnoticed, pre-objective everyday phenomenon, attaching an exchange value to sharing immediately appears problematic: commodities can be shared, but sharing is not itself a commodity. This difficulty has affected the various ways in which the term “sharing economy” has been described: as a universally beneficial reconciliation between cultures of sharing and the demands of an exchange-based capitalist economy (Howard 2015; Sundararajan 2017), as giving rise to hybrid economies involving both intimacy (sharing) and the exchange of money (Scaraboto 2015; Zelizer 2005), or as the co-existence of informal and formal markets (Polanyi 1944). From a phenomenological perspective, sharing appears as the limit of exchange, as I will discuss below. The question as to where the limits of exchange are, what the nature of such limits is, and how sharing relates to economic exchange, flows from a long-standing suspicion that there is something in being human that is inaccessible to economic exchange, or should be protected against it. In Greek antiquity, philosophers insisted that the truth cannot have a price. By attaching an exchange value to truth, truth would cease to be truthful (Hénaff 2010). Plato criticized the Sophists, who offered philosophical instruction for a fee, as “merchants of knowledge.” Aristotle, while conceding a more productive role for money in a political community, also contended that “knowledge and money have no common measure” (Hénaff 2014, 30‒31). Like Plato, he was highly suspicious of commercial activity, considering it as “an epidemic that requires quarantine” (Hénaff 2010, 63). To the Greeks, knowledge of the truth was the limit of exchange; knowledge could only be shared, not traded. In the modern era, philosophers such as Adam Smith questioned such quarantining. It was at odds with the liberal social theories emerging in the 18th and 19th centuries. These theories maintained that holding private property and being free to engage in trade was essential to freedom per se, so eventually wherever there were free people, there would also have to be free markets. The old question of pricelessness returned in the form of debates as to in which areas and to what extent governments should apply policies and regulations to markets. Plato’s rejection of the pricing of knowledge is the origin of an extensive and

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The who and what of sharing  41 multifaceted moral market criticism. For instance, Ackerman and Heinzerling (2004, 17) have suggested that unless there are laws that ban slavery (because human freedom is considered priceless), there would be an active market in human beings, because in a competitive market economy “anything profitable that is not prohibited by law is likely to occur.” The abhorrence of slavery springs from the fact that attaching an exchange value to human beings violates a moral boundary. How such boundaries around markets can shift in response to historical change, rather than being firmly in place, has been shown by Viviana Zelizer’s study of the changing social value of children, considered economically worthless while emotionally priceless. Once the economically worthless child was put to use in child labor, it was no longer priceless (Zelizer 1985). Moral objections against the principle of exchange have included the natural environment and the human body, often considered to be inviolable, or sacred. Profanation, or entering a worldly calculus of personal gain into a sacred sphere, is perhaps the most long-standing argument against the pricing of everything (Sandel 2012). Such moral criticism of the universal application of market principles rests on the possibility of valuing what is common to everyone over and above what we exchange. But when sharing acts as a limit to exchange, this is not necessarily tied to a moral argument. For Plato, attaching a price to truth would destroy the truthfulness of the truth, and only because of that would it be morally wrong. Bataille (1985, 1988) argued that there were inescapable inner limits to exchange, that all exchange would eventually meet its end in necessary expenditure. Following him, Baudrillard (2001) introduced a critique of exchange that suggested metaphysical limits to exchange, such as death, which has no equivalent outside of itself and can therefore not be traded for something else. The result of such impossible exchange is an inescapable and fundamental uncertainty by which every system of exchange is haunted. The outer limits of exchange, on the other hand, were long thought of in terms of gift-giving. But gift theories have revealed that the gift, rather than being a simple act of giving, is tied in with a spectrum of ideas and practices that range from obvious, even spectacular gift exchange (as in Mauss’s description of the potlach; Mauss 1966) to the recurring notion of pure, entirely unreciprocated giving. As in Baudrillard’s impossible exchange, such giving of the gift “as a gift” remains surrounded by uncertainty precisely because no return occurs. The possibility of the gift to be a matter of exchange on the one hand, and of being on the other, accounts for the social ambivalence of gifts. Derrida summed up this ambiguity: “For there to be a gift, it is necessary that the gift not appear, that it is not perceived or received as a gift” (Derrida 1991, 16). According to Bourdieu (1998, 94), making such ambiguity a livable social practice requires that givers and receivers collaborate, “without knowing it, in a work of dissimulation” that makes it possible to ignore the lurking possibility of exchange in every gift. As Bourdieu mentions in passing, such practices, in order to function as desired, require a shared understanding of how they are to be performed and read (just as any form of economic exchange requires a shared understanding of the nature of markets, of prices, of actions such as buying and selling). The sharing of such an understanding of symbolic exchange precedes exchange and it cannot itself be exchanged. The uncertainty outside of both economic and symbolic exchange accounts for the fluidity and informality of everyday sharing, where economic forms such as commodity and exchange value are absent, as is any certainty provided by returns or equivalency. Sharing therefore relies on trust. While trust is usually established through previous

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42  Handbook of the sharing economy positive experience or introductions, buyers and sellers do not know one another in the online environment of the sharing economy. Here, trust-building is almost entirely reliant on two-way reviewing systems, where buyers and sellers blind-review one another (Parigi and Cook 2015). Such rating systems often use stars or similar methods of measurement that once again create an exchange value that helps to calculate the risk involved in forgetting a risk (Chang and Wang 2018). The initial lack of regulation—a system of symbolic exchange—of the sharing economy businesses contributed to such uncertainty and meant that users depended even more on rating systems (Jonas 2015). The notions of pricelessness, impossible exchange and gift discussed in this section all indicate limits of exchange. While being a precondition of exchange, sharing has its place where exchange is not desirable (as in moral market criticism) or not possible. As a condition and as an activity, it must be in place before any exchange can be carried out, and cannot itself become a matter of exchange.

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THE WHAT OF SHARING: SHARING AND THE EVERYDAY As Belk (2010, 717) observed, “most of the daily sharing of food, money, and possessions goes unnoticed and is invisible to most people for whom is routine.” Phenomenology proceeds precisely from this unnoticed, or pre-aware place where we are most of the time: in the reduced awareness of everyday routines. Heidegger (2010, 122‒6) identified the everyday with dasein itself, but also with the inauthenticity and averageness mass culture. Here, the mass subjectivity of man (variously translated as they, one or people) prevails and nothing special is ever achieved. However, according to Nancy (2000, 9), Heidegger’s man neglects the general differentiation of the everyday: “its constantly renewed rupture, its intimate discord, its polymorphy and polyphony, its relief and variety.” A day in the everyday “is not simply a unit for counting; it is the turning of the world—each time singular . . . Days could not be similar if they were not first different, difference itself.” The same is true of people, who, even as removed from individual subjectivity and becoming similar, always retain a strangeness toward one another and never fully blend into a homogenous mass. In this way, the everyday comes to live as a place of activity, of routines that never can be perfect copies of one another, and people who never blend into the super-singularity of a homogeneous mass. As Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2016, 6) points out, the habits of everyday life are therefore a distinct mixture of inflexibility—through repetition maintaining the structure of the everyday—and creativity, introducing a discontinuity into this very structure. Michel de Certeau (1988) examined the everyday as a creative culture where people, as consumers, tactically adapt consumption to their shifting and unpredictable purposes, disrupting the logic of economic exchange. To him, this everyday consumption is itself a productive and creative process. He calls this productive inner life of consumption “making do” (de Certeau 1988, 29‒42). Because the everyday is mostly about sharing (rather than exchange), “making do” allows people to tactically extricate themselves from the pressures of exchange, while the objects or the knowledge created in this way never result in a commodity that would be offered on a market. As a consequence, the everyday, along with its routines of sharing, must look like a vast potential market from the point of view of an exchange economy. There are a number

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The who and what of sharing  43 of ways in which the advance of exchange principles into everyday sharing has been observed: for example, in digital media, Wendy Chun has identified a constant pressure to update that makes it impossible for the medium to ever become an everyday object subject to “making do.” She calls this pressure “updating to remain (close to) the same” (Chun 2016, 1‒19). Technologies such as the Amazon dash button roll back the everyday as a sphere of informal making do by eliminating the distinction between everyday life and shopping, which thus insinuates itself into very fabric of the everyday “taking care” of things in shared everyday dasein. Consumer researchers speak of an “awareness‒consideration‒evaluation sequence” (Farah and Ramadan 2017) that is replaced by a more fluid process which presents itself everywhere in the everyday. Habit-forming and addictive technologies (Alter 2018; Eyal 2014), in tandem with gamification, provide another entry point of economic exchange into the shared everyday, as does the rise of “inconspicuous consumption” (Eckhardt et al. 2015), where luxury goods, initially designed to be anything but everyday items, are concealed in the guise of everyday appearance. This conflict between sharing as semi-conscious everyday routine and the commodification typical of a market economy also affects the sharing economy, which is situated between the two spheres, with a foot in each. While many of the major sharing economy businesses have sprung up around everyday activities such as getting around (Lyft, Uber, Sidecar), being at home (TaskRabbit), or being away from home (Airbnb), where much of the original sharing occurs, they also function as for-profit businesses that depend on introducing market thinking into those very areas.

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THE WHO OF SHARING: CONTIGUITY AND COMMUNITY Sharing has been described as a “communal act that links us together as people” (Belk 2010, 717). It tends to involve solidarity, strong bonding, even intimacy. And while it represents no difficulty to think about exchange as carried out by individuals with no proximity to one another at all, the being-with on which a phenomenological conception of sharing is based raises the question of the sharers’ subjectivity. What does one become in sharing, and who is that “one” who becomes? To Heidegger, the original sharedness of the world makes being mithaft, or with-bound (Heidegger 1927/2010, 115‒16). The plurality of the “we” engaged in sharing can therefore never be a simple multiplicity of individual subjects interacting with one another, or, as Nancy puts it, “a we is not the adding together or juxtaposition of I’s” (Nancy 2000, 65). These claims are at odds with the established dichotomy of singularity and plurality handed down in Western thought, reaching its purest expression in an individual subject as a singularity juxtaposed to an anonymous mass as plurality. Nancy (2000, 5) speaks of the being-with of sharers as “contiguity.” In a contiguous plurality, subjects can no longer stand out through their individual differences. Rather, they become similar without ever becoming the uniform and flat generality that Heidegger, in his attempt to understand the non-subject of everyday dasein, called the man. But by transcending the dichotomy between the singular and the plural, sharing reveals itself as an inherently political concept. In the most general way, modern political theories have all been concerned with ways of working this singular‒plural dichotomy into a form capable of overcoming what Thomas Hobbes called the violent “state of nature.”

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44  Handbook of the sharing economy Following from that, democratic theories have been concerned with enabling community by overcoming both the romantic notion of individualism, and the totalitarian notion of the mass, creating a workable balance between the interests of the one and the many. For example, because sharing creates similarity among fluid subjectivities, it has long been of interest to those interested in egalitarian and solidary models of society. The sharing of resources among equals has been a key characteristic of egalitarian communities, from the 17th century Diggers movement (Hessayon 2009) to the co-operative movement (Findlay 2018; Scholz 2016) and some of today’s intentional communities (Habermann 2009); while power-sharing has been an important concept in post-conflict peace-building, that is, in re-establishing communities by creating a situation of equality between former adversaries from which peaceful relations may be built (Hartzell 2007). Engaging with Nancy’s argument, Raunig (2013, 2016) pointed out that the Latin origin of community, communitas, includes the noun munus, meaning an obligation to give something of one’s own self to the community: “The munus is a minus. Community implies becoming less, in order to become more” (Raunig 2013, 133). Regarding the problem of who performs such giving up, he retrieves an original concept from medieval philosophy, the dividuum, in opposition to the modern concept of the individual, the non-divisible. The term dividuum derives from a horizontal mode of ordering singular elements regardless of their belonging to a particular formation. Dividuum and dividuality “describe a non-individual singularity . . . not distinguished by the properties of individuality . . . wholeness and dissimilarity” (Raunig 2013, 138). Accordingly, Raunig argues, many dividuals form a condividuality. This loss of individuality (and gain of condividuality) transcends any dichotomy between singular and plural in the process of sharing. By contrast, exchange does not in any way compromise the exchanger’s individuality. On the contrary, certain types of exchange-based consumption, such as conspicuous consumption, have long heightening a consumer’s social status by denoting individuality as their main purpose (Eckhardt et al. 2015). Because such hierarchization can result from the principle of exchange, whether symbolic or economic, Theodor Adorno (1997, 227) referred to exchange as a “mask for domination.” For the sharing economy, this similarity among sharers stands against the needs of personal identification and marketing in an economy of exchange. Sharing economy businesses have therefore encouraged or required user profiles to reduce such similarity. This has included the highlighting and showcasing of personal stories that re-individualize participants, making them stand out against everyone else. Individuality, rather than being replaced by condividuality, can thereby be compacted into a “tell us about yourself ” and “complete your profile” economized hyper-individuality whose value is a function of customer ratings and algorithmic metrics. The introduction of Airbnb’s Superhost category may exemplify this process.

THE WHO OF SHARING: CONCERN AND CARING Understood as contiguity, the relationship among sharers cannot be described in a numerical way, as a multiplication of related but individual subjects. How, then, does the communal act of sharing establish communality? The common phrase of “sharing is

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The who and what of sharing  45 caring” usually refers to a positive attitude towards fellow human beings that is associated with sharing. Yet some sharing actions appear to not involve any such caring (Belk 2017). From a phenomenological standpoint, the caring involved in sharing transcends a simple identification with goodness. Dasein is essentially “for the sake of others” (Heidegger 1927/2010, 120), and sorge (care) is essential to being in the world (ibid., 186). Its origin is in the anxiety-producing freedom of existence that reveals and confronts us with individual possibilities, requiring decisions (ibid., 192). Care makes it possible to see possibilities, articulate decisions and embrace actions. It defines our being-with-one-another as well as our being-in-the-world. Consequently, caring can apply to either how human beings relate to one another, or how they relate to the world. The former is what Heidegger calls fürsorge, or concern,3 and it matches the meaning of care as “caring for.” However, there is another form of care, more common, but less talked about: a deficient mode of concern that includes (in inevitably awkward translation) “passing-one-another by, not-mattering-to-one another” (Heidegger 1927/2010, 118), as in the American colloquial expression of “caring less”: being unbothered or unconcerned. While care as concern is what we associate with sharing, the “deficient” modes of care are the ones dominant in everyday life. “Taking care of things,” on the other hand, is the meaning of care that applies to how we relate to the world on an everyday basis, interacting with useful things at hand, or Zeug (utensils) (Heidegger 1927/2010, 186),4 Such taking care, rather than producing a (measurable and marketable) commodity, simply ensures that secures everyday existence, where, as discussed above, most sharing happens in inconspicuous ways. These phenomenological meanings of care also apply to the sharing economy. It is the positive, but limited meaning of care as fürsorge, or concern, that is often present in its bright and friendly appearance, while the more common deficient modes of that are at the basis of its operations: for instance, as an Airbnb host or guest, one is likely to not care for the other “sharer” in a very personal way (as concern) and will instead maintain a business-like psychological distance (maintain a “deficient mode of caring”), particularly if one wishes to grow one’s sharing business. As Belk (2010, 2017) has shown, such “sharing without caring” or “sharing out” is in fact a key element of the sharing economy.

SHARING AND THE SHARING ECONOMY I have identified several ways in which sharing in the phenomenological sense presented here is at odds with the requirements resulting from the exchange elements in the sharing economy. Phenomenology sees sharing as an everyday, informal phenomenon integral to dasein, that is, being as being-in-the-world and being-with-others. As such, sharing is always already there before any exchange occurs, and continues to be there when exchange is terminated. Consequently, sharing itself resists commodification and acts as a limit   Literally “care for,” previously used to denote social welfare.   The German word Zeug used by Heidegger has also been translated as “equipment,” although neither this nor the cited translation convey the slightly derogatory connotation that Zeug has in German, comparable perhaps to English usage of “stuff ” as objects one carries or routinely handles in everyday life. 3 4

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46  Handbook of the sharing economy to the exchange processes occurring in the sharing economy. Because sharing is in place before individual subjects can be formed, those engaged in sharing lose individuality through this very sharing, giving way to the condividuality that describes the communality of sharing on the subjective level. This conflicts with the drive for individuality in the sharing economy. Finally, the communality in sharing rests on caring as concern, while the sharing economy, inasmuch as it functions as an economy of exchange, ultimately depends on a deficient mode of caring. A key element in this process are the web-based platforms used by the sharing economy that have intensified and magnified the contradictory relationship between the media and the everyday. The media, as Maurice Blanchot (1987) observed, are part of everyday routine, while living off claims of the new and extraordinary. According to Paolo Virno (2004, 93), the media “train the senses to consider the known as if it were unknown, to distinguish an enormous and sudden margin of freedom even in the most trite and repetitive aspects of daily life.” At the same time, they also train the senses for the opposite: “to consider the unknown as if it were known, to become familiar with the unexpected and surprising, to become accustomed to the lack of established habit.” Web 2.0, with its user-generated and algorithmically managed content, offers a technological platform that allows a straddling of the informal, inconspicuous everyday on the one hand, and the spectacular and commodified on the other (Suetzl 2017). Critics of the sharing economy have claimed that it is often not about sharing at all (Eckhardt and Bardhi 2015), or that it is mere “pseudo-sharing” (Belk 2014), and initially the phenomenological perspective offered here leads to a like conclusion. However, considering sharing from this perspective also allows us to see that the use of “sharing” in the sharing economy is not entirely unfounded. Like other business strategies that rely on a process of subjectification as a source of value generation (social media would be a case in point), the sharing economy involves a merging of sharing and labor. Paolo Virno’s (2004) analysis of post-Fordist labor could be applied to the sharing economy without great effort. In this model, the preliminary always-already sharing of language and cognitive habits, the shared being-in-the-world inherent to existence, becomes a market in which participants generate added value through subjectification processes. Whether that process amounts to labor or to the exercise of freedom is at the heart of conflicts such as the status of Uber drivers between independent contractors or workers (Bernstein 2018; Stafford 2016). And like other business practices that target the everyday as recurring and necessary, the sharing economy often capitalizes on inconspicuous everyday activities that mostly do not meet the formal criteria of exchange. On the other hand, a sharing economy that actually shares and is based on the contiguity of condividuals, as in the case of the commons, is not a sharing economy in the Airbnb and Uber meaning of the word: it never leaves the community and its gains cannot be expressed as exchange value. Historically, such sharing economies were accomplished by the commons, but they have received renewed attention in concepts such as platform cooperativism (Scholz and Schneider 2017) and “ecommony” (Habermann 2016). All the while, any reliance on market exchange continues to depend on sharing: the sharing of what phenomenologists call the lifeworld, as in the example of the alwaysalready shared language used in conducting an exchange transaction. The subjectification process generated in the sharing economy therefore has non-negotiable inner limits. We can purchase the services of a public relations company to optimize and fine-tune

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The who and what of sharing  47 corporate communications, but the language of everyday communication that we use most of the time cannot become a marketable service: it belongs the shared lifeworld that we ultimately cannot leave. Thus, the sharing economy, inasmuch as it claims to be about sharing, is in the peculiar situation of seeking to market the very thing that limits it. Whether it can do so without ceasing to be a distinct and meaningful category remains an open question, one that the other contributions to this volume might help answer.

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REFERENCES Ackerman, Frank and Lisa Heinzerling (2004), Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, New York: New Press. Adorno, Theodor W. (1997), Aesthetic Theory, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Albinsson, Pia A. and B. Yasanthi Perera (eds) (2018), The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Collaborative Consumption, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Alter, Adam (2018), Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, New York: Penguin Books. Bataille, Georges (1985), “The Notion of Expenditure,” in George Batailles: Visions of Excess. Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Alan Stoeckl, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 116‒29. Bataille, Georges (1988), The Accursed Share, Vol. 1, New York: Zone Books. Baudrillard, Jean (2001), Impossible Exchange, London: Verso. Belk, Russell (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (February), 715‒34. Belk, Russell (2014), “Sharing versus Pseudo-Sharing in Web 2.0,” Anthropologist, 18 (1), 7‒23. Belk, Russell (2017), “Sharing without Caring,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 10, 249‒61. Bernstein, Jared (2018), “The Future of Work through the Lens of Uber Looks a lot Like the Past,” Washington Post, 21 May. Blanchot, Maurice (1987), “Everyday Speech,” Yale French Studies, 73, 12–20. Bourdieu, Pierre (1998), Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chang, Wei-Lun and Jia-Yin Wang (2018), “Mine is Yours? Using Sentiment Analysis to Explore the Degree of Risk in the Sharing Economy,” Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 28, 141‒58. Chun, Wendy (2016), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. De Certeau, Michel (1988), The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkley, CA: University of California Press. Derrida, Jacques (1991), Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Mark A. Wrathall (eds) (2009), A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Eckhardt, Giana M. and Fleura Bardhi (2015), “The Sharing Economy Isn’t About Sharing at All,” Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-sharing-economy-isnt-about-sharing-at-all. Eckhardt, Giana M., Russell W. Belk, and Jonathan A.J. Wilson (2015), “The rise of inconspicuous consumption,” Journal of Marketing Management, 7 (31), 807‒26. Eyal, Nir (2014), Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, New York: Portfolio. Farah, Maya F. and Zahy B. Ramadan (2017), “Disruptions versus More Disruptions: How the Amazon Dash Button is Altering Consumer Buying Patterns,” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 39, 54‒61. Findlay, Isobel M. (2018), “Precursors to the Sharing Economy: Cooperatives,” in The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Collaborative Consumption, ed. P.A. Albinson and B. Yasanthi, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 16‒29. Habermann, Friederike (2009), Halbinseln gegen den Strom, Sulzbach: Ulrike Helmer Verlag. Habermann, Friederike (2016), Ecommony. UmCARE zum Miteinander, Sulzbach: Ulrike Helmer Verlag. Hartzell, Caroline A. (2007), Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Harvey, John, Andrew Smith, and David Golightly (2018), “Online Technology as a Driver of Sharing,” in The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Collaborative Consumption, ed. Pia A. Albinsson and B. Yasanthi Perera, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 75‒96. Heidegger, Martin (1927/2010), Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hénaff, Marcel (2010), The Price of Truth, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hénaff, Marcel (2014), “The Humanities, the Arts and the Market: Total Social Fact and the Question of

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48  Handbook of the sharing economy Meaning,” in Giving and Taking: Antidotes to a Culture of Greed, ed. Joke Brouwer and Sjoerd von Tuinen, Rotterdam: V2 Publishing, 27‒41. Hessayon, Ariel (2009), “Early Modern Communism: The Diggers and Community of Goods,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 3 (2), 1‒50. Howard, Billee (2015), We-Commerce: How to Create, Collaborate, and Succeed in the Sharing Economy, New York: Tarcher Perigee. Husserl, Edmund (1969), “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Perception: Selected Readings in Science and Phenomenology, ed. Paul Tibbetts, Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 176‒80. Husserl, Edmund (2001), Logical Investigations, London: Routledge. John, Nicholas A. (2012), “Sharing and Web 2.0: The Emergence of a Keyword,” New Media and Society, 15 (2), 167‒82. John, Nicholas A. (2017), The Age of Sharing, London: Polity. Jonas, Alexandra (2015), “Share and Share Dislike: The Rise of Uber and Airbnb and How New York City Should Play Nice,” Journal of Law and Policy, 24, 205. Kaplan, Alice and Kristin Ross (1987), “Introduction,” Yale French Studies, 73, 1‒4. Mauss, Marcel (1966), The Gift, London: Cohen & West. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962), The Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge. Nancy, Jean-Luc (2000), Being Singular Plural, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Parigi, Paolo and Karen Cook (2015), “Trust and Relationships in the Sharing Economy,” Contexts, 14 (1), 18‒19. Polanyi, Karl (1944), The Great Transformation, New York: Rinehart. Raunig, Gerald (2013), “Dividuum and Condividuality,” in Politics of the One: Concepts of the One and the Many in Contemporary Thought, ed. Artemy Magun, New York: Bloomsbury, 131‒43. Raunig, Gerald (2016), Dividuum: Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Pasadena: Semiotext(e). Sandel, Michael J. (2012), What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Scaraboto, Daiane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything in Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (1), 152‒76. Scholz, Trevor (2016), “Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy,” http://www. rosalux-nyc.org/platform-cooperativism-2/. Scholz, Trevor and Nathan Schneider (2017), Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, New York: OR Books. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” https://www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-thesha​ring-economy. Stafford, Blake E. (2016), “Riding the Line Between ‘Employee’ and ‘Independent Contractor’ in the Modern Sharing Economy,” Wake Forest Law Review, 51 (5), 1223‒54. Stewart, David and Algis Mickunas (1990), Exploring Phenomenology: A Guide to the Field and its Literature, Athens: Ohio University Press. Sturgess, Jessica N. (2018), “In Defense of Phenomenological Approaches to Communication Studies: An Intellectual History,” Review of Communication, 18 (1), 1‒18. Suetzl, Wolfgang (2017), “Sharing, Media, and the Everyday,” paper presented at the 103rd Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, Dallas, TX, November 19. Sundararajan, Arjun (2017), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Virno, Paolo (2004), A Grammar of the Multitude, Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Zelizer, Viviana A. (1985), Pricing the Priceless Child: The Social Value of Children, New York: Basic Books. Zelizer, Viviana A. (2005), The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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5.  The sharing economy and lifestyle movements Mikko Laamanen and Stefan Wahlen

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INTRODUCTION The sharing economy emerged in the late 2000s with the promise of an emancipatory and participatory sustainable economy, which started to unfold in the aftermath of the Great Recession and in the context of the devastating pace of increasing overconsumption. Collaborative consumption in the sharing economy rests on alternative modes of resource allocation, exchange, and social relations (e.g., Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Belk 2010; Botsman and Rogers 2010; Cruz et al. 2018; Felson and Spaeth 1978). The functional core of the sharing economy is the material and immaterial assets brought out of disuse into mutual access and recirculation through physical and digital platforms, and communal interaction (e.g., Acquier et al. 2017; Cheng 2016; Frenken and Schor 2017). Current observers of the sharing economy oscillate between seeing the phenomenon as, on the one hand, a creation of a liberatory space by socially oriented and environmentally aware collectives, and on the other hand, a new form of turbocharged, rent-seeking capitalism backed by venture-capital financed platforms (see, e.g., Cruz et al. 2018; Frenken and Schor 2017; Heinrichs 2013; Laamanen et al. 2018a; Laamanen et al. 2018b; Martin 2016; Slee 2015; Wahlen and Laamanen 2017). Our interpretation of the sharing economy follows the former view: we see it as a utopian economic model that provides a means of resilience to localities, strengthening the social grid by creating reciprocal and equal relations as well as collective identification in economic activity. In this chapter, we approach the sharing economy from a social movement perspective to account for how collective lifestyle and identity play out in resistance to the exploitative and profit-maximizing tendencies of neoliberalism seeping into the sharing economy. With our approach, we engage in the ongoing dispute on the sharing economy with regard to its relationship with capitalism. The aim of this chapter is to elaborate on resistance by lifestyle movements towards the neoliberalization of the sharing economy. For the most part, the sharing economy may well stand for neoliberal cooptation of collaboration and pacification of radicalism through which people come to accept the individualization and commercialization of their participation on platforms and communities. The social movement character in the sharing economy nevertheless becomes evident when we pose the question when and how communities become mobilized in collective action to address problems of the mainstream economy. Collective identities and lifestyles support practices with which these communities resist neoliberalism. We thus ask: how do collective lifestyles and identity enable resistance practice in the sharing economy? In more specific terms, we examine sharing economy movements by building upon existing research on theories of new social movements (Buechler 2011; Melucci 1989, 1996), lifestyle movements (Haenfler et al. 2012), and their enactments within consumption (Wahlen and Laamanen 2015). We contribute to research on consumption and the sharing economy by emphasizing the everyday as a locus for social change (see Wahlen 2011; Yates 2015), and in ­identifying 49

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50  Handbook of the sharing economy and elaborating collective resistance practices that challenge neoliberalism and its causatum (della Porta 2015). This chapter begins with positioning the sharing economy in the contemporary neoliberal political organization of the economy. Of particular interest to this story are economic counter-movements. We then elaborate on the conceptual understanding of lifestyles in movement collective action to further consider the various forms of resistance practice in the sharing economy communities. We close with a discussion on how lifestyle movements of the sharing economy build from everyday resistance, with suggestions as to what relevance this carries to general understanding of the sharing economy and future research.

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THE SHARING ECONOMY, NEOLIBERALISM, AND COUNTER-MOVEMENTS Originally, the sharing economy advocated relocalization, rehumanization, and recommunalization of economic activity. Subsequently, the sharing economy is increasingly considered as a conceptual misnomer—a floating signifier—while in practice, rather than being a liberating force, it brings individual responsibility, the commercialization of everyday life, and unfettered competition as part of the daily experience of people. Through these moralities of neoliberalism (see Amable 2011), the sharing economy has become dubbed “neoliberalism on steroids” (e.g., Martin 2016; Murillo et al. 2017). This chapter considers the sharing economy in its more radical parts as a response to neoliberalization as its counter-movement with its own practice and morality (see also Kornberger et al. 2018; Laamanen et al. 2018b). This perspective connects with Polanyi’s original idea of double-movement, representing the “action of two organizing principles in society, each of them setting itself specific institutional aims, having the support of definite social forces and using its own distinctive methods” (Polanyi 1947/2001, 138‒9). During the first great transformation, the reaction to the liberal economic movement was followed by a social protectionist countermovement, which opposed the marketization of societal and economic relationships (Polanyi 1947/2001). Tensions between conflicting economic interests in the first great transformation were pacified when the Fordist settlement provided social protections and higher wages for workers in exchange for increased ability to consume (which ultimately benefited businesses; Glickman 2009; Lichtenstein 2002). Della Porta (2015) considers the rise of neoliberalism as the second great transformation, marking the beginning of the post-Fordist period of flexibilization and precarization of the workforce and, ultimately, the consumer. When neoliberalism produces an individualistic consumer, the collective foundations of morality embedded in family, community, and class are abandoned (Binkley 2004; Laamanen et al. 2018b). Given the manner in which neoliberal assumptions became woven into the fabric of society, the economic relations and institutions neoliberalism promotes became viewed as the universal, normal state of affairs, and void of human agency. The perception that neoliberalism provides prosperity is challenged by various authors who instead see it as the agentic endeavor of business and politics to undermine democracy with unaccountable organizations and undemocratic, secretive decision-making (see, e.g., Springer et al. 2016). Beyond such democratic deficits, we are witnessing a dominance of market logic taking over the

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The sharing economy and lifestyle movements  51 private and public sphere, and rather than invariably increasing prosperity, gains that are distributed unevenly. Under neoliberalism, flourishing forms of resistance in popular counter-movements “emerged as independent from states and with more of a focus on the forms of protest on collective consumption than on labour . . . [reacting] to the disruption of everyday life” (della Porta 2015, 46). These disruptions of the quotidian represent problematizations in the routines and habitudes that govern everyday lives (Borland 2013). What mobilizes participants is the perceived or expected loss of a previous condition and its moral implications, such as alterations of subsistence routines and changes in social organization and control (Germann Molz 2013; Snow and Soule 2010). The ongoing economic crises, the disappearance of social protection provided by the state and its failing social support systems, and the deterioration of other forms of the common good are ailing the already deprived, pauperized working class and the proletarianized middle class (see Calhoun 2013; della Porta 2015). Disruption not only causes distress, but also agentic possibilities for rearranging social structures in order to denaturalize the dominant structure effectively. Here is where collective action comes in. Collective action constitute deliberate, continuous efforts outside of established political, economic, and social institutions in order to change (or maintain) a particular dominant social order (della Porta and Diani 2006; Snow 2004; Snow and Soule 2010). The sharing economy developed to revitalize and reinstitute forms of social solidarity and cooperation reminiscent of communities pre-dating the first great transformation (e.g., Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016; Frenken and Schor 2017; Laamanen et al. 2018a; Pais and Provasi 2015; Wahlen and Laamanen 2017). Then, lifestyle-based movements are located in the everyday, aiming for social change through aggregated individual action. Here, the targets of mobilized collective action have shifted from political to cultural and economic actors and change goals (Dubuisson-Quellier 2018; Haenfler et al. 2012; Snow 2004). As such, collective action in the sharing economy encompasses a significant number of individuals aiming at the disruption of the dominant economic system and the creation of a new one. These communities attempt to generate new forms of economic interaction and community sustenance in shared lifestyles and identities of collective action.

LIFESTYLES, COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES, AND COLLECTIVE ACTION Collective action is rooted in issues or conditions with emotional and moral associations, shared among a sufficient number of people, and serious enough to call for action (Snow and Soule 2010). To be able to mobilize individuals, grievances need to be interpreted and communicated, that is, framed in connection to a larger set of values, beliefs, and cultural markers that challenge the dominant institutions. Collective action frames provide the interpretive schema for grievances: they “assign meaning to and interpret relevant events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists” (Snow and Benford 1988, 198). Frames clarify and substantiate identities in collective action as the “individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice,

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52  Handbook of the sharing economy or institution” (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 285) needed for recruitment and maintaining solidarity (Jasper 2014). Beyond ideas, various resources need to be mobilized. Classical social movements secured resources through formal, hierarchical organizations typically based on understanding of Marxist class politics (e.g., Calhoun 1993). In contrast, new social movements emerged within capitalist welfare states as direct reactions to “postindustrialism, late modernity, advanced capitalism, or postmodernity” and the institutionalized “capitalist markets, bureaucratic states, scientized relationships, and instrumental rationality” (Buechler 2011, 159). In new social movements, the key mobilizing dimension is located in everyday life, lifestyles, and social reproduction, and identifications with race and ethnicity, sexual identities, environmental concerns, and countercultural beliefs. Socially and politically constructed collective identity coincides with the “fluidity and multiplicity of identities in late modernity” (Buechler 2011, 160), bridging between heterogeneous participation and the various personal needs of the participants (Melucci 1989). A lifestyle is thus both material and symbolic, addressing the basic requirements of the individuals as well as signaling distinction and group membership. In this way, lifestyle connects agency and social structure. A lifestyle bridges between the private and public as well as the individual and collective; in the context of consumption, “building bonds of solidarity and cooperation among people, bonds which are a fundamental resource for collective action” (Forno and Graziano 2014, 145). Collective features of lifestyles denote both personal preferences (for example, taste, identity) as well as group-level institutions (such as beliefs, norms, and values). Participation in lifestyle movements is: “(1) relatively individualized and private, (2) on-going rather than episodic, and (3) aimed at changing cultural and economic practices rather than targeting the state” (Haenfler et al. 2012, 6). Given these characteristics, collective identity in lifestyle movements is a “resource and reference point for individuals as they craft morally coherent and meaningful personal identities” (Haenfler et al. 2012, 8). Lifestyle becomes political participation, and consumption an area of activism, resistance, and civic participation (Buechler 2011; de Moor 2017; Dobernig and Stagl 2015; Forno 2015; Halkier and Holm 2008; Portwood-Stacer 2013); personal identities, behaviors, and choices are harmonized towards a transformed ideal state, providing solutions to social problems to be enacted in private, public, and institutional settings. The sharing economy is typically analyzed in individualized and commercialized terms. For instance, beyond a homophilic identification (Ladegaard 2018), any feelings of community or solidarity are excluded; typically distinction building creates rifts between participants and varieties of exchange (Schor et al. 2016). Indeed, the we-ness in the sharing economy, while central to its assumptions, has not been central to its practice or analysis. Some recent studies have elaborated on collective identity and a shared moral fundament in the sharing economy context (Kornberger et al. 2018; Laamanen et al. 2018b). Using a lifestyle movements lens, we can further particularize on the we-ness of everyday resistance practices, which is what we turn to next.

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The sharing economy and lifestyle movements  53

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RESISTANCE IN THE EVERYDAY AND THE SHARING ECONOMY In the sharing economy, participants allow others to have access to (that is, share) physical space, mobility and transport, commodities, time and skills, as well as money to solve immediate problems. At their core, ridesharing to get from A to B, or communal trading of scarce resources, are satisfying needs and necessities rather than aiming at broader social change. Practices of sharing relate to the improvement of immediate daily lives of ­consumers. Practices and routines provide the space and time for everyday consumption (Wahlen 2011; Warde 2005). Routines consist of mundane “objects and actions where there are no alternatives (for example, infrastructure), where there is no social distinction to harvest (for example, washing powder), where actions are heavily habituated and conventionalized” (Jacobsen and Dulsrud 2007, 477). Intentionality embedded in routines may focus on the satisfaction of needs and necessities whereby collaborative consumption may remain individualized without the aim of political change (cf. Halkier and Holm 2008). Nevertheless, political change needs to be rooted in everyday life. To Lefebvre (2014), the everyday is an expression of, and a place in, politics and the economy. Resistance comes across in opposition to a hegemonic and individualistic lifestyle; and in a praxeological understanding of the everyday, sharing becomes resistance when consumers on a broader scale try to “withstand and respond to undesired market discourses and practices” (Moraes et al. 2010, 274). This resistance has “on the one hand spatial, temporal and praxeological relevance and . . . on the other hand . . . [a] collective, contentious and ideological nature” (Wahlen and Laamanen 2015, 398). The way in which lifestyle movement becomes manifested in the practices of the sharing economy requires considering what makes the resistance practice collective. In what follows, we illustrate three general themes in collective resistance practices in the everyday sharing economy context, namely: (1) localization; (2) ideology and meaning creation; and (3) forms of organizing. As we discuss these in detail below, it is worth bearing in mind that these practices are interdependent and overlapping. Sharing as enacted resistance is bound to spaces and temporalities of the everyday life. Collective resistance practices in the sharing economy are connected to particular localities. The economization of social relations ingrained in neoliberalism turns a blind eye to private, collaborative relations among family, neighborhoods, and the community. Recent research drawing on the Polanyian concept of householding elaborates on communities creating self-sufficiency and autonomy from the mainstream economy by providing for themselves in reciprocal relations (Sahakian 2017; Laamanen et al. 2018b). Where historically householding was considered to relate only to closed communities in agrarian and semi-industrialized settings, digital networked and platform-aided social interaction in the sharing economy can extend the spatial reach of the concept beyond physical spaces. For instance, sharing food in urban food commons (Morrow 2019) exemplifies how localities are of specific relevance for how the movement unfolds and connects its various participants. The places of exchange and the types of physical and digital networks in the sharing economy can be understood as social movement spaces (Nicholls 2009) that combine kin and stranger. Communities are also institutional domains that create and carry ideologies and meaning upon which collective identities are built. Values, beliefs, and norms in lifestyles

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54  Handbook of the sharing economy question normative ideologies (Laamanen et al. 2018b; Parker and Morrow 2017) and, in turn, generate their own alternatives. For instance, communities of sustainability in consumer lifestyles engender activism in opposition to the economic growth paradigm and social injustice associated with the prevailing capitalist economic system (Morrow 2019). Mobilization further draws on meaning in everyday experiences. For instance, mobilizing collective action frames illustrate problems that connect the participants and incite action to challenge status quo, that is, the structuring of exchanges and the economy in the everyday. Martin (2016) explains how various frames, both for and against, are mobilized in the sharing economy. These draw on either the opportunities for sustainability in and around the economy and consumption, or against the fortification neoliberalism through unregulated marketplaces. Frames make sense of and mobilize participants to join and maintain their supply of resources to the sharing economy as a whole and various initiatives in particular. Laamanen et al. (2015) elaborate how mobilizing collective action frames are used by community exchange networks of timebanks. These lifestyle movement initiatives problematize the monetized market system and the transmuting power between the state and the market as the root causes for needing new forms of everyday sustenance. Subsequently, timebanks offer remedial strategies through which community co-production creates pools of transferable skills and resources in a democratic process that ultimately generates lasting institutions in the new economy (Laamanen et al. 2015). The ultimate motivation is to bring about “a paradigm change for a democratic society” with “personal lifestyles . . . transformed and enhanced” in communal exchange (Laamanen et al. 2015, 465). Similarly, the sharing of food to avoid food waste promotes alternative action frames that shifts the perspective away from the market in support of a communal production, consumption, and ownership perspective (Morrow 2019). Yet, lifestyle identity politics are challenging as they may simultaneously dictate community obligations as well as delineate subgroup distinctions. Participants may identify with a global movement rather than any particular group, or they may feel strongly about their community but ignore the larger field of these organizations (Flesher Fominaya 2010). To exemplify, Lichterman (1996) recounts how green political groups advocated strongly for certain diets as the moral obligation of community members. Bertella (2018) demonstrates this with the empirical example of vegetarianism which, understood as a lifestyle (movement), opposes the mainstream food system, while the lifestyle movement also involves various subgroups such as flexitarians (Bertella 2018). Related to the sharing economy, consumers may not necessarily prefer Uber over a taxi because of the system behind it, but rather because of convenience and fit within their daily practices. Yet, use of certain types of sharing economy platforms can carry moral obligations to the community, which ultimately render certain choices unavailable. If a lifestyle connects and mobilizes individuals in and beyond their individual actions, then resistance is not only a reaction to “the market,” to consume or not to consume, but also includes pre-emptive ways of gaining power and/or emancipation from neoliberal corporate and political authorities. Here the key challenges relate to how mobilization actually becomes organized. Lifestyles are enacted mainly in private, and related to the continuity of identity and action, with potential ephemeral bursts of protest or other demonstrative forms of visible collective action. As such, similar to new social movements, in general, lifestyle mobilization is founded on the periodicity of latency and

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The sharing economy and lifestyle movements  55 resistance. In social movement studies, Melucci (1996) claimed that during latency (that is, lack of visible activity), movements construct views on a new utopian reality, which become visible when they are confronted directly by the dominant ideologies, such as the beliefs and practices of the neoliberal politico-economic system. Latency and the visibility of a lifestyle movement mobilization is the visible collective expression of the movement divorced from the everyday individual practice. Haenfler et al. (2013, 13) see lifestyle movements as:

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collective action reservoirs, pools of potential participants whose collective value identities make them an ideal “reserve guard” ready to periodically support particular protest events and mobilizations . . . LM [lifestyle movement] participants may be occasional/temporary activists . . . oriented toward individual efforts at cultural change, driven especially by a desire to live out a moral identity or code.

Individually performed everyday resistance coincides with the collective organizing of collaboration and mobilization drawing on the everyday as an enabling condition (Melucci 1996). In the commercial sharing economy, platforms organize and govern both the people and processes taking place on them: proprietorship extends beyond the exchangemediating function of the platform, to governing people’s behaviors (even without formal contracts, such as for employment) and processes (for example, access with regard to place, time, and availability; see Purnhagen and Wahlen 2017). Arvidsson (2018) has argued that social movement activism in the sharing economy is extending political impact via entrepreneurial means. This assertion mirrors the classical professionalization argument of McCarthy and Zald (1977). They state that successful movements depend on the availability of resources, formal organization, and movement entrepreneurs to maintain and manipulate action. Thus, maintaining political pressure in consumption relies on “signalling activities of SMOs [social movement organizations] that let individual consumption choices appear as a form of collective action [while] political consumerism remains based on a myriad of individual decisions that observers in and of the market can understand as some kind of collective statement of purpose” (Holzer 2006, 413). To Slee (2015), the manipulation of meaning starts with the businesses that frame themselves as social movements: he illustrates how social movement framing was utilized by corporate platforms to present themselves as harbingers of progress, while actually building in “a movement for deregulation” of the market (Slee 2015, 51). Similarly, Dubuisson-Quellier (2013) has demonstrated how corporations revamped social movement tactics to market devices: for instance, companies take up claims promoted by the environmental movement to create new business ventures. Indeed, individual consumers may be recruited to participate in sharing economy activism to oppose the persistent growth (pro-sustainability) and injustice (pro-social justice) associated with the prevailing capitalist economic system but become pawns as resources for capitalistic renewal (see Dubuisson-Quellier 2015). As illustrated above, lifestyle movements share the traditions of new social movements (e.g., Haenfler 2013). They search for ways to organize communities and ultimately society in a more inclusive and democratic manner by reclaiming and nurturing common resources, building forms of joint ownership and governance, and reclaiming power from oppressive technologies and ownership structures. Drawing on ideological practice

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56  Handbook of the sharing economy renders everyday action prefigurative, both in terms of creating interdependencies between the organization of production, consumption, and disposal, as well as in relation to community governance (de Bakker et al. 2017; della Porta 2015; Haenfler et al. 2012; Laamanen et al. 2019; Yates 2015). To counter the problems pertaining to representation, slow-moving structures, and the elitist governance of old social movements, contemporary movements highlight democratic participation, organizational experimentation, and autonomy in their activities (e.g., de Bakker et al. 2017; Buechler 2011). The prefigurative ideal asserts a moral conviction of democracy, whereby individual and collective actions are inherently part of the change and future of the movement: there is no separation between means and ends, whereby the future of democratic participation and resource-sharing cannot be achieved by force or oligarchic decision-making mechanisms. Moralities delineate community boundaries through communicative and connective technologies in conjunction with strategies and mechanisms for self-organizing and collective governance of resources (e.g., Laamanen et al. 2019; Laamanen et al. 2018b; Morrow 2019; Rowe 2017). This is necessary, as in the sharing economy, older forms of collective representation through mechanisms similar to trade unionism or consumer associations that democratize questions of ownership, distribution, and governance have proven highly problematic (see Schor 2014; Laamanen et al. 2018a).

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CONCLUDING THOUGHTS The way in which lifestyle movements challenge particular hegemonic ways of the mainstream economy is not unavoidably grounded in the idea of opposing neoliberalism, but a reaction to the changing immediate contexts and consequences caused by it. This chapter started with the question of how collective lifestyles and identity enable resistance practice in the sharing economy. By anchoring our perspective with lifestyle movements, we scrutinize the extent to which lifestyle movements in the sharing economy may engender collective action for an emancipatory, participatory, and more sustainable sharing economy. This stands in stark contrast to the dominant neoliberal sharing economy on commercial platforms. The current literature emphasizes the nature of the sharing economy as individualized and commercialized. While this is certainly one part of the story, accepting this as the full picture of the phenomenon would denote turning a blind eye to the variety of radical interaction within the sharing economy. Similarly, though communality and non-commercialized relationships were central to the origins of the sharing economy literature, we-ness in the sharing economy has not been central to its analysis. From this perspective, what relocalization, rehumanization, and recommunalization requires is a focus on everyday collective actions in the sharing economy. This is where the contribution of this chapter and our focus on everyday collective lifestyles and identity in resisting neoliberalization comes in. The lifestyle movement approach holds that ­consumers’ collective action enables resistance in the sharing economy (Wahlen and Laamanen 2015), while taking note that action is contained mainly within the private context. Lifestyle is a basis to understanding the ongoing conflicts between traditional and newer forms of community as well as a building block of collective identity. Similarly, instead of demonstrations and street protest, the “banality” of everyday lifestyles

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The sharing economy and lifestyle movements  57 becomes central to the politics enacted and imagined by those activists and participants constructing utopian futures in the sharing economy beyond profit maximization. As we have elaborated, neoliberalism exists in a dialectic relationship with sharing economy lifestyle movements. The collective resistance practices build on localizing, identities and meaning, and forms of organizing. These may render the communities and their practices low-visibility in comparison to the commercial sharing economy; yet, it does allow what the commercial sharing economy clearly fails to do, namely, propagate democratic participation on a local level for the collective good. Low visibility also stands testament to the assumptions of lifestyle politics in new social movements of the sharing economy. The submerged networks of exchange of individually performed everyday resistance and community organizing—through the generation of values and frames—are easy to dismiss as non-existent and tangential as they only emerge from latency when confronted with dominant ideologies. When the lifestyle politics of the sharing economy movements challenge the current legal systems by blurring the traditional distinctions between producer and consumer roles (Purnhagen and Wahlen 2017), or in other ways challenge the neoliberal political economy, a reaction from dominant institutions becomes eminent (see also Laamanen et al. 2019). Beyond contesting, consumer activity may reproduce normative practices. The debate on the impact of local communities to well-being and on the sharing economy is still unresolved. The sharing economy may indeed work for the benefit of the dominant market actors in continuing oppression when the social movement initiatives of the sharing economy are “doomed” to latent activity. Whether working within and parallel to the dominant system subverts energy from actual systemic change remains to be shown in an empirical examination of the systemic collective action of lifestyle movements. However, moving on from individualist accounts and the acceptance of the sharing economy as only a reification of commercial interest is the initial step towards a consideration of the sharing economy as a locus where social and economic experimentation advances local sufficiency, autonomy, and thriving. Collective lifestyles and identity can serve as an entry point to future investigation of the “misnomer” of the sharing economy. As such, resistance to dominant systems is not to be found in the overt protest, but in the very specificity of the ordinary and its various practices advancing societal, sustainable transformations.

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Research, Volume 1, ed. Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 197–217. Snow, David A. and Sarah Soule (2010), Primer on Social Movements, New York: W.W. Norton. Springer, Simon, Kean Birch, and Julie MacLeavy (eds) (2016), The Handbook of Neoliberalism, London: Routledge. Wahlen, Stefan (2011), “The Routinely Forgotten Routine Character of Domestic Practices,” International Journal of Consumer Studies, 35 (5), 507–13. Wahlen, Stefan and Mikko Laamanen (2015), “Consumption, Lifestyle and Social Movements,” International Journal of Consumer Studies, 39 (5), 397–403. Wahlen, Stefan and Mikko Laamanen (2017), “Collaborative Consumption and Sharing Economies,” in Routledge Handbook on Consumption, ed. Margit Keller, Bente Halkier, Terhi-Anna Wilska, and Monica Truninger, Oxford: Routledge, 94–105. Warde, Alan (2005), “Consumption and Theories of Practice,” Journal of Consumer Culture, 5 (2), 131–53. Yates, Luke (2015), “Everyday Politics, Social Practices and Movement Networks: Daily Life in Barcelona’s Social Centres,” British Journal of Sociology, 66 (2), 236–58.

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PART II

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OWNERSHIP, ACCESS AND COLLABORATIVE MODALITIES

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6.  To own or to access? An exploration of sharing and access practices by Arab millennials Maha Baz Radwan, Georgios Patsiaouras and Michael Saren

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INTRODUCTION The collaborative consumption market was valued by PricewaterhouseCoopers at ₤9 billion globally as of 2013 and is estimated to rise to ₤230 billion by 2025 (Richardson 2015). The use of digital platforms by the sharing economy is emerging as a business megatrend, challenging traditional business models (Belk 2014b) and reshaping our understanding of consumer behavior in the 21st century (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Fortin and Uncles 2011). A growing academic interest in these exceptional forms of consumption has indicated that whilst older forms of sharing-based interactions were prevalent amongst family and community members, nowadays they increasingly involve strangers from anywhere in the world (Belk 2010), who desire to share music (Giesler 2006), accommodation (Tussyadiah 2016), skills (Laamanen et al. 2015), cars (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012), and children’s toys and books (Ozanne and Ballantine 2010), amongst others. While in the United States and Western Europe sharing practices and access-based consumption have been established as viable alternatives to ownership for the past 20 years, it is only recently that the phenomenon has gained popularity amongst young consumers in the Arab world. Accordingly, this chapter seeks to provide a historical and theoretical understanding around the meanings and practices of sharing and access-based consumption within this cultural context, which has a distinctive history and tradition of ownership and communal property rights. Subsequently, this study aims to highlight some unique features of sharing and access-based consumption practices amongst Arab millennials, which have remained unexplored in existing literatures.

SHARING AND ACCESS-BASED CONSUMPTION In recent decades, sharing practices and access-based consumption activities have been attracting increasing research attention across diverse academic disciplines. For example, anthropological research has explored phenomena such as tribal food sharing, bartering, and swapping (Woodburn 1982); while social scientific approaches have examined several sharing practices, such as income pooling and sharing within households (Marshall and Woolley 1993), and more recently family sharing and gift-giving activities (Arsel 2010; Belk 2007; Marcoux 2009). Several scholars have examined how technological advancements facilitate high-profile companies (for example, Uber and Airbnb) to pioneer alternative types of business models (Mohlmann 2015; Tussyadiah 2015). Other studies have offered a socio-cultural perspective in order to explicate by what means the sharing 62

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Sharing and access practices by Arab millennials  63 economy can foster environmental responsibility, community-building, or even political activism in forms of anti-consumption (Albinsson and Perera 2012; Cova and Dalli 2009; Ozanne and Ballantine 2010). In the realm of marketing and consumer research, we have identified a growing and dynamic literature around the concept of access-based consumption and a sharing turn that occurred with the arrival of the internet—especially Web2.0 (Belk 2014a)—which paved the way for many new forms of digitally facilitated sharing practices, while also aiding the expansion of older existing forms of sharing (John 2013). Additionally, over the last 20 years, a variety of definitions and diverse descriptions of the concepts of sharing and access-based consumption have been proposed. Botsman and Rogers (2010) defined contemporary sharing practices as the peer-to-peer sharing of underused assets or services for a fee or for free, combining market and non-market exchanges in their discussion. Belk (2014a) elaborated on the difference between sharing and exchange, noting that many contemporary sharing and access activities are actually market-based exchanges masquerading as sharing, a process for which the author coined the term “pseudo-sharing.” According to Belk (2014b), true sharing is not a profit-driven monetized exchange, but a process based on relations, which he distinguished as “sharingin” if primarily taking place between family and friends, and “sharing-out” when it occurs mostly between strangers. On the other hand, Bardhi and Eckhardt (2012) excluded from their definition all forms of sharing that involve transfer of ownership, and focused exclusively on access practices, later drawing a distinction between consumption practices that are “solid” or ownership-based and those that are “liquid” or access-based (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2017). Because the provision of a critical and panoramic overview of the existing definitions and literatures is beyond the scope of this chapter, we offer a brief summary concerning the conceptualization of sharing practices in the research to date in Figure 6.1. Following extensive readings, we suggest that whilst contemporary sharing and accessbased practices literature has provided sufficient breadth in capturing multiple manifestations of these practices beyond the closed confinements of dyadic exchanges, it seems NON-OWNERSHIP (ACCESS Only)

OWNERSHIP and OWNERSHIP TRANSFER Market-Based $$

Non-Market-Based

Market-Based $$

Non-Market-Based

B2C

C2C

C2C

Family

B2C

C2C

C2C

Family

Traditional or Online buying

Peer-topeer buying and selling

Barters and Swaps “free markets”

Renting or Leasing (Hotels)

P2P monetized access

P2P nonmonetized sharing

IKEA

ETSY

Freecycle

Gift-giving between family members and friends

HILTON

Zipcar

Sharehood

Familial sharing – offering a guest room or a car-ride

Bardhi & Eckhardt’s “Access”

Belk’s Sharing-out concept

Belk’s Sharing-in concept

Swapping, bartering and trading: Botsman and Rogers, Ozanne and Ballantine

Belk’s Sharing-in concept

Sharing and Collaborative Consumption: activities involving Ownership/Ownership Transfer

Sharing and Collaborative Consumption: activities that EXCLUDE Ownership

Figure 6.1 Conceptualizations of various collaborative consumption and sharing activities in the literature reviewed

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64  Handbook of the sharing economy not to provide sufficient depth for a more thorough understanding of the phenomena in diverse and contemporary socio-cultural contexts, such as the Middle East. Despite the useful and innovative findings of existing studies, insights around access-based consumption and sharing seem to focus primarily on the interactions between closed communities that comprise families, consumer tribes, or friends, primarily within a Western context. Consequently, although sharing practices have a growing global presence, the vast majority of contemporary research is situated in a Western context, particularly Germany (Mohlmann 2015), the United States of America (USA) (Tussyadiah 2015), and New Zealand (Ozanne and Ballantine 2010), while leaving aside non-Western realms (Asia, Africa, and Latin America) and the emerging Arab context. Additionally, we suggest that the current literature provides only limited analysis with regard to specific sociodemographic segments, such as the millennials, which act as seminal drivers behind the growth of the sharing economy (Godelnik 2017). Accordingly, in the following sections we seek to address some of these limitations by exploring in more depth modern access and sharing practices in the previously unexamined context of the Arab world, with particular focus on the activities of millennial consumers. We hope that this discussion will provide a basis for a more culturally sensitive and sophisticated understanding on the evolution and nature of contemporary sharing phenomena in a developing and dynamic context. The objectives of this chapter are threefold. Firstly, we provide a brief historical background, explaining sharing and access-based practices in the Arab world in the pre-internet era. Drawing upon rich secondary data from the fields of economic history, sociology of consumption, and political economy, we critically discuss early forms of sharing economic practices, with particular emphasis on the role of economic (for example, scarcity of food and water resources) and socio-cultural (for example, religion) variables in forming or fostering past and alternative forms of ownership. Secondly, considering contemporary and extremely popular digitized forms of consumption across different product and service categories in the Arab world, we explore the emergence of non-ownership and access-based consumption experiences and services (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012) that extend beyond a purely dyadic and balanced reciprocity. In order to understand further the nature of market-mediated transactions that value access over possession or ownership (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2017), examples of access-based services are analyzed based on the researchers’ observations and secondary materials from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Thirdly, we seek to draw wider conclusions around the growth of access-based behavior of Arab millennial consumers as an alternative to ownership.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARAB SHARING ECONOMIES In general, the Arabs can be understood as a diverse group of people who live primarily in Arab states and Northern Africa and form a global diaspora of communities sharing a common cultural heritage in terms of their language, religion(s), values, and beliefs (Behrens-Abouseif 1999; Robinson 1999). In contrast to more individualistic cultural contexts—such as Western Europe and the United States—Arab values place special emphasis on generosity, sharing, hospitality, and community or group cohesion (Nydell

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2006; Sobh and Belk 2011; Sobh et al. 2013). While the consumption lifestyles of modern, urban Arabs differ significantly from those of Bedouin tribes, it can be suggested that the notion of sharing is deeply embedded within the collective consciousness and cultural foundations of Arab societies. The presence of nomadic tribes across the Arabian Peninsula can be traced back to the sixth century BC (Hitti 1943). Throughout the pre-Islamic era, Arab clans, movable communities, and inhabitants of small urban areas were adapting to some of the most hostile environmental conditions in the world. Since the arid climate is not suited to agriculture or animal farming, everyday life and consumption were organized around very limited natural resources (Nydell 2006). Among traveling merchants, oasis-based farmers, and the camel raisers who controlled supply chains and the transportation of goods and people across the vast desert, market exchanges were limited, and the insufficiency of water and food supplies necessitated alternative forms in exchanging and sharing consumables and essential goods (Lancaster 1999). In this context, reciprocal and altruistic actions, in terms of sharing resources, extended beyond family members to include travelers and the wider community. Even nowadays, severe weather conditions and high temperatures foster collaboration, sharing, and careful management of natural resources amongst agrarian and rural Arab communities. In contrast to emerging and established European states of the same era, the preIslamic Arab world was mainly formed around pastoral nomadism, collective territories, and sporadic import of raw materials. The absence of institutional welfare and travel infrastructures strengthened the need for improvised and spontaneous sharing economic practices that characterized ritual activities, moral principles, and mundane matters. This largely self-sufficient and collectivistic organization of nomadic tribes would be greatly transformed by the most cataclysmic event in Arab history, the rise of Islam.

FAITH AND SHARING OF WEALTH Islam was born in the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century AD, and quickly spread throughout the rising caliphates and dynastic families of the region (Hodgson 1977). As the expansion continued during the Islamic Golden Age (8th to 13th centuries AD) and the Ottoman Empire, gradually the principles of the Islamic faith introduced a wider framework related to the cultural, political and economic integration of its followers, whilst many of these principles focused on “sharing” practices. Amongst those practices, sadaqa was widely encouraged by the Islamic faith. Sadaqa’s main thrust was to build communities by encouraging everyone to share: (1) money and material possessions with the less fortunate; (2) time, by visiting sick or elderly community members; (3) experiences, by giving advice or guidance; and (4) even happiness and positivity, by greeting people they met and wishing them well (Bint Mahmoodul Hasan 2018). Furthermore, the implementation of Islamic pillars across the Arab world contributed to the transformation of tribal and pastoral communities into well-organized states, urban centers, and stable economies (Webb 2016). Drawing on limited research on the interrelationships between Islam and sharing practices (Touzani and Hirschman 2011; Sobh et al. 2013), we can identify the more institutionalized sharing practice of zakat— one of the five Islamic Pillars—as key to structuring the informal sharing and “caring”

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66  Handbook of the sharing economy economy amongst believers. According to this religious obligation, a percentage of a follower’s wealth—approximately 2.5 percent of their assets provided that the individual meets certain criteria (Hefner 2006; Visser 2013)—is collected and redistributed annually to the most deprived members of society: orphans, poor Muslim converts, and travelers. Functioning primarily as a private and moral responsibility, rather than a strict tax system, in the majority of Muslim countries zakat contributions adopt a voluntarily and spiritual character in sharing wealth. Although the amount and forms of payment vary amongst Muslim nations, this unique form of alms-giving has been playing, even today, a seminal role in structuring a system of welfare distribution and enhancing a sense of social cohesion amongst believers. From a micro-perspective, the provision of personal wealth to marginalized social groups gave a philanthropic, spiritual, and egalitarian character to the concept of sharing amongst Arabs. Despite debates on the private or public practice of zakat, and on state involvement in the process (Hasan 2015), this long-standing economic arrangement and circulation of capital transferred individual wealth and transformed it into shelter, food, clothing, education, and healing for those in need. Giving relatively less importance to market exchanges, and instead prioritizing hospitality, throughout 14 centuries Arab Muslims have embraced a form of sharing that encompasses spiritual relief, moral obligation, and altruistic sentiment. We suggest that, with the growing interest in the anthropology of the sharing economy (Carrier 2012; Widlok 2017), there is potential to place more emphasis on how the interface between religiosity and the sharing economy influences reciprocal exchanges, social change, and political alternatives. Furthermore, historical readings and insights regarding the sharing economy can enrich existing research around religiosity, (macro-) marketing, and consumption (Benton 2016; Ger 2013; Jafari and Sandikci 2016). Considering Islam as the fastest-growing major religion in the world, its long-standing sharing practices have adapted to technological and socio-economic changes, while also maintaining their traditional ties with Arab values and consumption rituals. For example, non-interest crowdlending (jemee’h) amongst extended networks of friends and communities, neighborhood land-sharing crowdfund initiatives (wakef), and food-sharing, which typically takes place during Ramadan (Iftar/Mawa’id Alrahman), still exist in several Arab countries (Bayram 2015). In general, and contrary to the evolution of more secular Western contexts, Arabs’ perceptions towards sharing have been shaped by the interface between religion and the accumulation of wealth.

OIL, SHARING, AND ARAB CONSUMER CULTURE At the beginning of the twentieth century, petroleum was acknowledged as the most effective form of fuel for use in heating and motor-powered transport. The discovery of vast oil reserves in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf during the 1930s led to an economic and social transformation in Arab countries (Farsoun 2013). From the 1950s until the mid-1990s, the utilization and exportation of oil led to rapid growth in private and public wealth, and simultaneously induced economic modernization and huge public investment in the infrastructure, health, and education sectors of oil-rich Arab countries (Yousef 2004). During the 1970s, this economic prosperity was the backdrop to the emergence of

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Sharing and access practices by Arab millennials  67 Arab consumer culture, a phenomenon that has been enthusiastically embraced by millions of consumers while at the same time being fiercely criticized by public intellectuals and religious representatives. The rise of consumer culture, material desires, and increasing consumer choice altered social relations and introduced tensions between traditional forms of sharing practices and the individualistic expression of modern consumption lifestyles. Indeed, Hammond (2004) has suggested that a frenzied fascination with Western brands, luxury services, and impressive constructions has shaped modern Arab identities and urban centers. Commercial television, the advertising industry, and later the internet promoted and popularized mass consumption and luxury lifestyles among the emerging middle classes (Al-Abadi 1990). In the streets of metropolitan Arab cities such as Cairo, Beirut, and Dubai, the display of status symbols and conspicuous consumption practices rose exponentially, while hypermarkets and air-conditioned shopping malls became prominent features of city centers (Assad 2008). The replacement of community-driven values by uncontrolled consumerism, and of traditional outdoor bazaars by department stores, eroded and transformed long-established sharing practices amongst Arabs. Although the emergence of sharing practices, in the aforementioned historical accounts, stem from a very broad range of environmental and institutional forces—such as religious codes, hostile weather, and community values, amongst others—we observe that their cultural legacy has been injected within current forms of sharing and access-based services. For example, nowadays, in modernized and technologically advanced Arab countries, sharing economic practices, community-led crowdfunding, and collaborative networks manifest in a multiplicity of ways. Firstly, nostalgia for the “golden age” of Bedouin life, caliphates, and Arabic pre-modern culture prompts individuals and groups to maintain rituals related to sharing food, generous hospitality, and community-led crowdfunding (Bayram 2015; Behrens-Abouseif 1999). Secondly, the sharing of wealth, via the practice of zakat, continues to play a seminal role in fostering a sense of community and tackling societal problems through common resources. Thirdly, newly developed luxury, religious, and heritage tourism services have been infused with an element of Arabic authenticity characterized by openess, cordiality, honor, and commitment towards guests, tourists, and travelers. Considering the lack of a historical understanding around the evolution of the sharing economy and emerging access-based consumption and services (Wahlen and Laamanen 2017; Hazée et al. 2017), we identify how in a pre-internet Arab context the notion of sharing was shaped by unique environmental conditions, specific traditions, and socioeconomic events that differed from Western perspectives. In the following sections, we critically discuss how the internet, globalization, and electronic consumption facilitators have had a profound effect on the consumption practices of Arab millennial consumers.

THE EMERGENCE OF CONTEMPORARY DIGITIZED SHARING ACTIVITIES IN THE ARAB WORLD Over the last 20 years, digitized sharing practices via access platform services have become increasingly popular in the Arab world, such that the spending of Gulf consumers on sharing economy platforms is now estimated at $10.7 billion (Go Gulf 2018). Arab ­millennials

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68  Handbook of the sharing economy seem to be acting as the major catalyst behind this trend, due to their entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to innovation, creative products, and services (Nazeer 2017). In view of the size and spending habits of this segment, it has been extremely important to marketers. Firstly, the Arab millennial segment is much larger when compared to cohorts of the same age in other geographical contexts: millennials comprise around 40 percent of the total Arab population, as opposed to 25 percent in the USA (Raphael 2014), 28 percent in China (Russell 2016), and 24 percent in Europe (Stokes 2015). Secondly, their characteristics and attitudes are comparable to their global peers, especially in terms of them being curious, sociable, and tech-savvy (Ipsos Game Changers 2017; Fromm et al. 2016). Thirdly, Arab millennials, primarily nationals in affluent oil-rich countries such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the UAE, outspend their peers in North America, Asia, and Europe (particularly on high-value segments such as travel), and exhibit higher preferences for and usage of digital technologies (Visa Performance Solutions CEMEA 2016). In the KSA, for example, one of the largest Arab markets, 98 percent of millennials own a mobile phone, 62 percent use food ordering applications, and 52 percent use ride-hailing apps (Ipsos Game Changers 2017). Consequently, global sharing service platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Deliveroo, OLX, and Bag Borrow or Steal have been establishing themselves in the Arab markets and competing with the regional and local platforms that have been seeking to serve the growing demand for digitally facilitated access and sharing services (Cabral 2017). These services are not limited to ride-sharing, goods exchange, or hospitality, but extend to a whole range of service areas. For example, in the KSA, service apps such as Mahara (for hiring handymen and other freelancers) and Marsool (bids to complete tasks, from picking up laundry to collecting meals from restaurants that do not deliver) are becoming increasingly popular with Saudi millennials (Kataya 2017). In the UAE, Dubai Economy (the government entity responsible for Dubai’s economic policies) has launched an initiative called ShareDXB, to introduce the sharing economy concept to various industries across the Emirates and reduce inefficiencies from any unutilized capacity; for example, airlines and universities can upload their unused capacities to the platform so that universities can receive tickets from airlines, and in return provide airlines with education opportunities for their staff (Diaa 2017). Meanwhile, Lebanon has seen the emergence of initiatives for co-working spaces, such as Digihive and AltCity; of Nabbesh.com, a service website for matching freelancers and hirers; and of Wasselni, a car-pooling and crowdsourced traffic data update app (Mayard 2013). All of these indicate the growth of the sharing economy and the enthusiastic adoption of access practices by Arab millennials. Currently, the largest sharing economy sector in the Arab world is transportation, claiming around 30 percent of its total spending at $2.97 billion (Go Gulf 2018). This should not be surprising, considering the challenges associated with infrastructure, traffic, and other transportation issues in Arab cities such as Riyadh, Cairo, and Beirut (Everington 2017). Accordingly, and in order to focus our discussion, in the following section we explore the marketing and consumption practices of three transport-related access and sharing case examples from the contemporary Arab world.

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DIGITALLY FACILITATED TRANSPORTATION IN THE ARAB WORLD: RIDE-SHARING, SCOOTER-SHARING, AND BIKE-SHARING Claiming leadership in 107 countries around the globe (Marciano 2016), Uber is considered the world’s most popular ride-sharing application. Building on its earlier success in the North American and European markets, in 2015 Uber invested $250 million to expand its activities in the Middle East and North Africa regions, including the KSA, the UAE, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco (Syeed 2015). Yet, in the Arab world, Uber is only second in the ride-hailing app market, after Careem, a UAE-based ride-sharing platform that currently serves more than 65 cities in 13 countries across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (Careem 2017; Deulgaonkar 2017). Careem was founded in 2012 by two former McKinsey consultants who aimed to adapt Uber’s business model to respond to local market needs through innovative and imaginative services (Thomas 2016). The key challenges concerned issues of mobility in Arab cities, considering the absence of efficient public transport and other fast and reliable transportation solutions (Abraham 2017). Additionally, there were cultural challenges, especially in the case of the KSA, where women (up until June 2018) were not permitted to drive and had to rely on personal chauffeurs or male family members for transportation, and traditional taxis were considered unsafe and impractical. This condition was introduced by strict modesty rules and a collectivist culture that actively enforces gender segregation. For example, men and women who are not closely related by blood (meaning the men are non-mahrams) are not allowed to mingle in the workplace, in public, or even at home (Abokhodair and Vieweg 2016). However, with more women joining the workforce, and the recent relaxation of the gender segregation laws, more convenient mobility solutions, targeted specifically at women, have opened new opportunities. Careem decided to target the diverse needs of several Arab consumer segments with tailored solutions, considering the unique socio-cultural context. The company built its own mapping system, which made it easier and safer for drivers and customers to locate destinations and find each other (CNN 2017). It additionally innovated by recruiting mostly local Arabic-speaking drivers in the KSA and offering services such as pre-booked rides and monthly package deals for working professionals. It also offered the facility to pay in cash to bypass the limitations of credit card payments; and the option to contact the drivers anonymously so as to protect the customer’s privacy. Such processes emulated the convenience and safety of having a personal chauffeur without the costs of hiring one personally. For other segments, Careem offered car services for individuals with special needs, and with pre-installed child seats for parents (Abraham 2017). The name Careem means “generous” in Arabic, a highly valued trait in the Muslim and Arab world, reflecting the company claim that its brand and services are characterized by a unique cultural understanding, a fundamental belief in the notion of generosity, which governs its business model and guides its philosophy of sharing revenue and wealth with its employees, customers, and community (MacBride 2016). Careem employees are offered stocks in the company; drivers are called “Captains,” and earn around 30 percent more than other taxi drivers; excellence in customer service is paramount, and serving the community through corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns such as #BeCareem has been a recurring company initiative. Although these consumer ethnocentric and

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70  Handbook of the sharing economy profit-oriented practices are following examples of Western companies, Careem heavily infuses its charitable activities with a sense of Islamic values and obligation. For example, Careem has provided Iftar (meals for breaking the fast during Ramadan) for night-shift workers in the UAE and orphans in Morocco, organized a fun day out for orphans in Lebanon, launched education support initiatives in Pakistan and Egypt, and provided clothes for less affluent citizens in the KSA (Careem 2017). Following this culturally sensitive strategy, Careem is enjoying its lead over Uber, following a long-established consumer trend in the Arab world whereby consumers trust and support home-grown brands (Deulgaonkar 2017). While Careem successfully combines within its business model a focus on market needs with traditional Arab and Islamic values, other smaller-scale access and sharing services are satisfying local market needs without any explicit reliance on Islamic or Arab principles. For example, in Lebanon, a Middle Eastern Arab country whose culture is heavily influenced by Islam but is not considered exclusively Muslim, and where 18 different sects practice their beliefs freely, there is strong social coherence, and sharing is an integral part of people’s lives. Long-established practices such as sharing rides to save money and reduce traffic (Mayard 2013), and engaging in the trading and swapping of second-hand goods at a Sunday market, have been transformed through digital innovation, so that young Lebanese are now increasingly using ride-sharing platforms such as Uber and Careem, and trading and swapping goods online via platforms such as OLX. In the transportation facilitation market, and in the wake of Careem’s and Uber’s success, new, smaller, local players have emerged, aiming to satisfy the growing segment of Arab millennials, particularly the mobility needs of students and young professionals. For example, Loop Scooters is a Zipcar concept but with electric scooters, launched in Beirut in May 2017 by Loop SAL, a subsidiary of the Lebanese-owned Vancouver-based LOOPShare (Berytech 2017). Having started with one station hub in Beirut’s Central District, the company aims to add more throughout Beirut, near universities and central business areas, to facilitate transportation for commuters, students, and tourists. Bike 4 All is a bike-sharing service started by the same team of Lebanese entrepreneurs who founded the Beirut by Bike initiative for bike rentals in 1997 (Baz 2017). While the latter was aimed at families and the leisure market, Bike 4 All is positioned as a commuting solution for students and young adults (Baz 2017), and the company aims to set up stations near the 23 universities spread out across the Beirut area, showing the popularity of access-based consumption for young Arab consumers.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH AND CONCLUDING COMMENTS While the above mini-cases show the increased popularity of sharing and access-based consumption services in the Arab world, we suggest that more research is required in this area. The growth of the Arab sharing economy has been characterized by the localization of most service platforms and providers, technological advancement, but also a disparity in the usage of these services between nationals in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as the KSA and the UAE, and the large expatriate community who seem to be heavier users and more familiar with sharing economy

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Sharing and access practices by Arab millennials  71 services compared to nationals (Bohsali et al. 2017). Further research can show to what extent the reduced cost of access-based services constitutes a driving force and mutual benefit for Arab producers and consumers overall. Indeed, along with societal and technological trends, economic factors—particularly Arab consumers’ increasing inability to afford ownership, with the slowing of economic growth in oil-rich countries as well as in less affluent countries such as Lebanon—represent a main driver for access and sharing services (Owyang et al. 2013). Hence, with the slowdown of income growth overall in the Arab world, the usage of sharing services is expected to grow across millennial consumer segments. The concept of trust also requires further attention, since several studies have highlighted the importance of trust in access and sharing systems within a Western context (Tussyadiah 2015; Hartl et al. 2016). Contrary to more individualistic Western contexts where trust is cognitive-based and more consistently present across in-group (family and friends) and out-group (strangers) settings, in collectivist settings such as the Arab societies it has been observed that levels of trust are lower, especially in countries with high uncertainty avoidance, and especially in relation to out-group circles (Bohnet et al. 2010). Therefore, Arabs—particularly GCC nationals—have higher trust among their inner social circles and an aversion to risk, and accordingly they indicate lack of trust in sharing systems as a main barrier. Yet with the increased growth of the sharing economy in the Arab world, particularly through the success story of Careem, coupled with the economic slowdown that is placing more importance on value and saving, it seems that the conservative attitude of some Arab consumers towards the sharing and access services is shifting (Bohsali et al. 2017). Following on from Arab millennials’ preference for the sharing economy, we expect to observe, and empirically examine, a trend in the Arab world where consumers will adopt access-based practices more readily. These empirical findings can help us to assess the contradictory presence of low trust levels within a predominantly collectivist society, the nature or source of low trust (other users or the provider, for example) and how it can be mitigated. In conclusion, we have established that additional research is required so as to explicate the rise of access-based consumption practices in the Arab world, as well as the evolution of the term “sharing,” from a socio-cultural perspective. We have shown how the notion and practice of sharing were shaped in the pre-internet era by environmental (resource scarcity), religious (rise of Islam), and economic (oil revenues and affluence) forces. We have also critically discussed the emergence of contemporary digitized sharing activities, focusing on the popularity of transportation services, amongst Arab millennials in Lebanon, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Although the organization, provision, and promotion of these services employs the same digital means and techniques as in the USA and Europe, we have noted the infusion of a unique and culturally sensitive marketing strategy for Arab brands, with local features. We recommend that further research is undertaken to explore Arab consumers’ attitudes and perceptions towards the sharing economy in general, and non-ownership and access-based services in particular, so as to draw wider conclusions with regard to the interplay between consumption, trust, and cultural values in this unexplored context.

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REFERENCES Abokhodair, Norah and Sarah Vieweg (2016), “Privacy and Social Media in the Context of the Arab Gulf,” in  Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, New York: ACM, 672‒83. Abraham, Sneha (2017), “Careem’s Billion-Dollar Success Story,” https://www.meed.com/careem%C2%92s-bill​ ion-dollar-success-story/. Al-Abadi, Abdul (1990), “Developmental Issues in Gulf Countries,” Arab Future, 140 (10), 103‒17. Albinsson, Pia A. and B. Yasanthi Perera (2012), “Alternative Marketplaces in the 21st Century: Building Community through Sharing Events,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11 (4), 303‒15. Arsel, Zeynep (2010), “Other People’s Things: Perspectives on Ownership Transfer and Sharing,” in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 37, ed. Margaret C. Campbell, Jeff Inman, and Rik Pieters, Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, 135‒8. Assad, Soraya (2008), “The Rise of Consumerism in Saudi Arabian Society,” International Journal of Commerce and Management, 17, 73‒104. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881‒98. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana M. Eckhardt (2017), “Liquid Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Research, 44 (3), 582–97. Bayram, Ahmad S. (2015), “Traditional Arab Collaborative Economy Initiatives that Still Exist!” https:// ahmadsb.com/arab-old-sharing-economy-initiative/#more-335. Baz, Nelly (2017), “Lebanon’s First Bike-Sharing Service Pops Up in Beirut,” https://www.shareable.net/blog/ lebanons-first-bike-sharing-service-pops-up-in-beirut. Behrens-Abouseif, Doris (1999), Beauty in Arabic Culture, Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. Belk, Russell W. (2007), “Why Not Share Rather Than Own?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611 (1), 126‒40. Belk, Russell W. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 715‒34. Belk, Russell W. (2014a), “Sharing versus Pseudo-Sharing in Web 2.0,” Anthropologist, 18 (1), 7‒23. Belk, Russell W. (2014b), “You Are What You Can Access: Sharing and Collaborative Consumption Online,” Journal of Business Research, 67 (8), 1595‒600. Benton, Raymond (2016), “Introduction to Special Issue: Religiosity and Macromarketing,” Journal of Macromarketing, 36 (4), 232‒3. Berytech (2017), “News: Loop Scooters Launches First Electric Bike Fleet in Beirut,” http://berytech.org/loop-sco​ oters-launches-first-electric-bike-fleet-beirut/. Bint Mahmoodul Hasan, Shabana (2018), “Zakat vs Sadaqah,” https://www.globalsadaqah.com/blog/zakat-vs-sa​ daqah/. Bohnet, Iris, Benedikt Herrmann, Mohamad Al-Ississ, et al. (2010), “The Elasticity of Trust: How to Promote Trust in the Arab Middle East and the United States,” Harvard Kennedy School Working Paper No. RWP10031, Harvard Kennedy School. Bohsali, Samer, Sevag Papazian, Rawia Abdel Samad, et al. (2017), “Embracing Sharing: Managing the Disruption of the Sharing Economy in the GCC,” London: Strategy&, https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/ reports/embracing-sharing. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, New York: Harper Business. Cabral, Alvin R. (2017), “The Rise of the Sharing Economy in the Middle East,” https://www.khaleejtimes.com/ technology/rise-of-the-sharing-economy. Careem (2017), “Careem,” https://www.careem.com/dubai/node. Carrier, James (2012), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. CNN (2017), “Why Careem is Bigger than Uber in the Middle East,” https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/01/mid​ dleeast/careem-dubai-startup/index.html. Cova, Bernard and Daniele Dalli (2009), “Working Consumers: The Next Step in Marketing Theory?” Marketing Theory, 9 (3), 315‒39. Deulgaonkar, Parag (2017), “Uber vs Careem: Which is most Talked About in the Middle East?” http://www. arabianbusiness.com/uber-vs-careem-which-is-most-talked-about-in-middle-east--665326.html. Diaa, Sarah (2017), “Dubai Economy to Boost Sharing Economy across Emirate,” http://gulfnews.com/business/ economy/dubai-economy-to-boost-sharing-economy-across-emirate-1.2143927. Everington, John (2017), “Careem Blazes a Trail for Middle East Tech Start-Up,” https://www.thenational.ae/ business/technology/careem-blazes-a-trail-for-middle-east-tech-start-ups-1.680664. Farsoun, Samih (2013), Arab Society: Continuity and Change, London: Routledge Revivals.

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Sharing and access practices by Arab millennials  73 Fortin, David and Mark Uncles (2011), “The First Decade: Emerging Issues of the Twenty-First Century in Consumer Marketing,” Journal of Consumer Marketing, 28 (7), 472‒75. Fromm, Jeff, Brad Hanna, Chad Nicholson, et al. (2016), “The Millennial Mindset: Quantifying the Impact on Consumer Spend and Brand Preferences Across Generations,” Kansas City: Barkley Inc. and Futurecast, https://recsports.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FutureCast_Millennial-Mindset-Report.pdf. Ger, Guliz (2013), “Islamic Marketing at the Nexus of Global Markets–Religions–Politics and Implications for Research,” Marketing Theory, 13 (4), 497‒503. Giesler, Markus (2006), “Consumer Gift Systems,” Journal of Consumer Research, 33 (2), 283‒90. Go Gulf (2018), “Sharing Economy in Middle East—Statistics and Trends—Infographic,” https://www.go-gulf. com/blog/sharing-economy-middle-east/. Godelnik, Raz (2017), “Millennals and the Sharing Economy: Lessons from a ‘Buy Nothing New, Share Everything Month’ Project,” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 23 (June), 40‒52. Hammond, Andrew (2004), Pop Culture Arab World! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle, Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Hartl, Barbara, Eva Hofmann, and Erich Kirchler (2016), “Do We Need Rules for ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’? Governance in Collaborative Consumption Communities,” Journal of Business Research, 69 (8), 2756–63. Hasan, Samiul (2015), Human Security and Philanthropy: Islamic Perspectives and Muslim Majority Country Practices, New York: Springer-Verlag. Hazée, Simon, Cécile Delcourt, and Yves Van Vaerenbergh (2017), “Burdens of Access: Understanding Customer Barriers and Barrier-Attenuating Practices in Access-Based Services,” Journal of Service Research, 20 (4), 441‒56. Hefner, Robert W. (2006), “Islamic Economics and Global Capitalism,” Society, 44 (1), 16–22. Hitti, Philip K. (1943), The Arabs: A Short History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hodgson, G. Marshall (1977), The Venture of Islam, Volume 1, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ipsos Game Changers (2017), “Getting Closer To MENA’s Generation Y—KSA edition: The Region’s First Syndicated Study Covering Its Most Disruptive Segment,” Riyadh: IPSOS. Jafari, Aliakbar and Ozlem Sandikci (eds) (2016), Islam, Marketing and Consumption: Critical Perspectives on the Intersections, London: Routledge. John, N.A. (2013), “Sharing, Collaborative Consumption and Web 2.0,” London: MEDIA@LSE Electronic Working Papers. Kataya, Abdulghani (2017), “Saudi Delivery Apps that could Save You from Ramadan Traffic,” https://www. wamda.com/2017/06/saudi-delivery-apps. Laamanen, Mikko, Stefan Wahlen, and Mario Campana (2015), “Mobilising Collaborative Consumption Lifestyles: A Comparative Frame Analysis of Time Banking,” International Journal of Consumer Studies, 39 (5), 459‒67. Lancaster, William (1999), People, Land and Water in the Arab Middle East: Environments and Landscapes in the Bilâd Ash-Shâm, London: Taylor & Francis. MacBride, Elizabeth (2016), “How a Startup from the Middle East is Beating Uber, and Its Lofty Ambition for the Future,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethmacbride/2016/05/30/ careem-lofty ambition/#546d2a6e29f4. Marciano, Jonathan (2016), “Who Runs the World? Uber!” https://www.similarweb.com/blog/ worldwide-ridehai​ling-apps. Marcoux, Jean-S. (2009), “Escaping the Gift Economy,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (4), 671‒85. Marshall, Judith. J. and Frances Woolley (1993), “What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Yours is Ours: Challenging the Income Pooling Assumption,” in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 20, ed. Leigh McAlister and Michael L. Rothschild, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 541‒5. Mayard, Aline (2013), “Is the Arab World Ready for a Collaborative Economy? This Syrian Student Says Yes,”https:// www.shareable.net/blog/is-the-arab-world-ready-for-a-collaborative-economy-this-syrian-student-says-yes. Mohlmann, Mareike (2015), “Collaborative Consumption: Determinants of Satisfaction and the Likelihood of Using a Sharing Economy Option Again,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14 (3), 193‒207. Nazeer, Tasnim (2017), “How Millennials are Spurring Innovation in the Middle East,” https://www.forbesmid​ dleeast.com/en/forbesmiddleeast/. Nydell, Margaret K. (2006), Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times, 4th edition, Boston, MA: Intercultural Press. Owyang, Jeremiah, Christine Tran, and Chris Silva (2013), “The Collaborative Economy: Altimeter Research Report,” https://fr.slideshare.net/Altimeter/the-collaborative-economy. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Paul W. Ballantine (2010), “Sharing as a Form of Anti-Consumption? An Examination of Toy Library Users,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 9 (6), 485‒98. Raphael, T.J. (2014), “Millennials are On the Rise in the Middle East—and Bring their Own Agenda,” http:// www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-02/millennials-are-rise-middle-east-and-bring-their-own-agenda. Richardson, Lizzie (2015), “Performing the Sharing Economy,” Geoforum, 67 (12), 121‒9. Robinson, Francis (1999), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Russell, Chris (2016), “New Youth: Understanding China’s Millennials,” http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn/2016/02/03/ demographics/new-youth-understanding-chinas-millennials/. Sobh, Rana and Russell W. Belk (2011), “Domains of Privacy and Hospitality in Arab Gulf Homes,” Journal of Islamic Marketing, 2 (2), 125‒37. Sobh, Rana, Russell W. Belk, and Jonathan A.J. Wilson (2013), “Islamic Arab Hospitality and Multiculturalism,” Marketing Theory, 13(4), 443–63. Stokes, Bruce (2015), “Who are Europe’s Millennials?” http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/09/whoare-euro​pes-millennials/. Syeed, Nafeesa (2015), “Uber Invests $250 Million to Expand in Middle East, North Africa,” http://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/uber-invests-250-million-for-expansion-in-the-middle-east. Thomas, Sam (2016), “Careem: It’s Full Speed Ahead for this Middle East Startup,” https://www.entrepreneur. com/article/254894. Touzani, Mourad and Elizabeth Hirschman (2011), “Minority Religious Rituals in the Post-Colonial World: The Case of Armada in France,” in Advances in Consumer Research: European Conference Proceedings, Vol. 9, 116‒22. Tussyadiah, Lis P. (2015), “An Exploratory Study on Drivers and Deterrents of Collaborative Consumption in Travel,” in Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, ed. Lis Tussyadiah and Alessandro Inversini, Cham: Springer, 817‒30. Tussyadiah, Lis P. (2016), “Factors of Satisfaction and Intention to use Peer-to-Peer Accommodation,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 55 (5), 70‒80. Visa Performance Solutions CEMEA (2016), “Understanding the Millennial Mind-Set and What it Means for Payments in the GCC,” https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/partner-with-us/documents/millennialdigital-payment-trends-in-gcc.pdf. Visser, Hans (2013), Islamic Finance: Principles and Practice, 2nd revised edition, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Wahlen, Stefan and Mikko Laamanen (2017), “Collaborative Consumption and Sharing Economies,” in Routledge Handbook on Consumption, ed. M. Keller, B. Halkier, T.-A. Wilska, and M. Truninger, Oxford: Routledge, 94‒105. Webb, Peter (2016), Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam, London: Edinburgh University Press. Widlok, Thomas (2017), Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing, London: Routledge. Woodburn, James (1982), “Egalitarian Societies,” Man, 17 (3), 431‒51. Yousef, Tarik (2004), “Development, Growth and Policy Reform in the Middle East and North Africa since 1950,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18 (3), 91‒116.

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7.  Object history value in the sharing economy Charis X. Li and Richard J. Lutz

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INTRODUCTION Online platform-enabled peer-to-peer (P2P) rental, as a form of the emerging sharing economy, is reshaping how consumers make use of durable material goods. For example, a person can rent his neighbor’s parked car in the garage on Turo and use it for a couple of hours; a traveler can rent a spare bedroom in a host’s home through Airbnb; a college senior can rent a high-quality interview outfit from a business professional through Style Lend; and an amateur photographer can rent a range of camera gear from peers through ShareGrid. In each of these cases, the owner of the durable good earns a profit through renting a personal possession. Recirculating durable consumer products through P2P rental can increase the functional value extracted from consumer possessions, reduce waste, and make options available and/or affordable for consumers who would otherwise be unable to afford them (Belk 2007; Horton and Zeckhauser 2016; Lamberton and Rose 2012). In this chapter we introduce a new concept, object history value, and argue that, holding other object value constant, the “history value” in a pre-owned object can influence the preferences and behavior of both the owner and the renter. Because shared products in the P2P rental markets are all individually appropriated and used, otherwise ordinary consumer products can become considerably more valuable to their owners or to prospective renters due to their unique histories. For example, in their offers,1 Turo car owners often write about the past lives of their beloved vehicles. In addition, the trips that Turo car renters share in their reviews add to the character of the car, just as Airbnb renters’ diverse profiles increase the cultural experience of the spaces they occupy. Such value assigned to an object through use constitutes object history value and influences both owners’ and renters’ behaviors in the sharing process. In this chapter, we first define object history value and differentiate it from related constructs. Next, we present a theoretical framework of object history value in the P2P sharing economy, and advance testable propositions regarding object history value in the sharing process from both the owner and the renter perspectives. Through the lens of object history value, we tackle questions such as: Will the owner of a valuable possession share it with others, and if so, when? How will owners select renters based on anticipated usage? When should consumers choose to own versus rent? We derive testable propositions specific to owner and renter decisions in the sharing process from the proposed 1   See the following examples where the owner introduced the car’s appearance in a film (https:// turo.com/rentals/cars/qc/montreal/volkswagen-westfalia/175969), displayed photos of trips the car had taken (https://www.instagram.com/beastandbarnacle/), wrote about what kind of renters the car had accommodated (https://turo.com/rentals/suvs/ca/millbrae/ford-escape-avia​to/181777), and how past renters had used the car (https://turo.com/rentals/cars/il/chicago/volks​wagen-eos/137936).

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76  Handbook of the sharing economy framework. Finally, we conclude with theoretical and managerial implications of this work, its limitations, and future research directions.

OBJECT HISTORY VALUE

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Object history is a perceived property of a material object that people may use to assign value to that object. In the humanities, archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists uncover histories of human activities through studying tangible objects, such as artworks and other artifacts. In their daily lives, consumers use historical cues to evaluate the authenticity of market offerings (Grayson and Martinec 2004; Newman et al. 2011), and treasure those special possessions that mark their personal history and family heritage (Epp and Price 2010; Grayson and Shulman 2000; Kleine et al. 1995). Therefore, understanding the unique characteristics of object history value can provide marketers with insights into the acquisition, retention, and recirculation of consumer possessions. We intend to synthesize seemingly disparate approaches from prior literature to create a “big-tent” theory that can account for extant findings and inspire future consumer research, especially in the sharing domain. We define object history value as a meaning-based value that someone assigns to an object given their beliefs about the history indexically associated with the object, where the history can be related to people, events, times, places, and so on. This definition specifies three important properties of object history value: (1) the appraisal of object history value depends on the appraisal of the history’s meaningfulness; (2) the valuation of object history operates in a cognitive associative network; and (3) history-laden objects bear indexical cues of the history. Next, we develop these properties in depth with support from literature in consumer psychology, consumer culture theory, and semiotics. Properties of Object History Value Property 1: history meaningfulness determines history value Meanings provide unique value to objects. The value of an object, whether material or digital, can be derived from its association with meaningful sources, such as the self (Belk 1988, 2013), cultural meanings (McCracken 1986), or meanings in consumers’ everyday lives (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981). Kopytoff (1986, 74) recognizes that cultural or individual significance can singularize objects and pull them “out of their usual commodity sphere.” Similarly, Richins (1994) identifies “possession meaning,” including private and public meaning, as a source of a possession’s value. Because the perception of meaning significance is usually subjective, especially when the meaning is individual or private, history value perception varies across individuals. Individuals appraise meaning sources, and assign them both valence and magnitude; therefore, as a meaning source, object history is appraised to determine the valence and magnitude of the history value of an associated object. The valence of object history value refers to positivity or negativity. The magnitude of object history value refers to the degree to which object history adds to or deducts from the baseline value of the object. For example, people readily discard possessions associated with an undesirable or negative past self, but find it painful to give up objects that are associated with a desirable or

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Object history value in the sharing economy  77

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positive self-identity (Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005). Consumers value a gift from a significant other much more highly than the same gift from a stranger (Yang and Galak 2015). When evaluating a pre-owned product, individuals also recruit the valence and significance of the presumed owner (meaning source) to inform their attitudes toward the product (Newman et al. 2011). Similarly, in retail settings, Argo et al. (2006, 2008) found that consumers evaluated a product touched by an attractive other more favorably, but a product touched by unidentifiable or unpleasant others less favorably. Product attachment and “mental accounting” literatures also suggest that people value a product, and even money, more highly if it is obtained from a (positively charged) meaningful source than when it is received with no meanings attached (e.g., McGraw et al. 2003). The evidence above indicates that the first property—the appraisal of the history—is a crucial characteristic of object history value. Property 2: history value varies with association strength Associating an object with certain history is a cognitive activity, because such a connection might not be directly perceptible through surface characteristics (for example, by merely looking at the object). Therefore, the recognition of any object’s history value depends on one’s knowledge and/or belief of the object‒history association; given this knowledge or belief, the extent to which people rely on the appraisal of the history meaningfulness in object valuation is influenced by the strength of the perceived object‒history association. We draw on the spreading activation model of associative network theory (Collins and Loftus 1975) to inform predictions about the magnitude of the object history value one may perceive, and the actions one may take given such value. Firstly, the associative network model predicts that the more specific the history is, the stronger the association will be, and hence the more history value the object will have. For example, Grayson and Shulman (2000) found that people associating a personal possession with a period of time (for example, one’s childhood in general) deemed the object more replaceable than those associating the object with a specific event (for example, high school graduation). Secondly, when multiple objects are associated with the same history, the associative strength between each object and the history is reduced, so the history value of each object is decreased. In the antique auctions market, for example, bidders are advised to value items based on the scarcity of antiques from a particular era: the fewer pieces available, the higher the value of each piece.2 Thirdly, among the multiple objects that are associated with the same history, objects with relatively close association (for example, more relevant to the history, more critical to the memory of the history) exhibit greater associative strength than objects with distant association to the history, and therefore have higher object history value. Newman and Bloom (2014) found that the level of physical contact between celebrities and their possessions is positively correlated with how much people pay for these possessions. These three basic principles from associative network theory can guide our understanding of how people value, choose, retain, recirculate, or dispose of objects.

2   “How to Decide on the Value of an Antique,” http://www.festivalofantiques.co.uk/how-todecide-on-the-value-of-an-antique/; and “Inside the Mind of a Million-Dollar Art Bidder,” https:// www.thecut.com/2016/12/inside-the-mind-of-a-million-dollar-art-bidder.html.

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78  Handbook of the sharing economy Property 3: history value salience depends on indexical history cues In an associative network, a history-laden object is either a cue itself or carries cues that instantiate the perceiver’s cognition of the associated history; specifically, the association between the object cue(s) and the history is indexical. The concept of indexicality is adopted from semiotics (Mick 1986) and characterizes the way in which two or more entities connect (Peirce 1931‒58). To say that an object has an indexical connection with a piece of history: (1) the history itself has to be factual (or at least believed to be factual); and (2) the object is associated with the history through perceived ­spatio-temporal proximity or was affected by the history (for example, relocated, reshaped). Indexical connection is one of three object‒meaning connections in semiotics theory. The other two object‒meaning connections are iconic connection, wherein the object resembles the meaning in terms of form (for example, a recently produced Victorianstyle chair representing the Victorian era), and symbolic connection, wherein the object symbolizes the meaning in terms of concept (for example, a luxury branded product symbolizes one’s wealth). An object can have multiple connections with the same or different meaning sources. Neither iconic nor symbolic connections require a factual meaning source; visually or symbolically similar objects are interchangeable in representing the same meaning source if only iconic and/or symbolic connections are present. An indexical connection, however, is necessary for an otherwise commonplace consumer product to gain unique value that is not present even in a perfect replica (Epp and Price 2010; Grayson and Shulman 2000; Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005). Object history value, in particular, is the value people derive from the indexical connections (among all possible associations) between the object and its history. The value of indexicality is amply evident in consumers’ own narratives of their favorite or most cherished possessions. Consumers consider an object their “favorite thing” because it serves as a reminder of a friend or family member, a vacation trip, or some other event in their past (Wallendorf and Arnould 1988); they sometimes deem an object “sacred” and separate it from “profane” or ordinary objects because it preserves personal memories of other people, times, places, and experiences through “tangibilizing contamination” (Belk et al. 1989). Older consumers treasure their possessions for their indexical connection with past events and deceased persons, and use such connections to guide their disposal decision (Price et al. 2000). Consumers also often intentionally acquire objects to preserve meaningful memories and keep them as physical evidence to verify the past to themselves and to others (Grayson and Shulman 2000). An object’s history value can also increase through obtaining physical indexical cues (for example, getting a celebrity’s autograph on one’s ordinary possession; Fernandez and Lastovicka 2011) or digital records (also a form of indexical cue) of its unique history (for example, shared content in online forums recording trackable objects’ journeys in geocaching communities; Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016). For history value to influence a perceiver’s valuation of an object and behaviors regarding it, the association between the object and the history needs to be salient at the moment of evaluation. Because the object can carry cues of the history, the salience and distinctiveness of the cue(s) will also influence history value perception. For example, if history cues are removable, removing the cues will make history value less salient for the appraiser to evaluate.

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Object history value in the sharing economy  79 We argue that object history value should be viewed as a unique construct that can make specific predictions about consumer behaviors that similar constructs cannot. Therefore, it is important to differentiate object history value from other related concepts in consumer research, such as sentimental value and possession attachment.

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Object History Value versus Sentimental Value Sentimental value is often used by laypeople to describe some emotion-evoking or nostalgia-eliciting properties of an object. It is defined as a non-feature-related utility derived from associations with positive, significant others or from associations with positive, special events or times in one’s life (Givi and Galak 2017; Yang and Galak 2015). Examples of objects with sentimental value are photos with one’s best friends at their high school graduation, and an anniversary gift from one’s spouse. Based on this definition, sentimental value is similar to object history value in that it is a non-functional, meaningbased value that relies on associations. However, three major differences exist between these two constructs: (1) sentimental value is only positive, while object history value can be either positive or negative, depending on the valence of its history; (2) sentimental value relies only on private meanings, while objects can gain history value from both private and public meanings; for example, many museum displays have history value that is derived only from public meanings; and (3) object history value builds on indexical connections an object has with factual history, whereas the associations between an object and meaning sources (for example, one’s significant other) that give rise to sentimental value can be indexical (for example, a gift given by the significant other), iconic (for example, an object similar to one that is given by the significant other), or symbolic (for example, an object carrying the same brand as the one given by the significant other). Therefore, object history value is “fixed” onto a particular object (cue), while, depending on the specific connection type, some sentimental value can be transferred from one object (cue) to another. Object History Value versus Possession Attachment Material possession attachment is defined as a multifaceted property of the relationship between an individual or group of individuals and a specific material object that has been psychologically appropriated, decommodified, and singularized through person‒object interaction (Kleine and Baker 2004). It is a psychological and behavioral phenomenon featuring the relationship between the focal consumer(s) and an object, which may lead to subsequent behaviors such as higher valuation of the attached object and lower willingness to trade (Shu and Peck 2011). Like possession attachment, object history value is single-object-specific, and does not generalize to other objects. Both possession attachment and a positive object history value can lead to higher valuation and lower willingness to trade. However, object history value and possession attachment are fundamentally different. Firstly, possession attachment deals with the relationship between the owner and the object per se, whereas object history value characterizes the relationship between an object and its underlying history. Secondly, possession attachment is an owner-specific property, whereas anyone with an appreciation of the history associated with an object,

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80  Handbook of the sharing economy owners or non-owners alike, can recognize the object’s history value. Therefore, an owner’s possession attachment may not be able to increase another’s valuation of the object, whereas an owner of an object with history value can increase others’ valuations of the object by enhancing their awareness and appreciation of the history behind the object. Thirdly, possession attachment must come from direct interaction between the owner and the object, whereas the origin of object history value does not have to be experienced directly by the appraiser. In some situations, positive object history value can give rise to possession attachment; for example, if the object history is built through the person’s long-time interaction with the object. However, object history value is neither a sufficient nor a necessary antecedent of possession attachment.

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OBJECT HISTORY VALUE IN THE SHARING ECONOMY As discussed, since object history value often pertains to individual valuation of singularized objects, especially considering value generated from private history, its effects on consumer decisions when these objects re-enter commodity exchanges can be complex (see Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986). Due to such complexity, certain fundamental assumptions need to be made prior to our analysis. Here, we adopt a rational utility theory perspective (Fishburn 1968) to inspect consumer preferences with respect to object history value in the sharing economy. Firstly, we assume that individuals (either owners or renters in the sharing economy) seek higher utility when evaluating alternative transaction opportunities. Different sources of utility for owners and renters of shared goods emerge in the sharing economy; for example, economic utility and psychological utility. A transaction occurs only when the utility gained equals or exceeds the utility lost. Secondly, we assume that consumers negotiate with potential transaction partners (and with themselves) among utility gains and losses from various sources. For example, consumers can forgo economic utility to gain psychological utility (for example, paying more to rent a conspicuous luxury car instead of an economy car), or trade psychological utility for gains in economic utility (for example, forgoing comfort and an enjoyable experience to pay a lower price when renting an Airbnb accommodation). Therefore, object history value can be estimated by measuring the economic utility one would forgo to gain it (for example, willingness to pay, willingness to discount), or the economic utility one would require in order to part with it (for example, willingness to accept). In the sharing economy, especially P2P rental, owners possess the objects, which may or may not already have salient history value; and renters have temporary access to the objects, through which new object history may be generated. Figure 7.1 maps the existence of object history value, its valuation as the product of the meaningfulness of the history, the strength of association, and the salience of indexical cues. Object history value further influences the owner‒renter interaction in the sharing economy, which potentially leads to more object history value being generated. In this model, the feature-related utilities of a good, such as its functionality or aesthetic utility, are considered fungible among similar market offerings, and are held constant or assumed to deteriorate. As discussed earlier, object history is valued against the meaningfulness of its history (Property 1), qualified by the strength of the association between the object and the underlying history (Property 2), and the salience of indexical cues (Property 3).

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Object history value in the sharing economy  81 HISTORY MEANINGFULNESS History Characteristics: History valence History significance Appraiser Characteristics: Appraiser knowledge/memory Appraiser involvement in meaning-making Appraiser motivation to seek meaning (e.g., need for meaning, identity threat) Appraiser psychological distance from the history Appraiser perspective-taking ability

OBJECT HISTORY Public history Private history

CUES SALIENCE History Characteristics: Physical impact on object Object Characteristics: Cue separability, malleability, enactment affordance, tangibility, consumability, etc. Appraiser Characteristics: Appraiser knowledge/memory

ASSOCIATION STRENGTH History Characteristics: History specificity Object Characteristics: Relevance to the history, salience, uniqueness, etc. Appraiser Characteristics: Appraiser knowledge/memory

Object History Value

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OWNER‒RENTER INTERACTION OWNER BEHAVIOR Owner decision to share Owner choice of user Owner valuation of the object/rent

RENTER BEHAVIOR Renter choice of object Renter valuation of the object/rent Renter use and care for the object

Figure 7.1  Object history value in the P2P sharing process “Appraiser” here is the individual who evaluates an object’s history value. They can be the owner of the object, or a potential renter who is reviewing the sharing offer. “Meaningful history” includes any public or private history of significance, such as celebrities (public) or significant people in one’s personal life (private). History characteristics and appraiser characteristics influence the extent to which the appraiser finds the history more or less meaningful, and whether the history is negative or positive. Once an indexical connection (based on perceived spatio-temporal proximity) between the focal object and the meaning source is established, history characteristics, object characteristics, and appraiser characteristics influence the strength of the indexical connection and the salience of indexical cues. The strength of the connection and the salience of the cues moderate the impact of the history on the object’s history value by attaching varying degrees of valence to the object. Due to different valuations by different actors, object history might pose barriers or act as a promoter in various stages of a P2P sharing transaction. Next, we examine two

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82  Handbook of the sharing economy decision points from both the owner and the renter perspectives, where positive or negative object history value plays a role in the sharing process: (1) joining a sharing platform; and (2) owner‒renter selection and negotiation, through which testable propositions are derived from the proposed theoretical framework. Decision Point 1: Joining a Sharing Platform Owner considerations When a consumer decides whether to join the sharing economy as a rental provider, they need to evaluate the potential gain against their potential loss. Potential losses and gains of object history value can play a role in the owner’s decision to share their possession with others in the sharing economy. First, the owner might be concerned about the safety of their valued possession because most usage bears a potential risk of damaging the object. Any potential damage or loss can be especially salient when the object has unique history value. Because history value resides in the object, once the object is lost or damaged, the history value cannot be replaced: Proposition 1:  Owners are less likely to share an object associated with meaningful history than an object associated with less meaningful history. According to associative network theory, when the same history is connected to multiple objects, the history value can be spread to all of these objects. Therefore, we propose:

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Proposition 2:  Owners are less likely to share a history-laden object if the connection between the object and the history is exclusive than when the connection is shared by other objects. If history cues are separable from the object, for example, personal mementos (history cues) displayed in a rented room (object), removing the history cues from the object will reduce the history value of the object: Proposition 3:  Owners are more willing to share a history-laden object when history cues are absent than when such cues are present. Owners can remove separable history cues from sharable objects and preserve the cues somewhere else. Knowing that removing history cues may encourage owners to share their possessions, sharing platforms can provide incentives related to cleaning or renovating services to interested owners to help prepare owners for sharing. Renter considerations As an alternative form of consumption, the sharing economy allows consumers to enjoy the consumption utility of a shared good without taking on the cost of owning or maintaining it. However, many consumers are still hesitant to take advantage of the sharing economy, due to potential practical barriers such as the inconvenience of reserving and transferring the good, and lack of a match between idiosyncratic offerings and

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Object history value in the sharing economy  83

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one’s needs. In addition to these utilitarian reasons, consumers may take potential object history into consideration when deciding whether to buy or rent. On the one hand, a rented object that is privately owned by another consumer may bear cues of object history created by its owner and previous renters who have had access to it. Certain object history cues might be considered as “contamination cues” (e.g., Haidt et al. 1994). Contamination from object history can be physical or merely psychological. When a prior source can physically influence the object, the history that the object carries can contaminate the next renter’s experience. For example, car-sharing participants’ experience can be influenced by whether a previous renter smoked or left any trash in the shared car (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). Even when previous usage does not leave any physical trace on the object that may negatively influence the next renter’s experience, mere knowledge of an aversive history can deter some consumers from adopting a shared object. As online sharing platforms now allow renters to leave comments regarding their experience with the shared object, it is almost inevitable that potential renters become aware of the object’s history. However, not all contagion is negative. Consumers sometimes prefer contagion from positive sources, such as a product previously touched by an attractive shopper (Argo et al. 2008), an antique that has “absorbed” something sacred from an earlier time (Belk 1990), or a house allegedly having accommodated George Washington (Culler 1988). Similarly, gaining access to positive contagion sources may motivate some consumers to join the sharing economy, especially those open to novel experiences (Hendriks et al. 1999). For instance, a consumer may join Turo to experience a camper that has appeared in a film, or rent an Airbnb offering that has previously accommodated a celebrity. For consumers who are sensitive to “essence contagion” (Newman and Dhar 2014), the knowledge of the history of the shared object or any visual cues of object history may serve as negative contamination cues that lower their evaluation and tendency to accept and use the shared object (Argo et al. 2006; White et al. 2016): Proposition 4:  The effect of object history value on renters’ likelihood to rent is amplified by renters’ sensitivity to contagion, such that renters with greater sensitivity to contagion respond more positively to positive object history value and more negatively to negative object history value than renters low on sensitivity to contagion. Proposition 5:  Renters with a greater openness to experience are more likely to rent an item with object history value than renters low on openness to experience. An understanding of renters’ distaste for negative contagion and preference for positive contagion, and its implications for the specific product types shared, can potentially guide platform developers to rethink whether and how to display a shared item’s history in order to attract potential renters. Renting an item to use for a particular occasion means that the renter may give up the opportunity to purchase a similar product or use one they already own. For example, a high school senior can rent a high-end designer dress from Style Lend or Rent the Runway for her prom for the same price (for example, $80) that she could buy a dress of a lesser-known brand. Similarly, a skier can pay $100 to check their own amateur skis onto a flight to a resort for a four-day ski trip, or spend $25 per day at the resort to rent a set

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84  Handbook of the sharing economy of professional skis. In both examples, given similar costs, the consumer may be able to acquire higher experiential value with the rented object. However, because object history resides in the object, the consumer can keep the history value only if they own the object; any history value in the dress or skis is relinquished if the item is rented. Consumers see possessions as markers of their personal history, proof of events in the past, and vessels of family stories (Belk 1988, 1990; Epp and Price 2010; Grayson and Shulman 2000; McAlexander 1991), and actively acquire objects such as souvenirs and mementos as “tangible markers for retrospective memories in the future” (Belk 1990, 670). This means that the absence of owned objects from memory-worthy events may cost consumers ­valuable memory cues or stimuli for “future reflections, communication, and consolidation of sense of self ” (Belk 1990, 670). It is important to note that not all experiences are memory-worthy. As documented by Bardhi and Eckhardt (2012), most Zipcar users joined the sharing economy for its use value (for example, convenience, low price, variety) and for mundane tasks as simple as grocery shopping. Since the experience itself as a source of object history is not meaningful, shared car users may not value the object history generated through these uses. In addition, these users “avoid identification with accessed cars and as such do not engage in practices that would transform their use value to sign value” (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012, 890). From an object history point of view, the reason these users avoid engaging in sign-value creation may well be that they cannot keep such value because they do not own the shared car:

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Proposition 6:  Given similar costs, the more memory-worthy the potential experience, the more likely consumers are to choose to buy a product or use an already-owned item rather than renting a shared item. Although access-based consumption often has lower financial cost, higher experiential utility, and lower hassle cost (Lamberton and Rose 2012), these benefits are temporary compared to the long-lasting benefit that object history value provides. With a forwardlooking perspective, consumers may want to buy, instead of rent, an object to be used in a foreseeably highly meaningful event; whereas renting is recommended when the use is mundane. When owning is too costly, however, consumers may still opt for renting while keeping a piece of a meaningful experience by creating other memory cues (for example, buying a hair accessory for the prom while renting the dress, buying a souvenir from the ski resort while using the rental skis). When no other indexical connections can be made, consumers may also create iconic cues that remind them of the meaningful experience. Taking pictures is a viable way to preserve memories. Pictures have an iconic connection to the history, and can elicit similar emotional reactions as the history (Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005). However, consumers’ overall experience may be undercut by picturetaking (Nardini et al. 2019): Proposition 7:  Consumers are more likely to create other memory cues (for example, taking pictures, buying souvenirs) when the central product used during a meaningful experience is rented than when it is owned.

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Object history value in the sharing economy  85 Decision Point 2: Owner‒Renter Selection and Negotiation Online sharing platforms present renters with countless offerings, each with unique characteristics, from which to choose. On Airbnb, for example, there were more than 40 000 active host listings in New York City alone in 2016 (Farber 2016). Sharing platforms also provide owners with opportunities to be seen by and get rental requests from multiple potential renters for the same period of time, especially during busy seasons. There are utilitarian considerations from both the owner and the renter sides, such as the fit between one’s budget and the cost of the offering, and the perceived quality and risks of the rental experience. Besides these considerations, foreseeable gain and/or loss in object history value can play a role in the process of owner‒renter mutual selection and negotiation.

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Owner considerations As discussed in the previous section, owners may face the risk of the renter damaging or dampening the history value of the object. However, through meaningful usage, an object can gain history value while being shared and used by others. For example, an Airbnb host describes that one benefit of hosting Airbnb rental is meeting “people who lead thrilling, incredible lives you can’t imagine” and that such experience brings “the world to my home” (Pant 2015). As a shared object being circulated and used by different people, at various times, and for diverse occasions, the history accumulates. Thanks to online platforms that allow owners to track the rental history of the items they share, and record any meaningful experiences shared by renters in their comments, intangible object histories can be tangibilized into words, pictures, and data (Belk 1990) that further strengthen the connection between the object and the history, and facilitate both the storing and extraction of object history value: Proposition 8:  The owner of a shared object is likely to assign higher value to the item after a meaningful use and/or a noteworthy renter. Given the potential for increasing object history value through sharing, the owner of a shared object can actively engage in systematic creation of meanings that add to object history value. For example, consumers find certain experiences “collectable” and are motivated to check off items on an experiential check list and build their “experiential CV” (Keinan and Kivetz 2011). Similarly, an experiential curriculum vitae (CV) can add to object history value. Figueiredo and Scaraboto (2016) documented systematic creation of object history value (referred to as “indexical value”) through circulation, documentation, goal setting and completion through collaboration of participants in a geographically and temporally distant network. The owner of an object in the sharing economy can also choose to systematically create meaningful goals for the object, and select renters based on such goals. For example, the owner of a sports utility vehicle (SUV) can select renters upon their rental request and choose only those who propose to use it for outdoor adventures. This policy will build a consistent stream of object history related to these adventures. Similarly, the owner of a chiffon dress can select renters on Style Lend so that it serves only as a bridesmaid’s dress and collects histories related to the weddings in which it is worn across the vast geographical space it may reach in its lifetime:

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86  Handbook of the sharing economy Proposition 9:  Other things equal, an object whose owner actively manages its usage history (for example, via checklist completion or purpose exclusion) exhibits higher object history value than an object that is not actively managed. Because meaningful usage has the potential to create object history value, owners may be susceptible to potential renters’ negotiations for price reductions in exchange for meaningful usage. Research has shown that owners exhibit lower willingness to accept (that is, lower prices) when selling their possessions if the intended usage of the buyer is appropriate (for example, buying a piano for performing) than when the intended usage is inappropriate (for example, buying a piano for display) (Brough and Isaac 2012). Consumers care about the usage of their possession even after transferring the ownership of the item to another consumer, when from a logical perspective future usage of the object should be irrelevant. This tendency may be even greater when they still own the object that others use in the sharing economy. For example, when an Airbnb host is faced with a choice of renting to a world traveler asking for a “special offer” (that is, lower rent) or an average business traveler willing to pay the full price for the same dates, the potential history value gain might persuade the owner to forgo profit and choose to accommodate the world traveler. This practice may help the owner to build the history value of their possession; however, it might hurt her long-term financial well-being if repeated frequently. If an owner wants to limit financial losses associated with attempts to increase object history value, it might be wise for them to delegate renter selection to an agent who does not own the property, or to an automated system:

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Proposition 10:  The owner of a shared object who is concerned with maximizing object history value is more likely than an owner who is not concerned with object history value to display lower willingness to accept (that is, charge less) to a renter with more meaningful usage than to a renter with less meaningful usage. Proposition 11:  The potential for increasing object history value is more likely to influence an owner’s rental decision than the decision of an agent who manages the shared object on the owner’s behalf. Renter considerations The history of a shared item is usually idiosyncratic. If an object is associated with a positively charged private history, it is likely that the owner values their possession much more highly than a renter who is unaware of such meanings. One way to break an asymmetric valuation is to increase the renters’ appreciation of the history value. Because appraisers need to have knowledge or beliefs about the history of an object to be able make an evaluation of its history value, we propose: Proposition 12:  Renters who have knowledge or beliefs about an object’s connections to positive history attach greater value to the shared object than do renters without such knowledge. Thus, an owner can transfer their knowledge about the connections between the object and its meaningful history to a potential renter, as well as the significance of the history.

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Object history value in the sharing economy  87 For example, the owner of a renovated historic residence can describe the history of the house and its surroundings on Airbnb; the owner of a 1980s Volkswagen camper can detail the restoration history of this vintage vehicle and highlight the trips it has taken in its description on Turo. The knowledge of a shared object’s history not only may increase renters’ willingness to pay, but also may enrich their rental experience. Although renters cannot keep the history value in a shared object, they can experience the history as they form personal connections with the history through the object. Just as collectors of antiques make connections between themselves and the specific times and places where the antiques have been by learning about these objects and time periods (Belk 1990), and tourists transport themselves to a point in history by visiting historic sites (Grayson and Martinec 2004), renters in the sharing economy can gain experiential value by interacting with objects that have histories and learning more about these histories: Proposition 13:  Renters receive higher experiential value when using an object with an identifiable object history than when using an object without an identifiable object history. As stated in the owner section (Proposition 10), a renter’s meaningful usage can potentially increase the history value of the shared object. Therefore, renters who intend to use a shared object in a meaningful way could potentially increase the owner’s gain by informing the owner of their intent:

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Proposition 14:  Renters who intend to use a shared object in a meaningful way may receive a higher discount/lower rent if they communicate meaningful usage intent with the owner than if they do not. Such communication may help the renter get a monetary reward (for example, price reduction) from the owner and increase the total experiential value of the rental activity for both parties.

CONCLUSION To conclude, this chapter introduces object history value as a construct influencing consumers’ valuation of objects. We discuss the features of object history value and differentiate it from other related concepts. Object history plays an important role in the emerging sharing economy, because it influences owners’ and renters’ decisions to join the sharing economy, and their mutual selection and negotiation in the sharing process. We provide a framework to help understand how object history is valued by the owner and potential renters of an object, and how the interactions between various actors and the object contribute to the further creation of new object history. Conceptually, this work provides an overarching framework to account for previously loosely connected concepts, theories, and findings in the consumer culture theory and consumer psychology literature. We also discuss some testable propositions derived from the theoretical framework.

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88  Handbook of the sharing economy This chapter also provides sharing platform developers, sharing offering providers (owners), and renters with a new way to consider the trade-offs they make in the sharing economy, and to develop actionable strategies to increase total consumer surplus and grow the sharing markets. Understanding the long-lasting value of meaningful object history, consumers can make informed decisions regarding when to rent shared objects and when to buy, or what items they are willing to share with others and how to prepare for sharing. Sharing platforms, understanding owners’ attachment to their possessions due to history value, can increase supply by encouraging owners to remove and preserve personal history cues from sharable objects (for example, rooms, cars). Facing the problem of asymmetric valuations of idiosyncratic offerings, owners can communicate the private history associated with their possessions to potential renters to gain appreciation and higher valuation of their offerings from the renters. Given that renters’ meaningful usage of an object can also increase the owner’s valuation of the item, mindful renters can potentially get discounts from owners who wish to nurture the history value of their possessions. The practical implications of object history value as discussed herein are limited by the conceptual nature of the present work. However, we hope the propositions advanced here will serve as a springboard for future empirical testing of our theoretical framework and novel insights into the dynamics of the sharing economy.

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8.  Guest, friend or colleague? Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces* Adèle Gruen and Laetitia Mimoun

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INTRODUCTION The sharing economy is not restricted to consumption-centered activities such as accommodation (for example, Airbnb) or transportation (for example, Zipcar): it also affects how and where we work. Coworking spaces are an example of collaborative, access-based workplaces. Their number is growing fast, reaching more than 13 000 spaces worldwide in 2017 (Deskmag 2017). In the United States (US) and the European Union EU-15 (that is, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), between 20 and 30 percent of the working-age population works on flexible and independent jobs (McKinsey & Co. 2016). Digital platforms such as Upwork (freelancing) and Etsy (craft ecommerce) accelerate this trend by offering large-scale gig work opportunities. Collaborative workplaces answer the need of flexible workers for a place to work and socialize (Gandini 2015). These places signal creativity, innovation, and community, and aim to free workers from traditional offices’ constraints (Gandini 2015; Spinuzzi 2012). However, the term “collaborative” implies joint work, in contradiction with the access-based model of these places where gig workers typically work on separate projects. Moreover, gig work has been criticized for being exploitative and illegal, as companies deprive workers from all the employee-associated benefits (Eisenbrey and Mishel 2016; Schor and Attwood-Charles 2017). This chapter questions the legitimacy of the “co-” designation and interrogates the nature of the exchanges and relationships occurring in different types of collaborative workplaces. We carried out ethnographic fieldwork in two types of collaborative spaces in Paris and London: coworking and cohoming. While coworking is organized by service providers in usually stable commercial settings, cohoming is organized by individuals in their private homes on a day-to-day basis. Comparing the two spaces’ structures, activities, and relationships, we find that cohoming does not foster deep relationships (that is, strong links, intimacy, rich interactions) despite its embeddedness in the sphere of home and hospitality. Surprisingly, deep relationships emerge frequently in coworking, a more market-based workplace. While there has been an increasing interest in collaborative workplaces, existing research has tended to treat them as a homogeneous phenomenon, assuming collaboration and strong networks to be common within such places. We contribute to the existing literature on the sharing economy by clarifying the exchange and relationship dynamics which exist within different types of collaborative workplaces. *  The authors are presented in alphabetical order.

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92  Handbook of the sharing economy In this chapter we first review prior knowledge differentiating collaborative workplaces from traditional offices, and compare market and social exchanges. Next, we introduce the cohoming and coworking contexts and present our methodology. Finally, we report our findings and discuss their implications for understanding work within the sharing economy.

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COLLABORATIVE WORKPLACES Work and work practices in the gig economy are more flexible and fluid than in the “traditional” economy. Organizations, often (digital) platforms, connect clients and consumers to freelance workers (Langley and Leyshon 2017), who rely on project-based and gig work (Friedman 2014) for income. Entrepreneurs and freelancers embrace flexible working conditions, taking advantage of their cultural capital and reputation to find short-term, project-based jobs (Gandini 2015). New ways of working often hide low-paid, sometimes illegal jobs that lack social security (Eisenbrey and Mishel 2016; Schor and AttwoodCharles 2017), despite a celebratory discourse around entrepreneurship (for instance, when the French President expressed his dream of France becoming a “start-up nation”). Collaborative spaces are access-based workplaces used by entrepreneurs, freelancers, start-uppers, and, more recently, by larger organizations (RGCS 2017) as an alternative to renting offices and signing constraining long-term leases. They use the prefix “co-” to emphasize the social connections they provide. “Co-” comes from the Latin cum (with), which indicates an idea of support (Gaffiot 2000) and joined activity (Collins 1979/2012); collaborative means co-labor, working with. According to this view, consumers of collaborative spaces would not merely seek a place to work, but a place to work with others. Yet, users seem to seek the company of other independent workers: the top three motivations to join a collaborative space are “a social and enjoyable atmosphere” (59% of users), “interactions with others” (56%), and “a community” (55%) (Deskmag 2017). These spaces lessen the isolation of independent workers (King 2017), providing them with a sense of community and blurring the boundaries between work and home and between colleagues and friends (Merkel 2015). Collaborative spaces are usually designed in such a way as to facilitate social interactions (Gruen 2017). Yet, these are spaces where individuals work “alone, together” (Spinuzzi 2012): the comma emphasizes the divide between the will of being with others and the nature of independent work. There is a plethora of collaborative spaces, such as coworking spaces, fablabs, makerspaces, cohomings, hackspaces, and colivings, which differ in their offering, location, and goals. In coworking, consumers (usually) pay a monthly fee and are provided with desks and office facilities (printers, coffee, and so on). Coworking spaces motivate their members to interact and provide fertile ground for serendipitous connections (Moriset 2013). In cohoming, a homeowner opens their home to independent workers who, in exchange for a small fee, use it as a workplace. Users are given a seat at the owner’s table and access to basic amenities (that is, electricity, Wi-Fi, coffee/tea, bathroom and kitchen facilities). Cohoming is a rising phenomenon, with 8000 cohomers registered on CoHome in France (reported on CoHome’s website, September 2017) and recent platforms opening worldwide, such as Kitchin Table (https://www.kitchintable.com). The cohoming movement emerged in France as a critique of coworking, and was launched by independent

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Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces  93 workers who found coworking spaces expensive and overly commercial. They decided to open their homes to organize “pop-up” (that is, temporary and somewhat spontaneous) collaborative spaces on a day-to-day basis. They did not want to bear the cost of coworking and needed an alternative to working alone at home. From these pop-up experiments arose a more structured organization.

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THE DYNAMICS OF MARKET VERSUS SOCIAL EXCHANGE Prior literature on the sharing economy distinguishes market-mediated access-based consumption, a form of economic exchange embedded in utilitarian motivations and market norms, from non-market-mediated access-based consumption (or sharing; Belk 2010) which is “embedded in social relationships and governed by community norms” (Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016, 221). In practice, the logics at play in the sharing economy are often overlapping and confusing, creating misunderstanding and conflicts among market actors (Arcidiacono et al. 2018). The coexistence of contradictory market logics (dictated by profit-making and capitalism) and non-market logics (underlined by idealism and altruism) maintains the field’s flexibility, its fluid boundaries, and its inclusiveness to varied actors (Arvidsson 2018; Laurell and Sandström 2017). Two other chapters within this Handbook also contribute to our understanding of how such paradoxical interactions of market and social logics shape the sharing economy. In Chapter 15, von Richthofen and Fischer explore how Airbnb manages to navigate the logics of competition and profitability while preserving the framing of hominess and hospitality. In a related conversation, Dalli and Fortezza (Chapter 10) illuminate the overlap of market and social exchange logics within online barter communities. Barter users motivated by the maximization of economic value intermingle with users inspired by norms of kindness and trust. Actors of the sharing economy legitimate their choice of an alternative to classical market exchange by deploying discourses and motives embedded in the logics of social exchange (Arvidsson 2018). For instance, Ouishare, a sharing economy think-tank, epitomizes this approach in its mission statement: “Our mission is to build and nurture a collaborative society by connecting people, organizations and ideas around fairness, openness and trust” (Ouishare n.d.). Behind this celebratory and idealistic discourse, instrumental motives are widespread among actors of the sharing economy. For instance, Zipcar’s consumers seem to be driven by instrumental rationality and self-interest, rather than ideological beliefs (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). Eckhardt and Bardhi (2016) argue that the sharing economy might foster a “commodification of time and space,” leading to a sense of alienation rather than of community. The sharing economy is increasingly becoming an arena of economic competition for companies in search of maximum profitability (Martin 2016). It has also been a source of polemics, protests, and lawsuits from critics who believe that the sharing economy growth mostly relies on its lack of regulation and taxation (Hill 2015). To summarize, sharing economy exchanges generally include a price (money, time, or data) despite being framed as a space for collaboration and social exchange. This contradiction is a source of heated political debates and misalignments among consumers and marketers. This chapter contributes to this discussion by showing how collaborative

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94  Handbook of the sharing economy workplaces operationalize these contradicting logics and the implications this has on work practices.

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METHOD To answer our research question, we relied primarily on ethnographic fieldwork in cohoming and coworking spaces in Paris (France) and London (United Kingdom), where collaborative spaces are numerous, varied, and well attended. We followed established ethnography guidelines in the field (Arnould and Price 1993; Arnould and Wallendorf 1994). Data collection extended between January 2015 and January 2018, with each researcher focusing on one type of collaborative space. We engaged in prolonged participant observation, documented with fieldnotes, interviews with users and managers, and photographs, respectively in three coworking spaces in Paris and five in London, as well as in eight cohoming homes in Paris. This number allowed for a diversity of workplaces to be observed and for saturation to be reached. Access was gained through social media and personal connections. The researchers’ identity was disclosed to participants. Overall, we collected 530 photographs and 172 double-spaced pages of fieldnotes. During observations, we paid attention to how work took place around us (recorded any meetings, phone calls, business chitchat) as well as personal interactions and intimate connections (disclosure of personal information, non-work activities and discussion, activities outside of the workspace). This dataset was complemented by social media and mainstream press data. Netnographic data from the social media communities surrounding our field sites (Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Twitter accounts of both cohoming and coworking communities) helped us to acquire a complete view of the sociocultural interactions occurring. We collected newsletters from both collaborative spaces, as well as newspaper and blog articles discussing collaborative spaces from the French and British mainstream and specialized press (n = 124). We used these articles to contextualize collaborative workplaces in marketplace and media discourses. We also familiarized ourselves with emic language and practices, thus enhancing our ability to relate to participants and to interpret their behavior and discourse. Interviews and media data helped the researchers to overcome the problematic tendency to focus on what is easiest to observe. The dataset was analyzed using the interpretive hermeneutical approach (Thompson 1997). We iteratively moved between the data, the literature, and our emerging framework to develop our interpretation (Miles and Huberman 1994; Spiggle 1994). As co-authors, we were both deeply involved in the data analysis. We came together to compare the two types of collaborative workplaces, informed by an initial individual analysis of our respective sites. We focused on structures (for example, space design, organizational structures), relationships (for example, host‒guest, customers‒company, guest‒guest relationships), and activities (for example, routines, disruptions) within the collaborative spaces. Through brainstorming and discussion, we iteratively developed an architecture of collaborative workplaces. As our research question focuses on the notion of “co-”, we classified activities based on the amount of co- involved, designing a typology of co- activities.

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Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces  95 Table 8.1  Comparing coworking and cohoming Coworking

Cohoming Beside

Breaks and lunch

Majority of work: beside Group work and events: necessarily together With or without

Social activities

Necessarily together

Activities Work

Structural elements Staff Working hours Material organization Payment system Relationships Hospitality Friendship Commercial Professional

Breaks: with or without Lunch: necessarily together Limited

Present; involved guidance Up to 24/7; flexible Strategic, somewhat stable, and homey design Daily or monthly; high fee (several hundred euros/pounds monthly)

At-distance; lax guidance Business hours; predetermined Variable and unpredictable design

Only in discourse: not a home Frequent friendships Explicit service provider Moderate: support, help, and social networking

Real home: hospitality norms Rarely beyond acquaintances Implicit service exchange Minimal: not beyond some social networking

Minimized; compensation (€3–9/ day)

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FINDINGS Our findings are divided into two parts and summarized in Table 8.1. First, we develop a typology of co- activities within collaborative workplaces and expand on the nature of the work and leisure activities in each space. Next, we discuss the modes of exchange and the relationships emerging in both collaborative workplaces and show how the structures and norms of cohoming and coworking influence these relationships. The Co- Spectrum of Activities We derived a spectrum of co- activities from our analysis of workers’ consumption and work practices in collaborative workplaces (Figure 8.1). Unlike in traditional offices, such co- activities take place between individuals who chose to share the same workplace but do not work for the same company. We classify activities into three categories: “beside” (carrying separate activities next to each other), “with or without” (can be carried out with others, but it is not a necessary condition), and “necessarily together” (must be carried out with others). Not all activities involving some co- are defined as collaborative. From the definition of collaboration as “the cooperative way that two or more entities work together toward a shared goal” (Frey et al. 2006, 384), we identify collaboration in collaborative workplaces as “necessarily together” activities involving work.

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96  Handbook of the sharing economy

Beside Co- is almost non-existent

With or Without Co- is not necessary

Necessarily together Essentially co-

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Figure 8.1  The co- spectrum of activities In cohoming and coworking, we found the main “beside” activity to be similar: working on a laptop. It is a priority for collaborative workplaces to preserve productivity by giving users the possibility to focus on their own work without being distracted by others. Damini (early thirties, freelance wedding planner), for example, reviews: “Great cohoming with Thomas! A productive day punctuated by some very pleasant breaks” (netnographic data). Moreover, the coffee breaks are “with or without” activity in both collaborative workplaces. Chatting next to the coffee machine is a good way to meet other coworkers and hot desk neighbors (fieldnotes). In cohoming, sharing the break with others is optional. Yet, because the host suggests it, most cohomers will abandon their computers to share a hot drink or a snack. There are striking differences between the two workplaces in terms of co- activities. Activities necessarily done with others are the lunch and morning arrival in cohoming, and group work and events in coworking. Cohomers’ arrival transforms strangers into guests via the introduction, morning coffee ritual. Claude, a thirty-something cohomer, likes “not to be alone at home, to be able to share moments, especially at lunch and [in] the morning when people arrive, when we exchange a bit about our lives” (interview). Lunch is also compulsory: it requires the host’s impetus since cohoming occurs at their home. All cohomers are expected to share this moment of exchange and conviviality. Skipping lunch is frowned upon. It may happen, but advance notice and apologies are expected. To the contrary, lunch is a “with or without” activity in coworking: there is no obligation to join anyone for lunch. The most co- activities in cohoming are thus related to hospitality. These are activities where cohomers fall back in their respective roles of hosts and guests, sharing the conviviality of someone’s intimate residence. Group work and events are the main “necessarily together” activities in coworking. Work-related group activities encompass meetings and brainstorms, where sometimes coworkers get together to help a fellow coworker solve a challenge. Such (optional) supportive meetings are moments where coworkers are actually co-working, that is, working together. Other “necessarily together” co- activities are main events occurring in the auditorium or lobby: to celebrate a member’s success, pitch new projects, or advertise new products (Figure 8.2). Leisure activities comprise of weekly members’ breakfasts, drinks, and yoga classes, monthly movies, and occasional events such as a “learn-to-make-acocktail” workshop (fieldnotes, interviews). Coworkers attend these leisure activities to learn about others’ projects, get inspired, and network. These leisure activities, which are legion in coworking, are social but also instrumental:

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Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces  97

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Source:  @Sensespaceparis (2016), https://twitter.com/sensespaceparis/status/715508244458905601.

Figure 8.2  Organized social event: coworking in Paris (netnographic data) Everyone has a drink and it’s a nice way to get people to chat. Because it’s not always easy to go over and say hi to someone . . . Knowing who else is in the building is quite good, just being able to know if there is a company who does this or that, and you never know what’s going to happen in the future when you might need that. (Ian, business owner, London, interview)

Non-work activities, such as the members’ evening drinks, help coworkers to know who is who in the space. Later, this information can be used for business purposes. In coworking, activities with the most co- are organized by the managers and directly or indirectly favor work (for example, Figure 8.2: an evening party organized both for socialization but also to share entrepreneurial skills). Overall, we observed that collaboration, that is, “necessarily together” activities involving work, take place in coworking but not in cohoming, where “necessarily together” activities involve norms of hospitality. In the next section, we review the types of relationships and the modes of exchange that each collaborative workplace, coworking and cohoming, creates. We unpack how friendly, hospitable, commercial, and professional relationship norms occur in both workplaces.

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98  Handbook of the sharing economy The types of relationships taking place are heavily influenced by the dynamics of collaboration previously identified, and by the workplace structure. Cohoming Relationship and Exchange Dynamics

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In cohoming, hosts and guests work together in the host’s living room for the day. This physical and spatial proximity led us to expect high levels of informality and intimacy. The home is the canonical space for family and intimacy (Rybczynski 1986). Working on a dinner table, chatting with cohomers in the familial kitchen as the host prepares coffee, taking a call in a bedroom: cohoming seems to merge work and life. What struck us is that, despite the informal home setting, the relationships between cohomers remained relatively formal. Both professional and non-professional topics were discussed during breaks, but no intimacy—that is, closeness and mutual confiding—seemed to build up. No friendships developed, but neither were the relationships entirely transactional. Even though cohoming relies on a monetary exchange, the monetary element is perceived as a compensation for utilities rather than a remuneration. The price is low (averaging €4 per day, capped at €9) and rarely mentioned, as it is distanced spatially (online, not in the home) and temporally (not during the cohoming session). In this section, we uncover how such an informal setting can lead to formal relationships. The role of structural elements A first explanation can be derived from the structural elements which shape cohoming (Table 8.1). First, cohoming structures are unstable, as cohomers meet within random and constantly changing environments. Cohoming structures are highly variable and spontaneous, and most cohomers are independent workers with unpredictable schedules. Moreover, in cohoming, the 9 am to 6 pm working day is recreated following predetermined hours set by the host. This seemed to limit out-of-work interactions, development of intimacy, and personal connections among cohomers. Yet, many participants reflect that such time limits—which might seem inflexible compared to the necessities of flexible work—tend to positively affect their productivity. This is in contrast with the no-limit time they tend to waste away at home (fieldnotes). Cohoming relies on an intrusion into private spheres as the home is transformed for a day. The home ceases to be a fully private space dedicated to intimacy and close connections: it welcomes foreigners and outsiders, becoming public by contamination (Figure 8.3). However, the workspace is turned back into a home at the end of the day and is, therefore, less adapted to the multiplicity of tasks related to entrepreneurship or projectbased work. For instance, the living room was the main working space and the host’s permission was asked to use bedrooms for phone calls and private moments (fieldnotes; Figure 8.4). The material organization of the space thus cannot be as flexible and suited to flexible working needs as with coworking. Despite the “necessarily together” lunch and coffee, the lack of shared leisure space also limits the development of spontaneous social bounds. The role of hospitality norms The structural elements (that is, the existence of a host and guests, the monetary elements, the predetermined hours) and the structure of co- activities (that is, the “necessarily

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Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces  99

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Figure 8.3  Opening the home as a workspace: cohoming in Paris together” lunch; the “beside” work activities) of cohoming foster relationships are based on hospitality norms, which are activated despite the latent business and commercial interactions. According to Grayson (1998), when service interactions take place in a home, three forces shape a consensus about which social rules should be deployed: what the marketer wants, what the customers want, and what the social world will allow. At cohoming, the “real” marketer (the company CoHome) is absent and gives little guidance. Moreover, the home’s environment is visible (sofa, kitchen appliances, family pictures, children’s toys, and so on). Cohomers appreciate the warm and unique atmosphere produced by a home, which they distinguish from the supposedly contrived and uniform atmosphere of coworking spaces (netnographic notes). They are aware of the “home” nature of their current work environment and, thus, rely on the social consensus of the home (see Grayson 1998). The importance of the norms of hospitality over social and commercial rules is highly visible in the politeness and permission-asking characteristic of cohomers’ interactions. For instance, one of the authors attended a cohoming session hosted by Damini with two other cohomers, Meena (mid-thirties, entrepreneur) and Tabitha (early forties, freelance wellness coach). While the three guests did not know each other, they had all already cohomed at least once at Damini’s in the previous months. Nevertheless, Damini repeated all the usual invitations and permissions at the beginning of the day (for example, where

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100  Handbook of the sharing economy

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Figure 8.4  T  aking a professional call in a bedroom after asking permission: cohoming in Paris to find the bathroom; that the bedroom could be used for a call—Figure 8.4—and so on). Despite this, Tabitha asked for permission when she had to make a call or when she needed cutlery for lunch. Meena asked, “Your bathroom is there, right?” before using the bathroom (fieldnotes). The cohomers and their host were not interacting as customers who purchased a service from a provider, nor as friends comfortable with each other. Neither were they colleagues or co-workers: as our spectrum shows, no collaboration is taking place. Rather, Damini remained the host and cared for the guests present in her home. She brought water and poured drinks and offered cookies for the break (fieldnotes). The cohomers remained guests, respecting Damini’s control and not taking any initiative (Figure 8.4). Interestingly, cohomers did not seem bothered by having to ask for permission and being restricted in their use of the space (for example, predetermined business hours). Conversely, this was perceived as fostering a respectful and familial atmosphere. According to participants, such an atmosphere is lacking from coworking spaces, which they find too “commercial” (netnographic notes, interviews). This homey atmosphere seemed to be an essential reason why cohomers continue to regularly use this type of workplace. Despite the increasing commercialization of homes through services such as Airbnb (home-based accommodation renting) and Eatwith (home-based restaurant service), the

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Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces  101 social consensus which naturally emerges in the home is one of hospitality rather than one of business exchange or friendship. Therefore, cohomers are bluntly conscious that the space they are using is not their office, nor their workspace. These are not spaces that facilitate flexible work practices such as the need to create bonds with other independent workers, to conduct group meetings or phone calls, or to have adaptable working hours. Therefore, we expect the feeling of perceived ownership over the workspace to be lower than in coworking, which is more likely to be identified by users as “their” office space. Let us explore why. Coworking Relationship and Exchange Dynamics: A Home without Hospitality Norms? Coworking spaces are not primarily governed by rules of hospitality. Rather, they are commercial spaces: coworkers pay a consequent fee (from €180 up to several hundred euros per month) and are customers of the workspace. They often go to the managers, who are salaried employees, to help them with the facilities, to learn about future events, to connect with other members, and sometimes to lodge complaints. Interestingly, despite this customer‒service provider relationship, we were surprised to see that the dominant discourse of both customers and managers regarding coworking is one of hominess and family (fieldnotes and interviews). Members often talk about managers as the “mums” and “dads” of the space (Merkel 2015). Both managers and members have referred to the coworking space as their homes (fieldnotes), like Mindy, a membership manager in a coworking space in London:

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Well it’s like my home. And so I’m cleaning because, you know, I do not want guests to come in the space and see it’s a mess. I want them to see it and think it’s lovely and nice. And so I think I treat it like my home and I think that everyone who works here feels that way. (Mindy, coworking membership manager, interview)

Mindy refers to the coworking space as her home, believes that members feel the same, and refers to visitors as guests. One global coworking organization’s tagline reads: “Welcome home. Oops . . . We meant welcome to work” (fieldnotes, London). In addition, coworking spaces are designed to offer many different spaces, which are adapted to the needs of flexible work. This allows for “necessarily together” work (meeting rooms, phone booths), “beside” work (hotdesking, working booth), “with or without,” casual work conversations (large shared desks, sofa corner, library space, kitchen tables), and even “with or without” non-work, purely relaxing and playing activities (napping room, small garden, games room). Wooden materials, dim lights, and sofas are common, creating homeyness (see McCracken 1989). Coworkers report feeling at home because they are free to use the space in a flexible way and because they experience a sense of belonging to a community (interviews). As such, the relationships developed between coworking spaces’ members, as well as between managers and members, tend to be embedded in intimacy: coworkers disclose personal information, make friends, and tend to see each other outside of the collaborative space (fieldnotes). Three reasons seem to explain this. First, friendships develop during the numerous occasions when members can meet other members, do activities together, and help each other. The various leisure (for example, yoga classes, creative workshops) and work (for example, brainstorming, pitching days) “necessarily together” activities to which ­ coworkers

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102  Handbook of the sharing economy ­ articipate on a daily basis create a fun, informal atmosphere and foster interactions p (fieldnotes). This is promoted by staff members who encourage collective routines, such as weekly breakfasts (fieldnotes). Further, the extended working hours, often including 24/7 access, allow for more flexibility and encourage further social interactions (sharing late dinner, and so on). All these elements and co-activities create friendships or close bonds between coworkers. Coworking users explain how this flexibility contributes to their feeling that coworking has a dual functionality, part workspace, part living quarters, where coworkers organize parties and have casual drinks in the evening (user interviews). The second reason that explains such high levels of informality in coworking is that coworkers, who are often start-uppers or freelancers, are eager to connect with other members to expand their professional network (Wittel 2001). Coworking organizations promote connections between members, often introducing potential business partners and putting special networking events in place (fieldnotes and manager interviews). Temporality appears to be the third reason why the bonds are more intimate than in cohoming. In coworking, members spend their days working side by side, sometimes together, in the same space. The staff and regular coworkers provide a core of users who engage in frequent, repeated interactions in the same physical space. As they work beside one another, they are not, as in cohoming, strangers in a public library. They chat, joke, and have a drink together. Many times, we encountered coworkers who were also flatmates or who went on holidays together. In most cases observed, there seem to be a deeper bond between coworking members than between cohomers. Of course, this does not hold for all coworkers, as some may only come to the coworking space for a day or a week.

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CONCLUSION To sum up, coworking tends to foster more intimate, informal relationships thanks to organized “necessarily together” co- activities, which lead to friendships (co- leisure activities) and professional relationships (collaboration). These social relationships are embedded in discourses on community, family, and hominess. Cohoming fosters hospitality rules where the user is a guest in the host’s home, as represented by the “necessarily together” lunch which is orchestrated by the host. Work relationships are more comparable to that of strangers or library users and restricted to “beside” activities. Thus, coworking, which is closer to an office in its nature, is more favorable to collaboration (that is, “necessarily together” work activities) than cohoming. Cohoming, even if it opens the intimacy of the home and its associated hospitality and friendship norms, seems to be often restrained to more impersonal and formal relationships. The instability of the group and the unpredictability of cohoming, which is constantly redefined and reorganized at each cohoming session, seem to prevent the development of intimacy. It should be noted that coworkers and cohomers are generally satisfied with their respective workplace, finding the rigidity or flexibility of the experience to suit their needs. We find that non-market logics do not always facilitate non-commercial and intimate relationships and collaborative activities. Counterintuitively, our data reveal that coworking, which resides further in the commercial sphere from a structural viewpoint, enables much more social-exchange relationships and friendships than cohoming, even if the latter is structurally inscribed in the spheres of intimacy and socialization. We

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Unpacking relationship norms in collaborative workplaces  103 observe that, in the absence of explicit norms, consumers in the sharing economy do not necessarily abide by the prototypical familial norms (see Belk 2010), but rather, in this case, on the much stricter norms of hospitality. It appears that hospitality rules, which dominate in the home, rigidify and constrain the social and work interactions taking place in cohoming. Therefore, friendships and “necessarily together” work activities rarely emerge in cohoming, which lacks the purposefulness and involvement of coworking’s structural elements. Collaborative workplaces often brand themselves with reference to a variety of alternative spheres, including the home, the family, and the playground, as they strive to differentiate themselves from traditional offices and contractual exchanges. Our findings indicate that collaborative workplaces’ managers must be careful in their structural and branding choices when using the home’s imagery, as fostering hospitality and guest‒host relationships might be counterproductive when collaborative work and social exchange are desired. Moreover, our comparison of collaborative spaces reinforces the idea that very little co-labor (that is, co-work) happens in such workplaces (Spinuzzi 2012). These findings challenge the use of the label “co-” and the image it sends to users of collaborative spaces. In fact, accounting only for the amount of collaborative work, it is likely that traditional offices, where members of the same company work and mingle, are more collaborative. Nevertheless, co- workplaces are also collaborative in that they foster the blurring of boundaries between work and leisure, friends and colleagues, and production and consumption. We focused our study on commercial coworking spaces and cohoming, but other spaces, such as community centers and some hackerspaces, could be an avenue for future research as they might display higher levels of collaboration. Coworking and cohoming are labelled as co- because, at least for a day, strangers share a lunch and a workspace and work/consume together. The structural elements and the norms they foster encourage a form of intimacy and a type of social exchange which the independent workers of the gig economy otherwise miss. Consequently, collaborative workplaces have a degree of legitimacy in their co- labels and can benefit consumers’ well-being in reducing the isolation and loneliness otherwise associated with such lifestyles (Petriglieri et al. 2018).

REFERENCES Arcidiacono, Davide, Alessandro Gandini, and Ivana Pais (2018), “Sharing What? The ‘Sharing Economy’ in the Sociological Debate,” Sociological Review, 66 (2), 275‒88. Arnould, Eric J. and Linda M. Price (1993), “River Magic: Extraordinary Experience and the Extended Service Encounter,” Journal of Consumer Research, 20 (1), 24‒45. Arnould, Eric J. and Melanie Wallendorf (1994), “Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation,” Journal of Marketing Research, 4 (November), 484‒504. Arvidsson, Adam (2018), “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy,” Sociological Review, 66 (2), 289–301. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881–98. Belk, Russell W. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 715‒34. Collins, Williams (1979/2012), Collins English Dictionary: Complete and Unabridged, Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers. Deskmag (2017), “The 2017 Global Coworking Survey,” http://www.deskmag.com/en/background-of-the-2017-glo​ bal-coworking-survey.

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104  Handbook of the sharing economy Eckhardt, Giana M. and Fleura Bardhi (2016), “The Relationship between Access Practices and Economic Systems,” Journal of the Association of Consumer Research, 1 (2), 210‒25. Eisenbrey, Ross and Lawrence Mishel (2016), Uber Business Model Does Not Justify a New “Independent Worker” Category, Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/uber-businessmodeldoes​-not-justify-a-new-independent-worker-category. Frey, Bruce B., Jill H. Lohmeier, Stephen W. Lee, and Nona Tollefson (2006), “Measuring Collaboration Among Grant Partners,” American Journal of Evaluation, 27 (3), 383‒92. Friedman, Gerald (2014), “Workers Without Employers: Shadow Corporations and the Rise of the Gigeconomy,” Review of Keynesian Economics, 2 (2), 171‒88. Gaffiot, Félix (2000), Le Gaffiot Dictionnaire Latin-Français: Nouvelle Edition, Paris: Hachette. Gandini, Alessandro (2015), “The Rise of Coworking Spaces: A Literature Review,” Ephemera, 15 (1), 193‒205. Grayson, Kent (1998), “Commercial Activity at Home: Managing the Private Servicescape,” in Servicescapes: The Concept of Place in Contemporary Markets, ed. John F. Sherry Jr, Chicago, IL: NTC Business Books, 455‒81. Gruen, Adèle (2017), “Understanding Consumer Appropriation in Access-Based Consumption as the Creation of Meanings: An Investigation Through Design,” Doctoral dissertation, Paris Sciences et Lettres. Hill, Steven (2015), Raw Deal: How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers, New York: St Martin’s Press. King, Steve (2017), “Coworking is not About Workspace—It’s About Feeling Less Lonely,”Harvard Business Review, December 28, https://hbr.org/2017/12/coworking-is-not-about-workspace-its-about-feeling-less-lonely. Langley, Paul and Andrew Leyshon (2017), “Platform Capitalism: The Intermediation and Capitalisation of Digital Economic Circulation,” Finance and Society, 3 (1), 11‒31. Laurell, Christofer and Christian Sandström (2017), “The Sharing Economy in Social Media: Analyzing Tensions Between Market and Non-Market Logics,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 58–65. McCracken, Grant (1989), “‘Homeyness’ a Cultural Account of one Constellation of Consumer Goods and Meanings,” in SV—Interpretive Consumer Research, ed. Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 168‒83. McKinsey & Co. (2016), Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy, New York: McKinsey Global Institute. Martin, Chris J. (2016), “The Sharing Economy: A Pathway to Sustainability or a Nightmarish Form of Neoliberal Capitalism?” Ecological Economics, 121, 149‒59. Merkel, Janet (2015), “Coworking in the City,” Ephemera, 15 (1), 121. Miles, Matthew B. and A. Michael Huberman (1994), Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Moriset, Bruno (2013), “Building New Places of the Creative Economy: The Rise of Coworking Spaces,” 2nd Geography of Innovation International Conference, Utrecht, January 23‒25. Ouishare (n.d.), “Our DNA,” https://www.ouishare.net/our-dna (accessed April 18, 2018). Petriglieri, Gianpiero, Susan J. Ashford, and Amy Wrzesniewski (2018), “Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities,” Administrative Sciences Quarterly, 64 (1), 124‒70. RGCS (Research Group on Collaborative Spaces) (2017), “Coworkers, Makers and Hackers in the City: Reinventing Policies, Corporate Strategies and Citizenship?” White Paper. Rybczynski, Witold (1986), Home: A Short History of an Idea (Vol. 10), New York: Viking. Schor, Juliet B. and William Attwood-Charles (2017), “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Labor, Inequality, and Social Connection on For-Profit Platforms,” Sociology Compass, 11 (8), https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12493. Spiggle, Susan (1994), “Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data in Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research, 21 (3), 491‒503. Spinuzzi, Clay (2012), “Working Alone Together: Coworking as Emergent Collaborative Activity,” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 26 (4), 399‒441. Thompson, Craig J. (1997), “Interpreting Consumers: A Hermeneutical Framework for Deriving Marketing Insights from the Texts of Consumers’ Consumption Stories,” Journal of Marketing Research, 34 (4), 438‒55. Wittel, Andreas (2001), “Toward a Network Sociality,” Theory, Culture and Society, 18 (6), 51‒76.

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9.  Designing the economics of the sharing economy: towards sustainable management* 4

Ann Light

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION The sharing economy joins a long history of mechanisms for determining value and managing goods. Society has flourished on formal trading contracts but also subtle forms of exchange and collaboration based on social negotiation (Belk 2007; Benkler 2004). The trend to regard humans as rational economic actors has treated the financial economy and other economies of resource management as distinct. Yet, as Marçal (2015) and others argue, markets are able to exist only because of domestic economies of care. With the sharing economy, these macro- and microeconomies meet in new relations. These relations can be structured along with individual services (Sharp 2018). United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1981) once starkly addressed the manipulation possible, saying: “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.” The examples below try to change how people feel about owning things. They show design decisions being taken in using digital brokering for sustainable economic activities. Digital networks make connections between “the many and the many” (Murray et al. 2009), allowing scaling of digital systems globally through distributed participants. According to Jegou and Manzini (2008), platforms involve “a system of material and immaterial elements (such as technologies, infrastructures, legal framework and modes of governance and policy making).” Digital platforms can act as brokers using algorithms that handle vetting, matchmaking, data aggregation, pricing and other decisions. They can change their criteria and evolve fast in response to new technical opportunities, usage patterns and legal and regulatory issues. Digital micro-payments on an industrial scale are possible, meaning interactions can be monetized. They need few staff; a small workforce can maintain a global presence. All these qualities change socio-technical-economic relations. The following chapter draws its orientation from design research, investigating the conceptualization, production and/or use of socio-technical artifacts in order to understand better how to optimize them. Analysis of design here focuses on systems, not the specifics of interface, interaction or graphics, while noting that these also contribute to the uptake of platforms. It looks at—and beyond—the design of individual tools to explore global network effects and how the introduction of platforms might support socio-economic change. In particular, it discusses two case studies that concern the economics of *  Data collection information: the author conducted all of the fieldwork and interviewing herself between fall 2008 and fall 2018, supplemented by more general data collection on sharing practices by a research fellow based at Northumbria University, UK (fall 2013 to spring 2014), where the author was faculty at the time. The analysis is the author’s own, conducted at the University of Sussex, UK.

105

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106  Handbook of the sharing economy s­ ustainability, where platform founders have an interest in resource management, beyond making money to distributing tangible goods. What is offered, then, is a demonstration of the relationship between different decisions in the design of platforms to show, practically, the politics of economies in embodied form.

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DESIGNING ECONOMIES At the macro level, the economy has become synonymous with the market, a global system of trade. The very argument that this should run its course without centralized management (Hayek 1978) is a design intervention leading to state policies that protect the freedom of the market rather than intervene in it. This neoliberal form of economics obscures the politics of resource management, implying that economics is beyond designing. Noting this political failure and its ecological consequences, economist Raworth (2017) asks a foundational design question: “what are economies for?” Her answer includes moving the economic paradigm towards planetary sustainability and a model of value that recognizes domestic work and the collaborative economy (ibid.). Her invoking of Ostrom’s commons links her with the economics of sharing at its most benign (Bradley and Pargman 2017) and resource management systems that espouse values as well as value. In looking at individual markets, Roth (2007) also notes the need to understand purpose and focus on specifics: “Market design turns out to be about details, such as the nature of the transactions.” In the interaction design literature, Lampinen and Brown (2017) operationalize Roth’s insights (Vulkan et al. 2013) for the sharing economy in the design of digital marketplaces to “fulfill function while being effective and enjoyable” (Lampinen and Brown 2017), stressing the need for sufficient take-up to make them useful (“thickness”). However, Raworth’s question is broader, going to the heart of designing resource allocation. Markets are only one form of economy. Resource management platforms can bring new markets into being, or replace markets with other forms of interaction. Benkler (2004) juxtaposes the crisp interactions of markets with the more contextually rich activity of sharing, which he classes as a social exchange mechanism. Market transactions require precise information on actions, goods, and obligations, and greater precision of monitoring and enforcement than social exchange systems (ibid., 317), which rely on nuance and tacit and culturally reproduced capacities to interpret social settings (ibid., 317). These paradigms of resource management exist as alternatives, yet Light and Briggs (2017) demonstrate that, depending on configuration, platforms can influence as well as respond to culture round them. And Belk (2017) discusses how materialism might be addressed by engagement in sharing economy activities. Platforms can change how people think about managing resources as well as how they exchange money and goods. The platforms featured in the case studies were designed to be viable, functional and effective, but also purposeful in this extra sense: to drive change in the everyday management of tangible goods. Macroeconomics and microeconomies meet in this ambition for both platform viability and planetary sustainability.

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  107

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Models for New Mechanisms Different possible platform configurations show in the various business models that support economic viability, reflecting trends that have converged in the sharing economy (Hellwig et al. 2018). The for-profit sector of the sharing economy is highly visible: it has the advertising budget (and the financial pressure) to scale rapidly. Most major sharing economy platforms have venture capital behind them. Digital networks have enabled winner-takes-all by allowing a platform to become the primary global marketplace for a particular segment of activity (such as eBay, Amazon or Airbnb). The capital involved demands aggressive growth strategy and the promise of a monopoly (or profitable initial public offering, IPO), suggesting these services are running like other big businesses in the design of their financial models, even if technology is providing profit from a small staff base (Slee 2015). Similar systems have been built by existing commercial juggernauts adopting new ways of providing their business, such as turning to mobility-as-a-service and away from car ownership. This sees car hire giant Avis provide car-sharing facilities as car clubs in many big cities. This sector of the sharing economy mediates an increasing number of our transactions by supplying a platform and a structured process for exchange in a growing peer-to-peer marketplace (Bauwens 2012). But other enterprising uses of networked platforms exist. Light and Miskelly (2015) and Katrini (2018) draw attention to sharing cultures, which “grow informally within a region between diverse stakeholders and have as their main goal to co-produce, manage, and share resources, time, services, knowledge, information, and support based on solidarity and reciprocity rather than economic profit” (Katrini 2018). Digital platforms can support sharing cultures to emerge and feed into a solidarity economy (Miller 2009). For instance, community interest companies and social enterprises organize around a triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic good, promoting a less commercial ethos even within a business context. Platform co-operatives are appearing with similar values (Scholz 2014).

DESIGN FOR SHARING These different models reveal a tension in the role of sharing. How types of sharing emerge and are adapted is both an effect of what digital networks allow, and what is shared and why. Sharing may manifest as buying or using something co-owned, doing something together or merely asynchronously making use of the same commercial resource. While the last may not sound like sharing, some see the benefit of better resource use regardless of fee or ownership (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Stokes et al. 2014). Many commentators have discussed this blurring already; Belk (2014) summarizes this discussion well. It is mentioned here because design and function are inextricably linked. Comparing two well-documented platforms shows how this ethos can differ between ostensibly similar sites. Airbnb and Couchsurfing both facilitate the greater use of spare rooms (Lampinen and Brown 2017). Both services connect people wanting to travel, with people providing a bed. Airbnb is a heavily advertised company that vets potential visitors and hosts and takes part of the fee charged for accommodation. Couchsurfing is free and works by word of mouth, linking people who wish to share lives for a few hours

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108  Handbook of the sharing economy through borrowing/lending spaces. The process design reflects these different priorities. Lampinen and Brown point out that people may renege on deals, but: “The binding nature of agreements on Airbnb imposes barriers to this for both hosts and guests . . . [whereas] there is little beyond community norms and reputation to push Couchsurfing participants to keep their agreements” (Lampinen and Brown 2017). In other words, trust between users is handled differently in the two cases, leading to different shared experiences. Such cultural elements also lead to different audiences and usage patterns. Collective Models of Sharing Bradley and Pargman (2017) structure their typology of “sharing the commons” around questions such as what is being shared, who can access the resource and to what extent commoners are dependent on the resource. Light and Miskelly (2015) offer a more general categorization of economic design factors: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

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●● ●● ●●

reciprocating versus gifting/renting; finite versus infinite resources; collectivized versus individualized sharing; joint ownership of shared resources; based in collective space; physically located versus virtual exchange; need for clusters versus distributed participation; requiring critical mass; paid-for service, paid-for access to service or free to use; for-profit versus community management; currency-based; time critical; scalable versus replicable; digital network dependent.

Most of these characteristics are developed further in this chapter. For instance, both Airbnb and Couchsurfing connect individual lender-loaners and renter-borrowers of private spaces through a platform. A more collective model aggregates people venturing together, such as co-owning pubs, gardening together and stocking a micro-library (Light and Miskelly 2014). The London pub is co-owned corporately; the garden and micro-library are collectively sustained by volunteers. A variant of this is the single FairBnB offering on the FairMarket platform (market. fair.coop/shop/product/fairbnb-london-2030?country=233), where a flat can be hired by FairCoin users for a FairCoin donation and promising to feed the cat. This is an individual exchange. But FairCoin is an alternative currency operating on blockchain and run by FairCoop, a not-for-profit structure that globally regulates and maintains the currency. This is actually the shared economy of a financial system that promotes “fair value exchange . . . paving the way for a collective change towards a life based on values in common . . . [c]ooperation, ethics, solidarity and transparency” (fair-coin.org). Everyone taking their currency in FairCoin is part of FairCoop and a co-venturer, even if individual exchanges are not directly collectivist.

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  109 Infinite

Finite

Intangible

Digital files, etc.

Money, time, skills, labor, etc.

Tangible

n/a

Objects, transport, produce, land, people, etc.

Figure 9.1  Characteristics of sharing: tangibility and finitude There are well-known problems with commonly held goods (Cox et al. 2010). For instance, in some eco-villages there is collective car ownership, but while sharing cars has worked well, there are tales of neglect: nobody looks after cars’ longer-term requirements. This was solved in at least one village with a car-adoption scheme. Collective sharing at scale means giving time to creating structures for organizing and communicating as well as sharing, then adhering to them.

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What is Shared Affects Design Informing the design of the exchange process is also what is to be shared. Figure 9.1 presents the (im)material nature of resources. Infinite intangibles, such as digital files, can circulate forever without leaving computer networks. This makes them particularly low effort to share. Time can be shared remotely or face-to-face. Timebanking, the hour-for-hour exchange of time, is a barter process that can be mediated by digital means (Briggs et al. 2015), though effective online matchmaking between people with different needs and skills is still elusive (Light and Miskelly 2014). We might classify time as finite and intangible. The value of material items (finite tangibles) relates to the time and effort (social and physical) needed to secure them or agree a process for sharing them, as well as what they are worth commercially (for instance, to replace), their quality and how badly they are wanted at that moment. Geography and temporal concerns come into play in designing for sharing tangibles. Tangible qualities—size, perishability, timeliness, and so on— impact what a service prioritizes. For instance, DiSalvo and Jenkins’s (2017) community foraging tool responds to the ripeness of fruit and needs to provoke action within a day or soon after (particularly considering competition for foraged fruit). Seasonality and perishability situate activity within a time horizon (Table 9.1). Distance is also significant. A study on neighborhood sharing (Light and Miskelly 2014) found multiple types of co-located activity, involving: ●● ●● ●●

co-owned objects, including ladders and power tools; shared resources, including nannies; shared tasks, including taking children to school.

This sharing was locally organized—without sharing platform intervention—and each had its own circumference of tolerance; in other words, how far people thought it reasonable to travel to pair up for resource exchange or management. Only in handling intangible goods can proximity and location be ignored. Otherwise, what constitutes “nearby” is a major factor in deciding whether to share (Table 9.1).

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110  Handbook of the sharing economy Table 9.1  Temporal and spatial factors in sharing tangible items Temporal:

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Spatial:

Urgency

Regularity

Duration

Is the resource time-limited? Topical Perishable Seasonal Dwindling

How often is it shared? Continually Often Occasionally Once

How long is it shared? Briefly Long-term Permanently

Manageability

Arrangement for sharing

Item’s journey

Accessibility for sharer

Perception of Distance

Pocketable/ Portable Bulky Fixed

Centralized

Used in situ

Co-located

Inter-person Commons

Used A-to-B Returned to base

Walkable Drivable

Immediate neighborhood Nearby Remote

Even within a locality, designs play differently. The Library of Things (www.libraryofth​ ings.co.uk) is a sharing service where items go on loan from a central base. Sensors track tagged tools, making monitoring assets easy and increasing the basis for trust. Men’s Sheds, established to provide senior care (www.changex.org/us/mensshedsinternational), provide older men with centralized resources to meet and make things. Tools are available in situ and centrally managed. Other platforms promote interperson sharing to mobilize items lying unused, such as bicycles (www.cycle.land). All rely on people’s willingness to travel and trust others, but centralized services offer a social hub and growing familiarity through use, while interperson services offer the opportunity of new and closer lending partners. Transport platforms have further spatial concerns. For instance, city-wide bike loan schemes rely on lending in places where people want bikes. Sensors can report bikes’ whereabouts, but providing a service may also require moving bikes from popular destinations to popular departure points as flows of use change. These brief examples show the impact of materiality on sharing. In the studies below, this theme is continued and the social aspects developed to look at neighborhood lending circles and craft for sale.

CASE STUDIES This section discusses two examples of platform-based services with an agenda of improving sustainable use of finite resources. They are picked to show diversity in the sharing economy, but the analysis also examines how design and function relate to purpose. The section draws on: ●● ●●

Ecomodo: an ambitious scaleable platform for local interperson sharing or loaning of underused items, space and skills; now defunct. Makerhood: a local platform for connecting makers with purchasers, which started out as an e-commerce platform and changed its ambitions.

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  111 Method These cases are drawn from long-term observation of several United Kingdom (UK)based platforms concerned with social innovation, sustainability and societal transformation (see Light and Briggs 2017). The accounts come from interviewing key people and tracking decisions and changes as these services evolved. 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. Service initiators were asked to articulate relations between motivation and design choices. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed (see Light and Briggs 2017). The sample is neither representative of the sector, nor is it given as example of successful services, either in terms of economic viability or against the measures of success defined by their initiators. The cases are picked to provide contrasting accounts of how economic decisions sit at the heart of design choices: in choosing a business model and what behaviors to support. The interviews reveal the extent to which the initiators attempted to shape social behavior through platform design. The sample is solely from the UK, for familiarity and ease of comparison. This does not affect generalizability, since the relations described hold for other circumstances, but does affect detail, such as regulatory framework.

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Ecomodo.com Ecomodo opened for business in 2007 and closed in 2015. Occasional contact with the service started before launch and continued as the platform was tested on Guernsey and in London. Much detail comes from an hour-long interview with co-founder, designer and successful businesswoman Meriel Lenfestey in 2011, from which quoted material is taken unless otherwise stated. Other material comes from observation, use of the platform and the Ecomodo.com blog. Ecomodo was a platform for sharing and hiring out things, skills and spaces. Lenfestey recalls that it was born out of frustration that environmental communication at the time was expressed negatively. Her goal was to build something that functioned positively on all counts, including its business model, which demanded, she said, commercial viability. It was set up as a social enterprise, with a triple bottom line of supporting economic, environmental and social sustainability. It also had an advocacy role; the founders were spokespeople for a behavioral shift away from “inefficient individual consumption to more sharing, collaborative forms of consumption” (website). The partners knew it would be challenging to make it work: A little bit of money for every paid transaction hopefully one day adds up to a sustainable business. We are playing the long game on the financial sustainability side, which is a really hard one. People will look at it and think it’s a commercial business model, so we won’t get environmental or social money. And, for business, it’s too much of a long game and risky because you have to change behavior. It needs deep pockets.

However, the possible outcomes—more sharing, less purchasing, the knock-on effect of more robust production practices, more neighborhood interaction and “a richer life for

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112  Handbook of the sharing economy

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less”—were worth the effort. “We are trying to reinvent lending and borrowing for our society and make it acceptable.” Much design work went into organizing points of interaction and removing potential for embarrassment. On Ecomodo, you could lend something for free, for money or for charity, and a box allowed those advertising to say how money from loaning would be spent, to minimize perceptions of greed. Every commercial aspect had a mitigating social aspect to deal with “awkwardnesses.” As well as taking a small fee, the levy on loaners paid for an insurance company to protect against loss or damage. “Negotiating the price is another difficult discussion that the site manages. So there’s a rate, which people can change for any individual transaction.” The platform was intended to create potential for local encounters: to hand over goods, explain how things work and discover common interests. Yet, addressing friction points “is a surprisingly complicated process, even if you just break down the human-to-human interaction around lending something. We’ve had to incorporate that and features to encourage lending between strangers.” To further trust, people joining were assigned a local lending circle to customize with friends, family and colleagues. The enterprise was structured to become a global sharing economy platform. It won awards; it looked professional and was easy to use. “We know that from research when we put it in front of people. Trust in the brand has never been an issue.” But after nearly a decade, the team decided to put their energy elsewhere. Take-up never reached beyond early adopters, despite excellent site design, extensive testing and promotion in mainstream media and door-to-door in targeted areas. “We’ve designed a very big thing when the user base is still very small, but we needed to because of those trust issues. It wasn’t the sort of thing where you can start small and just build and add features later on because then people wouldn’t come.” Lenfestey sums up: It doesn’t really have a place; it doesn’t sit in the economic world we understand. That’s a real barrier to people trying to do good. There isn’t an easy way to use those design and problemsolving skills; the environment isn’t there to support it. Very frustrating, but I understand the reasons: it’s massively challenging and ambitious.

Makerhood Makerhood launched in 2010. This account is based on several interviews with the two founders, as well as observation over 8+ years. Material here comes from a post-launch hour-long interview with co-founder Kristina Glushkova in 2011, unless otherwise stated. Makerhood is a social enterprise led by volunteers and overseen by a steering group, showcasing the work of local makers in a small part of South London to encourage a buy-local ethos. Created in 2010, it answered the two founders’ failure to find locally made goods. At the outset it was an e-commerce platform, but that model gave way as it became obvious that the value the platform provided was not to manage money, but to connect and support makers. Similar to Ecomodo, motivation included environmental and social sustainability goals, emphasizing quality of life and reduced consumption. The founders researched what was known about buying and owning, learning that people with less money spend it on things that are meaningful to them. This chimed

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  113 with the founders’ own outlook: “For me, consumer culture is empty. Part of being a community with different skills is that we make things for each other.” Buying local would reduce footprints, but buying specially crafted pieces meaningfully would reduce overall purchasing. The next months involved exploring opportunities: “The technology, community and business approach came out of talking to people. It was not defining something in isolation from the community, but defining something with them. And it was not starting from what technology can do, but with what we need. Technology was the last bit.” They brought potential stakeholders together, including Transition Towns, the local council and people joining as volunteers, including an author, designer and developer. All the design choices then emerged from this collective, in response to discussions with local makers and using a devolved structure that has allowed individuals with responsibility for a feature to shape that component:

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We make changes every day as we learn. We are so local; people know who we are. We are “real people” and that helps a lot. I live here and I blog about making jam from my allotment in Herne Hill. Trust-wise, you’d have to work really hard to make something like that up.

Trust was an issue that had to be addressed in this system too. Paypal was used while there was an e-commerce function, introducing third-party credibility. But there was also the issue of how to receive goods. The platform encourages people to get to know the person who made their object. Storytelling about the producers is a prominent feature of site content. The idea of meeting is embedded; you can send goods, but ideally the maker and purchaser meet to enact the transaction. To further this and protect makers’ privacy, guidance on delivery spots, using streets known to be safe and pleasant, is part of Makerhood’s code. Nowadays, a major focus is also on makers meeting. Makers’ Clubs, which appeared round the trading platform and brought makers face-to-face to discuss issues and make craft, became as important as online marketing. By 2013, the model had shifted from a stress on one-to-one meetings between makers and their clients to assembling people with an interest in craft and business. As a sense of ownership transferred, these meetings took off. Club events—used to promote work to local buyers and provide business development and networking events—were increasingly run by local makers instead of the core team. This stayed true as the scope grew over the years, with other nearby makers groups opening in 2012‒13 and pilots in the neighboring inner London borough. Glushkova said, already in 2011: We could scale it and make it much bigger, but we didn’t want to do that. It’s not an internet project; it’s a project about connecting people locally, helping people find things by local makers and helping local makers find each other. The technology can be transferred quite easily, so we are very up for sharing it. [But] I feel quite strongly that we shouldn’t be running local Makerhoods; they should be run locally. It’s part of an area having it’s own identity or finding it in the process of doing this.

This approach has informed expanding, requiring little but connection from new groups. The platform costs £2000‒£3000 a year, including website maintenance, publicity, events insurance, accounting and legal charges. The clubs charge a subscription to help cover running costs, taking over from the original 4 percent levy on sales through the site.

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114  Handbook of the sharing economy In late 2018, the founders announced that they were withdrawing from Makerhood. There is a sense that, with so many other positive initiatives having developed in the neighborhood, the project may no longer be needed (Glushkova interview, 2018). It was never a platform that made its founders money, and they have successful careers that compete with maintaining it. Meanwhile, it has achieved everything it set out to do. “People long for community, for greater connection; people really want to have things that are meaningful. It’s about tapping into those things and framing them in a language that is understandable to people and enables them to do things in a different way.” Glushkova concludes: “It’s easy to spend a lot of time trying to use the best technology features. It’s not the same as doing it in the community, shaping the ideas together.”

CASE ANALYSIS The studies here were picked to consider economies for sharing tangible goods and how to design them. In common to both examples, the founders: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

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●●

state explicitly that they designed to change resource management practices and make desirable behavior easy and pleasant; provided an organizational structure to encourage new behaviors to emerge; had a regard for the nature of ownership: Ecomodo to make it safe to lend/loan one’s things; Makerhood to enhance the value of owned goods; addressed neighborhood conviviality as well as reducing wasteful spending on things (and, by extension, their production); expected users to meet and build relations as part of handing over goods; ran as social enterprises, with a triple bottom line looking after business, environment and society.

In other words, the founders cared about economics beyond the financial aspects, and engaged extensively with the social aspects of sharing. In the next sections, the chapter looks at key differences between socio-economic aspects of the platforms, before returning to the wider theme. Organizational Processes and Business Models The study reveals two very different design processes. Lenfestey points to the work in getting a trustworthy digital system launched at the outset; it is centrally conceived by the designers, has an elaborate model of use incorporated and was designed to be robust as the service launched and grew. It was tested exhaustively with potential users as an interface and way of conducting business. Glushkova describes a collaborative development process with frequent changes and an explorative approach to working out what the platform should do. Although both set up a relationship with Paypal, Makerhood abandoned the trading part of the service as local use showed what was more important in that locality, changing their funding model from tax on sales to subscriptions as the focus moved from individual transactions to linking up makers.

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  115 Underpinning this are two different approaches to business. Ecomodo was supposed to scale and make money to support this: an ambition to provide people with livelihoods and ensure the service would be sustainable in the longer term. This model was set competitively within the global economy and involved partnership with a major insurance company and investment from success with other businesses. From the outset, the team acknowledged the challenge of its social enterprise ambitions. Although the founders took grants to keep going during the years of roll-out, the long-term aim was a fully selfsustaining system based on fees from loans. The fact that business sustainability eluded the founders does not alter the significance of that belief in the shape of the design. Makerhood was also always intended to be self-sustaining, but Glushkova points to a different strategy, building on the interests of local people using it and generating enough funding to keep it running as a membership organization. Importantly, in keeping it a volunteer effort, maintenance of the system cost very little and, when selling stopped being digitally mediated, it removed the need to maintain competitive digital competencies. Makerhood’s model of organizational sustainability existed in a local care economy, not the competitive global financial system of marketplace platforms such as Etsy.

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Promoting Trust Accompanying these organizational differences were different understandings of how trust is cultivated. Trust is a key sharing economy issue (Botsman 2017), because it involves “strangers trusting strangers” (Slee 2015). Hawlitschek et al. (2016) describe three foci for trust: peer, platform and product. Both initiators discuss building trust as core, citing measures taken to make using the service safe and exchanges easy, not just for receiving goods and handing over money (addressed using reputable third parties), but in terms of engaging with other people. Whether Lenfestey’s and Glushkova’s views on trust differ because of context or whether their ambitions differ because of different beliefs about trust is beyond the scope of this chapter, but where Lenfestey talks abstractly about people coming to trust each other through machine brokering (as Botsman 2017, might advocate), Glushkova starts from a position where everyone around is a “real person” and trust develops through repeated encounter and mutual interest. Makerhood manages privacy and security: makers do not invite people to their home; safe delivery spots are specified for the area. This is not to elect a category of meeting place, such as a supermarket, but to name a spot on a particular street that will feel safe to people in a mixed area where perceptions vary by demographic. In other words, trust is co-produced and situated in social relations in Makerhood to a larger extent than Ecomodo. However, for Ecomodo, the challenge is not just arranging one meeting to sell/receive something; it is lending that must be returned and in good condition, where perhaps instruction is needed. In these situations, trust grows over many exchanges. For instance, Makerhood’s Makers’ Club members happily lend each other resources. Their mutual trust comes from getting to know each other: through collective engagement, not digital vetting. Where Ecomodo makes a point of intervening to overcome the awkwardness of lending, Makerhood moves away from handling money to focus on building social structure. Its focus becomes increasingly collective, establishing networks in the community that enable local purchasing to flourish and encouraging new makers to come forward and

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116  Handbook of the sharing economy take on more. Evaluation suggests increased confidence in making and trying to sell among makers, with increased interest in the wider neighborhood in sourcing locally made goods.

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The Reach of Sharing Makerhood does not, on the surface, promote sharing; Ecomodo does. Like many other services, Ecomodo had the loss-leader of free elements: sharing as well as loaning was possible through the platform. However, it was eventually suspended as not economically viable, not having attained “thick” enough use (Vulkan et al. 2013; Lampinen and Brown 2017). Spread across the UK, it needed to provide millions of potential users with the perception of a lively presence in their immediate neighborhood. It also had to address what different people think is near enough and easy enough to bother with, depending on the item. It existed within a traditional commercial paradigm, sensitively monetizing lending and attempting to use the scaling potential of digital networks, despite needing to respond to local conditions and manage tangible goods. It had the global opportunities—it could have become the world go-to platform for lending/loaning goods—and constraints, where reach and turnover are the measure of success. For whatever reason—timing, design of process, theme and/or budget—it was not able to attain the ubiquity of Airbnb or Uber. Makerhood less evidently cultivates sharing. Like a craft market, it brings together makers with people who want to buy. However, the structure its founders built to execute these exchanges involves collaborative development, maintenance and use that amounts to shared ownership, certainly in psychological, if not legal, terms. The volunteer structure around it visibly demonstrates resistance to the reduction of everything to commerce. We are reminded of the distinction between extractive and generative ownership (P2P Foundation n.d.): Makerhood meets the criteria for the latter, with a “living purpose,” “rooted membership” and “ethical networks” (ibid.). The team has been able to cultivate selling and buying with an affective dimension and a stress on meaning. It has started and stayed local in ambition, reach and understanding of relations. Its engagement with place, as well as location, makes it a challenge to globalized approaches, capable of slowly changing patterns and parameters of exchange. The subtleties of both Ecomodo and Makerhood mean that people need to interpret social settings as part of using the system (which, Benkler 2004 posits, is a feature of social exchange), yet the different choices these initiators made as to where to situate trust and how to manage relations show some of the range of socio-economic configurations possible. We cannot generalize from this; neither the sample nor the nature of the field would justify it. But we can note two ways—out of many—that the intersection of economics and design can manifest in the exchanges that platforms structure, and also point to the more general trends being manifested (Figure 9.2): trade/share and share/trade.

THE MANY ECONOMIES OF THE SHARING ECONOMY Ecomodo and Makerhood are used as cases here to show diversity in the design of sharing economy platforms. They were also picked because their environmental mission gives insight into impacting resource management behaviors. They provide context to claiming

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  117 Relations through platform Share Platform’s organizational structure

Trade

Shared

e.g. Community Garden, MicroLibrary

Makerhood, FairCoop

Private

Ecomodo, Couchsurfing

e.g. Airbnb, Uber

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Figure 9.2  Different economic relations behind/through sharing economy platforms that social and economic issues are linked, building on the discussion earlier in the chapter that considered material challenges in sharing tangible goods. Obviously, the different aspects relate, and it would seem that overcoming “awkwardnesses” (as Ecomodo sought to do) is not enough, any more than proximity and timeliness are enough on their own. Comparing Ecomodo and Makerhood is deliberately not comparing like with like. Unlike shopping, people do not tend to borrow on impulse: temporal aspects mean that they must believe they will use what is borrowed. By contrast, browsing a craft site might prompt an impromptu purchase. Also, Light and Miskelly (2014) note that people do not think to advertise things for lending as they would for sale or disposal. For many people there is no good reason to list objects for lending, and some bad ones (theft, accusations of showing off). The same people, in the right conditions, would lend an object if asked. Library models where people share central resources, and collective models where people buy together, both seem to have more appeal than interperson systems that support the lending out of one’s things. This speaks to and challenges hopes of a rapid transition to a post-materialist society (Belk 2017). Of course, one cannot generalize because every system is designed with different priorities and people in mind. The mere existence of many forms of sharing platform is likely to precipitate new mindsets. Yet, notably, while every platform exists within the global financial regime, not every platform orientates by aligning with it; some are deliberately designed to nurture types of microeconomy based in social exchange, care and recognition of voluntary labor (Benkler 2004; Bauwens 2012; Belk 2017). Given the challenges of holding goods in common, mutual support is paramount in these situations. Growing an economy of small initiatives requires shared learning; happily, it also creates the culture where this may flourish. Makerhood contributes to community initiatives on the ground in a particular place and, in doing so, strengthens what Light and Miskelly (2015) have called the culture of sharing: the “relational asset” of a dense mesh of collective voluntary initiatives in a small area. It demonstrates how practices and activities “expand and bleed” in a sharing culture (Katrini 2018), so that sharing, lending and making friends start to accompany selling and buying. Allowing access to its management processes, its impact is qualitatively different from remotely managed services; it encourages transitions from use to participation at an organizational level. Global (Networked) Futures The chapter’s intention has been to consider the different economies of the sharing economy, looking at the design of individual services as a means to explore how global

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118  Handbook of the sharing economy network effects and the introduction of platforms might support socio-economic change. Successful businesses in the sharing economy do change people’s behavior. Much has been made of the better resource use possible (Botsman and Rogers 2010). Uber is changing markets by taking custom from public transport and putting potential passengers into private vehicles (Powley 2018). It loans drivers money to buy cars. Uber argues that each car is better used because it is busier as a resource, but, at present, as a means of moving people around, Uber cars are less resource-efficient than public transport. Perhaps that will change in the future. It is early days to assess the impact of choices beyond the success of individual platforms. We can say that a contractual digital model has become the face of the sharing economy and with it have come ambitions to scale for global dominance, exploiting the nature of digital networks (Slee 2015). Martin (2016, 149) warns that, “If the sharing economy follows this pathway of corporate co-option it appears unlikely to drive a transition to sustainability.” Yet, not every successful platform is designed to support existing financial models or to scale. An alternative is to stay responsive to context. A key feature is the local and accessible nature of such platforms’ management systems: the platform may be run collectively to some degree and the sharing may exist at an organizational level. This alternative vision, with characteristics of a solidarity economy (Miller 2009), is an ecology of small projects, now appearing in some cities (Sharp 2018). It is location-specific and situated and runs with modest revenue ambitions and accessible management structures, navigating economic issues by drawing on both large-scale and alternative economies. To build (digital) platforms, such as improved management systems, to help create these ecologies would be to design a different way of considering resourcing and, with it, different economic behavior in our societies. Like many players in the sharing economy, the featured systems sought to make neighborhoods richer places to live, attempting to better manage people’s need and desire to purchase goods and to build local connections. By successfully developing people’s trust in others and running a management of volunteers, the local enterprise was cultivating the social sustainability that underlies the possibility for a thorough and deeply lived environmental sustainability to take hold (Light and Miskelly 2014; Belk 2017). This would move in the direction that Raworth (2017) advocates, of making economics serve planetary concerns. In evaluating design, there are no absolutes, just fitness for purpose. The chapter introduced two case studies and related examples to examine sharing economy structures and processes, acknowledging the alternative economic models that networks and communities of interest can create. In considering ambitions to initiate socio-economic change, it looked at how different approaches to resource management—from what is shared, to how people are understood to operate—affect design choices and, thus, environmental and societal outcomes. In doing this, it has shown that the sharing economy has the potential to link the global financial economy with local social exchange mechanisms, sharing cultures and economies of care in valuable ways, but questioned the current direction of travel.

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Designing the economics of the sharing economy  119

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REFERENCES Bauwens, Michel (2012), Synthetic Overview of the Collaborative Economy, P2P Foundation, http://wiki.p2pfoun​ dation.net/Synthetic_Overview_of_the_Collaborative_Economy. Belk, Russell W. (2007), “Why Not Share Rather Than Own?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611, 126‒40. Belk, Russell W. (2014), “Sharing Versus Pseudo-Sharing in Web 2.0,” Anthropologist, 18 (1), 7‒23. Belk, Russell W. (2017), “Sharing, Materialism, and Design for Sustainability,” in Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design, ed. Jonathan Chapman, London: Routledge, 160‒72. Benkler, Yochai (2004), “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production,” Yale Law Journal, 114, 273‒358. Botsman, Rachel (2017), Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart, New York: Public Affairs. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours, New York: Harper Business. Bradley, Karin and Daniel Pargman (2017), “The Sharing Economy as the Commons of the 21st Century,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 10 (2), 231–47. Briggs, Jo, Celia Lury, and Sarah Teasley (2015), “Creative Temporal Costings: A ProtoPublics Research Project with Leeds Creative Timebank,” project report, Northumbria University, Newcastle. Cox, Michael, Gwen Arnold, and Segio Villamayor Tomás (2010), “A Review of Design Principles for Community-Based Natural Resource Management,” Ecology and Society, 15 (4), 38. DiSalvo, Carl and Tom Jenkins (2017), “Fruit Are Heavy: A Prototype Public IoT System to Support Urban Foraging,” Proceedings of DIS’17, New York: ACM, 541‒53. Hawlitschek, Florian, Timm Teubner, and Christof Weinhardt (2016), “Trust in the Sharing Economy,” Die Unternehmung—Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice, 70, 26‒44. Hayek, Friedrich (1978), Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy: The Mirage of Social Justice, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hellwig, Katharina, Marlyne Sahakian, and Felicitas Morhart (2018), “Societal Factors and the Emergence of the Sharing Economy,” in The Rise of the Sharing Economy, ed. Pia A. Albinsson and B. Yasanthi Perera, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 51‒71. Jegou, François and Ezio Manzini (2008), Collaborative Services: Social Innovation and Design for Sustainability, Milano: Poli.design Edizioni. Katrini, Eleni (2018), “Sharing Culture: On Definitions, Values, and Emergence,” Sociological Review, 66 (2), 425‒46. Lampinen, Airi and Barry Brown (2017), “Market Design for HCI: Successes and Failures of Peer-to-Peer Exchange Platforms”, Proceedings of CHI’17, New York: ACM. Light, Ann and Jo Briggs (2017), “Crowdfunding Platforms and the Design of Paying Publics,” Proceedings of CHI’17, New York: ACM. Light, Ann and Clodagh Miskelly (2014), “Design for Sharing,” EPSRC Sustainable Society Network+, https:// designforsharingdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/design-for-sharing-webversion.pdf. Light, Ann and Clodagh Miskelly (2015), “Sharing Economy vs Sharing Cultures? Designing for Social, Economic and Environmental Good,” IxD&A, 24, 49‒62. Marçal, Katrine (2015), Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? A Story About Women and Economics, trans. by Saskia Vogel, New York: Pegasus. Martin, Chris J. (2016), “The Sharing Economy: A Pathway to Sustainability or a Nightmarish Form of Neoliberal Capitalism?” Ecological Economics, 121, 149‒59. Miller, Ethan (2009), “Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues,” in Solidarity Economy I: Building Alternatives for People and Planet, ed. Emily Kawano, Thomas Neal Masterson, and Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, Amherst, MA: Center for Popular Economics, 51‒74. Murray, Robin, Julie Caulier-Grice, and Geoff Mulgan (2009), “Ways to Design, Develop and Grow Social Innovation: Social Venturing,” Nesta and the Young Foundation, http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/ social_ventu ring.pdf. P2P Foundation (n.d.), “1.3 What Does a P2P Economy Look Like?” https://primer.commonstransition. org/1-short-articles/1-3-what-does-a-p2p-economy-look-like. Powley, Tanya (2018), “Transport for London on Course for £1bn Deficit,” Financial Times, February 26. Raworth, Kate (2017), Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Roth, Alvin E. (2007), “The Art of Designing Markets,” Harvard Business Review, October, http://kuznets.fas. harvard.edu/~aroth/alroth.html. Scholz, Trebor (2014), “Platform Cooperativism vs the Sharing Economy,” Medium, https://medium.com/@ trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad.

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120  Handbook of the sharing economy

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Sharp, Darren (2018), “Sharing Cities for Urban Transformation: Narrative, Policy and Practice,” Urban Policy and Research, 36 (4), 513‒26. Slee, Tom (2015), What’s Yours is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, New York: OR Books. Stokes, Kathleen, Emma Clarence, Lauren Anderson, and April Rinne (2014), “Making Sense of the UK Collaborative Economy,” London: NESTA and Collaborative Lab. Thatcher, Margaret (1981), Interview for Sunday Times, May 1, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/10​ 4475. Vulkan, Nir, Alvin E. Roth, and Zvika Neeman (2013), The Handbook of Market Design, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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PART III

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EXCHANGE PRACTICES IN THE SHARING ECONOMY

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10.  The new face of bartering in collaborative networks: the case of Italy’s most popular bartering website Daniele Dalli and Fulvio Fortezza

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INTRODUCTION Bartering is based on the notion of double coincidence of wants (Graeber 2011; Jevons 1875) and consists of an exchange of goods for other goods. The main issue in bartering is the value assessment of two different offerings. As in market exchange, where money is exchanged for goods, two parties in a barter negotiation seek to get the most out of the exchange unless they are socially connected to each other (Graeber 2001, 2011; Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992). Thus, in bartering, as in every exchange, the social embeddedness (Granovetter 1985; Polanyi 1944) of economic interactions may lead to more or less severe application of the principles of economic exchange. In fact, as we will see, the communal nature of the bartering process, if adequately driven and supported, may turn economic exchanges into social exchanges. While bartering is not yet a dominant practice, it is becoming increasingly popular as ethical and sustainability concerns affect people’s everyday lives and internet platforms grow and enable interactions, exchanges, collaboration, and sharing between strangers (Arsel 2015; Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Belk 2010; Corciolani and Dalli 2014; Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016; Perren and Kozinets 2018; Scaraboto 2015). Following the academic literature, we consider bartering platforms to be hybrid collaborative consumption types or pseudo-sharing that involve multiple actors who exchange goods for goods in a collective, communal context in which economic and social instances emerge and affect value assessment practices and criteria. Although bartering should be included in the market or commodity exchange model (Belk 2010), when it is immersed in a communal context there are reasons for and trends of its hybridization towards social exchange. This is a major issue, which we will develop here. Our main research goal is to understand whether the value regime on which bartering is based (economic, market) can contextually translate into or combine with a different regime (social, community). This is consistent with the suggestion by Arnould (2013), who identified a gap in consumer research about the intersection of and translation between value regimes. We also look at the interplays between markets and non-markets (Kozinetz 2002; Ozanne and Ozanne 2016), since we are interested in how market-based interactions are mediated by social norms in hybrid economies (Scaraboto 2015). To reach these goals, we collected qualitative data from Italy’s most popular bartering website, Zerorelativo.it (ZR), which is a synchronous swap platform where participants negotiate the value of the items they wish to exchange and are not allowed to exchange items for money or credit of any kind. For this reason, we may describe it as a pure barter type, while at the same time it is organized as a community in which multilateral and 122

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  123 repeated exchanges among members are favored, and in which mindful and sustainable consumption is fostered. From this perspective, our empirical setting shows significant peculiarities compared to existing contributions about bartering, which are mainly based on offline and time-constrained contexts such as critical events (Kozinets 2002) or discrete events (Albinsson and Perera 2009, 2012). We first discuss the literature on bartering in the consumer research tradition. After the methodological section, we present and discuss empirical evidence. This is followed by a final section on implications and limits.

LITERATURE REVIEW

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Bartering in Consumer Research Bartering (or swapping) is a moneyless transaction type between people who are in principle free and equal (Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992), and whose disposable possessions mutually suit one another’s wants. Thus, this practice is specifically based on the notion of double coincidence of wants (Case et al. 1996) so that, to accomplish an exchange, we need to find someone who has what we want, but that person must also want what we have to give in return (Graeber 2011). Another related special feature of bartering is the critical issue of equivalence (Arnould 2013), since the terms of the exchange must be negotiated every time from scratch with each counterpart, which increases the evaluation processes’ subjectivity (Graeber 2001). Further, bartering and purchasing are different practices, based on the absence or presence of money, although they share the same value regime: economic exchange. In the economic literature, bartering is usually portrayed as inefficient and almost extinct, except for very limited and marginal situations (Engineer and Bernhardt 1991; Marvasti and Smyth 1998). Yet, there are cases in which entire countries revert to bartering, although in very dramatic and unpredictable situations (Hill and Stamey 1990). So, in fact, bartering has never disappeared. It is also worth noting the recent renewed interest in bartering. For instance, during the recent global economic crisis, business-to-business bartering rose dramatically (Kaikati and Kaikati 2010) as a way for companies to sell off their unsold items. Concerning people-to-people exchanges, the direct relationship between economic pressure and a willingness to barter remains under-researched, having to date received limited support in the academic literature (Chatzidakis 2017), yet newspapers and magazines often report on it. Recently, together with other acquisition types, bartering is receiving growing attention, since it represents an alternative to traditional purchasing for consumers to get the resources they need in their everyday lives. Clearly, people now consider a wider set of channels and practices (both within and outside the traditional market exchange) to get resources when deciding how to satisfy their needs and wants (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016; Kozinets 2002; Scaraboto 2015). In this sense, in the literature (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Roos and Hahn 2017; Wilhelms et al. 2017), bartering is often generically considered to be a shared consumption type as, according to these authors, people-to-people interactions are key for value

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124  Handbook of the sharing economy c­reation (Hofmann et al. 2017) in collaborative networks (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016) or lateral markets (Perren and Kozinets 2018). From a slightly different angle, Belk (2014a) sees bartering (and bartering platforms), at the border of collaborative consumption, as a type of pseudo-sharing, since exchanges occur without money (as in sharing), but at the same time, in order to get something via bartering, it is necessary to give something back (as in a market exchange). We draw especially on Habibi et al. (2016), who discussed collaborative consumption practices through a dual framework whose extremes are pure sharing and pure exchange. From this perspective, bartering has characteristics that belong to both exchange modes and can therefore be classified as a hybrid form in which social and economic exchange patterns coexist. The antecedents of a bartering revival appear to be people’s rising interest in sustainability (Scaraboto and Figueiredo 2017), which implies less waste and less pollution (Albinsson and Perera 2012; Möhlmann 2015), the search for lifestyles based on downshifting (Huneke 2005), which implies mindful consumption (Sheth et al. 2011) and voluntary simplicity (Shaw and Moraes 2009), and the new consciousness of people about consumption’s roles (Dunn et al. 2011). Mindful consumers have been greatly helped by the development of digital platforms and other internet resources that increase the opportunities for unknown persons to get in touch, exchange, collaborate, and share (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Belk 2010, 2014a, 2014b; Botsman and Rogers 2010; Corciolani and Dalli 2014; Giesler 2006; Ozanne and Ballantine 2010; Ozanne and Ozanne 2011; Perren and Kozinets 2018).

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Value Regimes: Economic and Social We will consider two polar-opposite value regime types: economic exchange and social exchange (Bagozzi 1975). Economic exchange is mediated by the market, while social exchange occurs without monetary rewards, even if costs and benefits are considered so as to decide whether or not to actually perform an exchange. In economic exchange, it is usually assumed that the parties tend to act for their own self-interest; while in the social exchange condition, there are more opportunities for altruism and solidarity (Giesler 2008). The debate about the economic and the social spheres of life dates back to studies in anthropology and sociology: according to these research traditions, market mediation has implications for the nature of an exchange (economic or social) and the associated forms of governance and reciprocity. In our discussion, pure bartering belongs to the market domain, but its substantial or phenomenological accomplishment is strongly affected by the non-market, social dimension; this discussion goes back to Polanyi (1944) and his conclusions about the interdependence and reciprocal integration of social and economic forces and institutions. In the sociology of consumption, Zelizer (2002, 2011) provided one of the most detailed analyses of the interactions of social and cultural elements with economic ones in the field of household consumption. Other consumer research scholars recently elaborated on Zelizer’s notions (Bradford 2009; Epp and Velagaleti 2014). Following these approaches, and drawing on Habibi et al. (2016), we consider bartering as a hybrid between economic and social exchange and—in given conditions that we will discuss below—it can be closer to one or the other extreme. On the economic side, we expect to find barterers who are more oriented to economic and substantial individual benefits, and who appreciate

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  125 exchange value. On the other side, we expect to find barterers who express a more social stance, who are less oriented to self-interest, and who pursue more subjective, use-valueoriented benefits as well as a more sustainable consumption model. We seek to demonstrate that, in given conditions, barter platforms and swap communities integrate discrete market transactions into a collective process in which multiple and reiterated exchanges occur between members, giving rise to more social (than market) exchange patterns. In this view, barter exchanges develop as steps in an interactions trajectory in which the actors’ identities, values, and personal backgrounds change the very nature of the exchange.

SETTING AND DATA COLLECTION

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The Zerorelativo Community Zerorelativo.it is Italy’s most popular bartering website. It was created in 2006, with the aim of promoting more mindful consumption choices and recycling. There are now nearly 42 000 registered users on this website. At ZR, payments and credit of any kind are forbidden. The exchanges are synchronous and must to be completed within a given time. Users begin their activity by publishing their wish-list and describing what they offer in exchange. Once the barterers have reached an agreement, they need to decide how the exchange should be done: hand to hand, by courier, or by asking other barterers who live midway between them to fetch and deliver the goods. Once the exchange has been completed, each barterer must publish their personal assessment of a barter’s fairness. ZR also allows gift-giving and lending, but not money-lending. Users exchange a great many items, such as any goods people no longer use or want (for example, books, clothes, bags, beauty and body care products, and so on); home-made products (mainly food); cleverly and creatively recycled products (for example, a bag made from an old T-shirt); professional services (for example, accounting or hairdressing); nonprofessional services, namely activities that people cannot or do not want to market (for example, the ability to prepare vegan food); and free time they wish to share with other people (for example, sharing the experience of jogging in an urban park). The website organizers undertake many activities in order to reinforce the platform’s sense of community (for example, they promote official gatherings of ZR members) and support active user participation in the platform’s daily life, even via regular calls for ideas. What is particularly important in such a case is that, even if not all members contribute, they all believe that they are free to contribute and able to add value to the community (Ozanne and Ozanne 2016). Data Collection We collected two data types. First, we conducted 25 Skype interviews with ZR members. The aim was to discuss the importance of shopping and consumption, their objectives for bartering on ZR, the importance of bartering exchanges to fulfil ZR members’ overall needs, the worst and best memories of participating in the ZR bartering system, and the characteristics of the items they had recently exchanged via ZR.

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126  Handbook of the sharing economy We randomly selected interviewees who are more active in terms of their exchange numbers and exchange frequency as well as the assessments they received on ZR over time. The interviewees were mainly female (24 of the 25), since women are more active on ZR, accounting for roughly 90 percent of current total users. This is consistent with what Ozanne and Ozanne (2016) noted: alternative consumer markets are still primarily women’s work. The average respondent age was around 41 and ranged from 22 to 56. Further, the interviewees’ professions differed, while two were unemployed. We also collected data through participant observation, which allowed us to collect statements and evaluations from users regarding their offers, assessments, and complaints. From June 2012 to January 2014, we analyzed the following ZR web resources: users’ personal notice boards, the website help section, the community blog, and the Facebook fan-page. The most important discussions and threads were noted step by step, and were fully transcribed into a 50-page report and then coded. All in all we produced around 110 pages of textual data from our data collection.

BARTERING ON ZERORELATIVO.IT

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Why Do People Barter on Zerorelativo? We asked our respondents about their primary objectives when approaching ZR to barter; those described below are the more important ones. These objectives are not mutually exclusive and often complement one another. We present them as discrete alternatives for reasons of clarity. Some relate to both demand and supply (people seeking and others giving objects), while others more specifically relate to one of the two sides. Each combines, to a different extent, both economic and social elements, thereby situated closer to one of the two value regime poles. The early reasons for bartering on ZR are primary factors in that they relate to the very first attempts to use the platform and could also be defined as original or elementary. A second objectives set emerged after some experience of bartering on the platform. Recycling is a factor that was frequently mentioned by ZR members; it presents a mixture of utilitarian and ethical dimensions. Some members initially engaged in bartering to extract some value from their items (Brace-Govan and Binay 2010; Epp and Price 2010; Kozinets 2002). Here, users want to circulate their items, giving them a new life (Türe 2014) and allowing others to benefit from these items’ residual value (Albinsson and Perera 2009). This factor relates to bartering one’s items: I like to give things a new life. I feel joy when I see that an old family toy has found a new user. (#21) I began to barter because I hate looking at unused things in the basement, the more so if I think that other people may like and use them. (#4)

A second, frequent factor concerning bartering is disposal: the need to remove unused objects from the house, freeing up space. In this case, users are also focused on bartering their unused items: “I began bartering in order to clear the house” (#10);“When I’m not looking for specific things, I’m happy if someone else finds something interesting among

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  127 my things, because my house is full of stuff ” (#8). We consider clearing to be a functional need that often relates to the opportunity to obtain some value in return. In this sense, disposal is partly linked to recycling as a general approach to bartering that is functional and utilitarian. ZR members also barter in order to obtain goods for themselves (either necessary or luxury goods), or to give away as gifts. This objective was usually cited by those who were mainly interested in getting items, and only secondarily focused on the items they are bartering away: “Thanks to ZR, I can get all my children’s clothes” (#18); “Thanks to ZR, I basically stopped buying Christmas gifts!” (#11). Barterers were sometimes even willing to purchase something new to exchange so as to get a specific object they needed or wanted: “I remember when I got some beautiful bedsheets from barterer X. I really loved them. It was basically brand-new and looked fantastic! I felt I had to get them, and to do so, I had to buy a beauty cream product that X wanted” (#11). A few respondents explained their first attempts at bartering as economizing; that is, the search for opportunities to save money, but also to make money. In this sense, economizing relates to both giving and getting items: I have saved a lot of money on ZR. To me, it’s a fundamental resource that accounts for fifty to sixty percent of my total expenses. (#16)

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If you want to sell a product on a second-hand market, you must price it at half the original price, no matter if it looks like a new product. If you exchange it through bartering, you can keep at least part of the economic value that you would otherwise lose. (ZR forum entry)

A small group of users began to barter on ZR owing to their desire for a more sustainable consumption lifestyle (Albinsson and Perera 2009, 2012; Botsman and Rogers 2010; Brace-Govan and Binay 2010; Epp and Price 2010; Kozinets 2002). They want to consume less: to purchase fewer new goods and to reduce waste. They wish to reduce the impacts of their consumption activities in terms of resources, money, and so on: I want to avoid excessive consumption, mainly children’s clothes, which are usually almost new when you give them away. (#21) Bartering is not for everyone: some people are unable to let go of their stuff. Once I have exhausted an item’s use, it’s right to pass it on to someone else who may want it. (#14)

As noted, some further objectives arise; after some time, users started becoming experienced at bartering. For instance, some people start seeing bartering as a playful pastime (Arsel 2013); that is, a hobby that entails managing practical activities (disposal, clearing the house, and so on) in lively and clever ways. Some members experienced bartering as a self-fulfilling activity, especially when it is linked to the relationships they build in a community. This means that the game of bartering may be more enjoyable when the playground consists of pleasant relationships with other users: Bartering is becoming a hobby of mine. I would say, “Let’s see what’s new on ZR!” Daily opening a window on the ZR world, a pleasing moment, as eBay used to be before I found out about ZR. I regard eBay as a more commercial, less human setting. (#4)

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128  Handbook of the sharing economy Many informants reported that they felt increasingly involved in ZR, specifically owing to their need to get in touch with like-minded people. Thus, bartering and exchanging objects were seen as special way to socialize (Albinsson and Perera 2009, 2012; Kozinets 2002): I started bartering because I needed to, but then I discovered a community on ZR I really like. We share needs and exchange thoughts, which is great, because it can help others. I often meet up with other barterers to exchange goods in person, while our kids play together. In this way, I make friends, which is also very important to me. (#3)

In sum, on ZR, people barter for many reasons, which range from more self-oriented ones (for example, seeking objects or economizing, especially in terms of wanting to earn money) to more other-oriented ones (for example, sustainability or socializing). The former are mostly about a personal gain or interest, while the latter are about connectedness to others, also to a “generic other.”

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Zerorelativo Member Profiles According to their personal traits and their acculturation processes, ZR members can be classified into different profiles, which we labelled as follows. The “greedy” are members who often started using ZR owing to curiosity, as they wanted to experience another channel (usually not their preferred one) to improve their consumption possibilities by obtaining the most value from items they no longer used or they are no longer interested in: “Unfortunately, a large number of users want to get the best deal for their branded goods. Of course, they are perfectly entitled to do this, but they are not the kind of people with whom I like to do business” (#14). In some cases, they also try to cheat others or profit from information asymmetry (Albinsson and Perera 2009; Arsel 2013). Interestingly, their membership is shorter, compared to other member profiles. The “educated” were the largest and most active group in this community. They first practice bartering in order to get rid of extra goods and free up space in their homes, to obtain something useful in return (that is, something they really need or even desire for luxury consumption), and to conclude exchanges cleverly, ethically, and mindfully. In a sense, they play the bartering game to pursue a mixed benefits set. The relational and social dimension of bartering is important to them and grows over time. In the process, they tend to develop a network of relationships with preferred exchange partners. The “communards” were the smallest group in the ZR community. These persons are strongly committed to ZR’s emancipatory and transformative dimension. Bartering is part of their personal strategy of sustainable consumption. They also barter as a way to strengthen their relationships with likeminded people. Their needs for any given barter (recycling, disposing, and so on) seem secondary, compared to their ethical and social requirements: “Already as a child I enjoyed organizing little flea markets with my friends, so it was natural for me to join ZR. I have always felt engaged with bartering and sharing as special ways of expressing myself and getting in touch with others” (#21). In development terms, the greedy usually remain greedy. The educated may evolve into communards or, at any rate, may learn to behave in more pro-social ways, especially when dealing with barterers with whom they have developed closer relationships. Communards are strongly devoted to responsibility and sustainability issues inside and outside the

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  129 community, and often voluntarily guide and train other members towards collaboration and pro-social behaviors. Value Assessments in Bartering With the exception of Arsel’s (2013) preliminary attempt, there have been no attempts to deepen our understanding of value assessments in bartering. Albinsson and Perera (2012) generally refer to the value issue as underlying how a lack of money influences the ways barterers manage their deals. Our informants considered two primary value types when bartering: exchange value and use value (Karababa and Kjeldgaard 2013; Venkatesh and Peñaloza 2006). ZR members consider exchange value (Bagozzi 1975) when they explicitly refer to their items’ monetary value. In some cases, they mentioned the articles’ prices, while in others they referred to other elements (for example, brand) as proxies of the items’ intrinsic value: We had bought this flea collar for our cat. When the cat died, we thought about putting it up for exchange. We had spent a lot of money on it, and our salary is not very high, which meant we had to give it an economic value. (#5)

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One of my first experiences was when I offered my husband’s old iPhone in exchange for two child seats. These were very well kept and of a good brand. If I had to buy them, I would have had to paid at least €200. Given the iPhone with a €300 market value lying in a drawer, both of us were happy to exchange. (#24)

Even those who criticized materialistic attitudes and behaviors clearly identified exchange value as a driver of value assessment, albeit in critical terms: “I don’t like those who calculate value to the last cent, that is, ‘I paid a certain amount of money for this and I want it back’” (#8). Members with a more subjective, historical, and context-dependent mode of value assessment considered use value (Holbrook 1999): “I got some accessories for my daughter’s doll and I exchanged a hated tray someone had given us as a gift. I thought it was horrible, while the barterer I exchanged with thought it was wonderful” (#24). These members do not see a strong relationship between the monetary or intrinsic value and the value they attribute to the items they want or wish to get rid of. In some cases, they explicitly negate the role of monetary expenses as a factor or a driver of the value of the items to be exchanged: “In my view, value is not measured by money or the market price, but by utility in a given moment and setting” (#14). Depending on the ZR member’s profile and experience, there were varying attitudes towards exchange value versus value, while other members relied more on monetary or indirect measures (for example, the brand) to determine the exchange value. Other significant concepts of value also emerged from our data, for instance, “identity value” (Karababa and Kjeldgaard 2013; Phillips and Sego 2011). Thus, in given cases, objects can assume additional value because a specific person—usually someone who is highly appreciated, has long been an acquaintance, has similar values, and so on—offered them. In this sense, we also see a “linking value” (Cova 1997; Türe 2014), which can modify the way users estimate the value of what they are giving and receiving (Askegaard and Linnet 2011):

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130  Handbook of the sharing economy These things have an added value that depends on the kind of person who offered them to me. When I see them around in the house, I feel happy and fulfilled. (#18) We met at my place and exchanged a pastry board for silver earrings. And this girl hennaed my hair. During the exchange, we even had a thorough discussion about the sustainability of economic development which I remember with great pleasure. The striking thing was that, once we met, we both realized that the earrings I promised to give her didn’t suit her, so I gave her another pair that looked really good on her. This happened very easily and naturally, even though this pair were far more expensive. (#13)

To conclude, our findings showed that modern barter exchanges are not necessarily guided by strict economic assessments. The use, exchange, identity, and linking values of goods and services (Cova 1997; Karababa and Kjeldgaard 2013; Phillips and Sego 2011; Türe 2014; Venkatesh and Peñaloza 2006) interact with different contextual conditions as well as the barterers’ profiles and objectives. So, for instance, more ethically minded users are more interested in use, identity, or linking value than in exchange value. In contrast, other members relied more on monetary or indirect measures (for example, the brand) of exchange value. We have also underlined how those who are not ethically minded at the outset can improve their awareness of sustainability and solidarity issues owing to their growing involvement in the community and the interactions with more acculturated users. This is an important outcome, because it demonstrates how and to what extent the ZR community transforms the nature of exchanges and value processes, triggering the hybrid nature of bartering.

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Bartering beyond Bartering We have pointed out how the value assessment process of barterers may be influenced by multiple factors, most importantly the relationships between the counterparts in an exchange. This is consistent with what Scaraboto (2015) refers to when describing the hybrid economy, which is characterized by the co-existence of both market and non-market logics that “fluctuate between one value regime or another, or partake of both at the same time, depending on the social relations of specific transactions” (Scaraboto 2015, 155). In our analysis, these dynamics are fostered by the specific setting and the rules of a digital platform such as ZR, which creates opportunities for people to interact and share value and values, even beyond the narrow perspective of bartering. Thus, recurring interactions between users and/or a shared ethos can affect a negotiation process (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016), and can lead to other practices in combination with or even in substitution of bartering. These practices are less based on a strict evaluation of equivalence and on the coincidence of wants between parties. The average ZR user experiences these practices in an advanced practice stage in the community as a result of intense social networking (also offline) and even as a manifestation of a shared identity (Belk 2010) or, at any rate, of common feelings and beliefs. All of this can lead to unexpected consequences in terms of value creation processes. The first of the aforementioned practices is gifting for affective or solidarity reasons (Arnould 2013; Belk 2010). On ZR it manifests itself in three main ways. The first is one-to-one gifting as an alternative to bartering: ZR members sometimes feel committed to realizing other members’ wishes even if they get nothing in exchange:

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  131 Once I received a package with a watch I was interested in. This was a total surprise. In the box there was a brief note in which a barterer with whom I had had only a few exchanges said she wanted me to have this watch. She was giving it to me as a gift because it didn’t suit her taste. I cannot forget her gesture. (#11) I have grown very fond of many of the people I chat with on ZR, and even when they don’t have anything on offer I need to exchange, or when I’m not looking for anything, I’m happy to give them my stuff anyway. (#4)

The second is one-to-one gifting combined with bartering: Some time ago, a ZR friend of mine was at home with flu and fever, as were her relatives, so she was unable to go and buy the appropriate meds for her nebulizer. After some time, we had a barter, and I put these meds in the package. Then she also started putting little surprises into her packages to me. This is an example of the positive feedbacks you can get on ZR. (#3)

The third example of gifting on ZR is one-to-one-to-many gifting, which is very close to charity (Bajde 2009): I work in a nursing home for elderly people. Last year, as Christmas was approaching, I thought it would be great to collect unused items from ZR barterers so as to give each of my beloved old folks a little present. A barterer decided to strongly support me. She started convincing everyone she was in contact in the community to join the cause. Very soon I was literally overwhelmed by stuff from the community! And I’m still receiving things! Almost everyone in the community took a concrete step to help me, which made me realize the real potential of such a platform, which goes well beyond just exchanging goods. (#5)

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In other cases, ZR members circulate some of their resources into the community (Belk 2010). Here, barterers experience sharing, especially in this case, of home-sharing, regardless of ongoing barter exchanges: Last year, I told barterers I would be willing to host those travelling to Sicily on holiday for a meal together, to let them a shower, something like this. One ZR member stopped here for two days, and another with her son for ten days. I hope to get to know others personally. People are always coming and going in my house, and I like sharing. (#14) One of the best experiences I’ve had on ZR was meeting a really nice barterer who lives in Corsica. We’re in touch all the time. My partner and I have also gone there and stayed at her place for a few days. (#5)

Finally, we found time and skills sharing, which involves single users or small groups of barterers: One day I got a phone call from X, who is a very kind barterer. She asked me to help another barterer who was having trouble with her computer and so couldn’t take part in any exchange. I decided to offer my time and expertise, because X was really nice and very gracious. (#22)

Sharing material resources and/or time as open and volunteer community support is actively promoted by the platform’s creators. Here, ZR members just let their resources flow in the community towards a “generic other” (Arnould and Rose 2015). This is the case, for instance, for the “travelling barterer,” an initiative by ZR’s creators to facilitate

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132  Handbook of the sharing economy the delivery of exchanged goods: a third barterer helps those who performed the barter, acting as a courier for one or the other or even both, for free. Similarly, we also found the “barterer as a friend,” a limited number of users who actively participate in the platform’s daily workings, for instance by giving answers to new users’ questions and moderating conversations on ZR’s discussion boards: “I firmly believe in ZR. This is why I became a ‘barterer as a friend’. I feel that this is a way for me to contribute to something valuable even though it requires a lot of work” (#9). In sum, in a platform that is designed to facilitate barter exchanges, acculturation and socialization processes, as well as direct interventions by the platform’s creators (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016), led to the emergence of non-market interaction types. These trends support previous research’s findings about the hybrid nature of exchange settings and the coexistence of different value regimes (Scaraboto and Figueiredo 2017).

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DISCUSSION Our analysis shed light on interesting developments in bartering behaviors driven by important changes in society and fostered by the digital revolution. Bartering is not an inefficient or remote way for people to get the resources they need in their everyday lives. In contrast, in given conditions, consumers consider it within the range of (hybrid) practices they usually rely on, both within and outside the traditional market logic. In this sense, barter exchanges can be considered a viable alternative to primary markets, second-hand markets, and access-based consumption. Bartering is attractive for a wide range of objectives (Arsel 2013) and for various user sets. From this perspective, our analysis differs greatly from previous studies (Albinsson and Perera 2009, 2012; Kozinets 2002). ZR is an open platform that offers members repeated and systematic engagement with bartering practices and several acculturation opportunities that influence the ways users manage their exchanges. In this context, we saw how personal profiles, objectives, and acculturation enable users to get used to bartering exchanges and to promote social exchange types along with traditional, market-like ones (Hofmann et al. 2017). This confirms that new exchange practices exist (and can thrive) alongside the dominant market exchange paradigm (Arsel 2015; Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016; Ozanne and Ozanne 2016; Scaraboto 2015; Scaraboto and Figueiredo 2017), and that these practices now go beyond the strict anti-consumption domain (Kozinets 2002). They represent hybrid interaction types that integrate two value regime poles (Scaraboto 2015). This strongly affects the sphere of value, which should be conceived as a process (Arnould 2013; Arsel 2015; Scaraboto 2015) that stems from significant interactions and is situated midway between the worlds of price and pricelessness. In sum, market and non-market logics are increasingly intertwined owing to the new opportunities offered by the digital revolution, and owing to new attitudes and behaviors of empowered individuals. Recirculation markets create new opportunities for people’s value creation processes and tend to challenge the traditional market-based exchange paradigm (Arsel 2015). This is an aspect that the sharing economy is contributing to (Belk 2010, 2014b; Botsman and Rogers 2010), pushing companies operating in primary

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  133 markets to find new and intriguing ways to reach consumers. Further, new business opportunities arise for and in digital platforms (Perren and Kozinets 2018) that allow one to creatively cross boundaries between different practices as consumers develop integrated sets of acquisition practices based on access, buying, gifting, sharing, and so on. Opportunities also arise for policy makers to foster pro-social behaviors by promoting proper network infrastructures (Scaraboto and Figueiredo 2017).

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134  Handbook of the sharing economy Giesler, Markus (2006), “Consumer Gift System: Netnographic Insights from Napster,” Journal of Consumer Research, 33 (September), 283‒90. Giesler, Markus (2008), “Conflict and Compromise: Drama in Marketplace Evolution,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34 (April), 739‒53. Graeber, David (2001), Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, New York: Palgrave. Graeber, David (2011), Debt: The First 5,000 Years, New York: Melville Press. Granovetter, Mark (1985), “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology, 91 (November), 481‒510. Habibi, Mohammad R., Andrea Kim, and Michel Laroche (2016), “From Sharing to Exchange: An Extended Framework of Dual Modes of Collaborative Nonownership Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (April), 277‒94. Hill, Ronald P. and Mark Stamey (1990), “The Homeless in America: An Examination of Possessions and Consumption Behaviors,” Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (December), 303‒21. Hofmann, Eva, Barbara Hartl, and Elfriede Penz (2017), “Power versus Trust: What Matters More in Collaborative Consumption?” Journal of Services Marketing, 31 (November), 589‒603. Holbrook, Morris B. (1999), “Introduction to Consumer Value,” in Consumer Value: A Framework for Analysis and Research, ed. Morris B. Holbrook, London: Routledge, 1‒28. Humphrey, Caroline and Stephen Hugh-Jones (1992), Barter, Exchange, and Value: An Anthropological Approach, New York: Cambridge University Press. Huneke, E. Mary (2005), “The Face of the Un-Consumer: An Empirical Examination of the Practice of Voluntary Simplicity in the United States,” Psychology and Marketing, 22 (July), 527‒50. Jevons, Stanley W. (1875), Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, New York: Appleton & Company. Kaikati, Andrew M. and Jack G. Kaikati (2010), “Let’s Make a Deal: The Growing Role of Barter in the Marketplace,” Wall Street Journal, January 25. Karababa, Eminegül and Dannie Kjeldgaard (2013), “Value in Marketing: Toward Sociocultural Perspectives,” Marketing Theory, 14 (February), 119‒27. Kozinets, Robert V. (2002), “Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man,” Journal of Consumer Research, 29 (June), 20‒38. Marvasti, Akbar and David Smyth (1998), “Barter in the US Economy: A Macroeconomic Analysis,” Applied Economics, 30 (August), 1077‒88. Möhlmann, Areike (2015), “Collaborative Consumption: Determinants of Satisfaction and the Likelihood of Using a Sharing Economy Option Again,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14 (May‒June), 193‒207. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Paul W. Ballantine (2010), “Sharing as a Form of Anti-consumption? An Examination of Toy Library Users,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 9 (November‒December), 485‒98. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2011), “A Child’s Right to Play: The Social Construction of Civic Virtues in Toy Libraries,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 30 (Fall), 264‒78. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2016), “How Alternative Consumer Markets can Build Community Resiliency,” European Journal of Marketing, 50 (March‒April), 330‒57. Perren, Rebeca and Robert V. Kozinets (2018), “Lateral Exchange Markets: How Social Platforms Operate in a Networked Economy,” Journal of Marketing, 82 (January), 20‒36. Phillips, J. Barbara and Trina Sego (2011), “The Role of Identity in Disposal: Lessons from Mothers’ Disposal of Children’s Possessions,” Marketing Theory, 11 (December), 435‒54. Polanyi, Karl (1944), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Roos, Daniel and Rüdiger Hahn (2017), “Does Shared Consumption Affect Consumers’ Values, Attitudes, and Norms? A Panel Study,” Journal of Business Research, 77 (August), 113‒23. Scaraboto, Daiane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything in Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (June), 152‒76. Scaraboto, Daiane and Bernardo Figueiredo (2017), “Holy Mary Goes ’Round: Using Object Circulation to  Promote Hybrid Value Regimes in Alternative Economies,” Journal of Macromarketing, 37 (June), 180‒92. Shaw, Deirdre and Caroline Moraes (2009), “Voluntary Simplicity: An Exploration of Market Interactions,” International Journal of Consumer Studies, 33 (March), 215‒23. Sheth, Jagdish N., Nirmal K. Sethia, and Shanthi Srinivas (2011), “Mindful Consumption: A Customer-Centric Approach to Sustainability,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39 (February), 21‒39. Türe, Meltem (2014), “Value-in-Disposition: Exploring how Consumers Derive Value from Disposition of Possessions,” Marketing Theory, 14 (March), 53‒72. Venkatesh, Alladi and Lisa Peñaloza (2006), “The Value of Value in CCT,” Marketing Theory, 14 (March), 135‒8. Wilhelms, Mark P., Katrin Merfeld, and Sven Henkel (2017), “Yours, Mine, and Ours: A User-Centric

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The new face of bartering in collaborative networks  135

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Analysis of Opportunities and Challenges in Peer-to-Peer Asset Sharing,” Business Horizons, 60 (November‒ December), 771‒81. Zelizer, Viviana (2002), “How Care Counts,” Contemporary Sociology, 31 (March), 115‒19. Zelizer, Viviana (2011), Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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11.  Sharing economy to the rescue? The case of timebanking Carmen Valor and Eleni Papaoikonomou

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INTRODUCTION Timebanks are a type of market where participants have the double but asynchronous role of producer and consumer. Users provide services to other users earning time credits that may be later used to obtain a service that they need; in turn, the recipient has a debt in time credits and “repays” by providing a service to the same or a different member of the timebank. In this way, time is “banked” and may be used when the member needs it. In timebanks, time is used as an alternative type of currency for the exchange of services, that is, an hour’s work for an hour’s work. Exchanges include a variety of services from gardening to child care (Seyfang 2006) depending on the skill set of the members and what they choose to offer and demand. Timebanking has been studied from the social policy perspective (e.g., North 2003; Seyfang 2003), but has received very little attention as a space of exchange in the marketing and consumer behavior literature (for notable exceptions, see Laamanen et al. 2015; Ozanne and Ozanne 2016). Furthermore, timebanking has received limited attention in sharing economy studies. There are many definitions of the sharing economy. Timebanks would not be explicitly considered under Meelen and Frenken’s (2015, 1) definition where the sharing economy is about “consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets (‘idle capacity’), possibly for money.” This definition echoes previous conceptualization of the access-based economy (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). Although timebanks are based on customer-to-customer (C2C) exchanges similar to other sharing exchanges systems (Frenken and Schor 2017), skills, and not assets, are the object of the exchange. Yet, there are other definitions of the sharing economy acknowledging that immaterial assets can be object of exchange (e.g., Dubois et al. 2014; Schor 2014). Timebanking is an example of a not-for-profit peer-to-peer service exchange platform (a for-profit homologue would be Task Rabbit). Many authors agree that the term “sharing” has been employed loosely in the case of the sharing economy (Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016; Frenken and Schor 2017; Schor 2014). Eckhardt and Bardhi (2016) argue that different high-profile “sharing economy” practices such as renting an apartment through Airbnb should not be regarded as sharing because they are market-mediated, placing specific expectations of reciprocity on the participating parties and reproducing the existing market exchange logic. Instead, they relate sharing to non-market mediated social exchanges that take place within the family or the community, where reciprocity is understood in different terms. However, as we will explain throughout this chapter, timebanks are caught in-between market and non-market logics, which makes them an interesting case to study within the sharing economy. 136

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The case of timebanking  137 One of the main differences between timebanking and other sharing systems is that timebanks are chain-generalized exchange systems that require indirect and multilateral reciprocity from users. So, whereas in some sharing contexts users have the option of being either the provider or the consumer (Benoit et al. 2017), in timebanks users are explicitly required to take on both roles, in order to ensure the continuity of exchanges. As we shall see, the uniqueness of timebanking is that, on the one hand, timebanks are forced to be well-functioning markets, which translates in exchanges taking place. On the other hand, there is constant tension so that timebanks do not lose their non-market ideals. Timebanking has been celebrated as an experiment towards a post-growth and pro-common-based economy, although this notion has also encountered criticism (Cahn 2001; Dittmer 2013; Laamanen et al. 2015; North 2018). Beyond economic, social and environmental motives that have been often observed in previous literature on the sharing economy (Benoit et al. 2017), timebanks put forward the political dimension of this project towards a more democratic and fair economy and society. Whereas other forms of the sharing economy are thriving (especially in transportation and lodging), timebanking is far from being institutionalized (Papaoikonomou and Valor 2017), as the failure rate of these networks demonstrates (North 2018). During fieldwork, the difficulties in maintaining active and working timebanks was often emphasized by informants. Thus, the research aim of this chapter is to explain why timebanks fail to institutionalize as marketplaces and finally collapse. Our findings enrich our understanding of the institutionalization of sharing economy markets by focusing on a problematic case instead of a success story. The theoretical underpinnings of this chapter are found in reciprocity and neoinstitutional theories used to account for the findings of a three-year fieldwork study in Spanish and Greek timebanks. This chapter positions timebanking within the sharing economy, and by integrating previous work by the authors it attempts to explain why timebanks fail in the institutionalization process. We conclude that the institutionalization of timebanking is subject to conflicting logics, which in turn means that the objectification of the multiple institutional logics creates tensions. Timebanks do not function successfully as markets since exchanges are not carried out, so they may eventually disappear. Our findings reveal the incapability of timebanking to institutionalize a hybrid model that successfully blends functionalism and symbolism, which ultimately explains their demise. Also, the chapter will show that the cultivation of indirect reciprocity is a difficult endeavor among consumers already socialized in the practices of balanced, direct reciprocity typical of neoliberal markets.

TIMEBANKING AND THE SHARING ECONOMY In this section we discuss how timebanking is positioned within the sharing economy. A key distinguishing feature of timebanking is the type of reciprocity on which timebanking is built (see Table 11.1). There are two basic types of social exchange, and reciprocity is understood differently in each (e.g., Ekeh 1974; Sahlins 1972): exchanges based on restricted mutual reciprocity (between two agents), and generalized exchanges at the group or /network level. In the former case, dyadic exchanges take place that result in structures of direct reciprocity (Molm et al. 2007). In the latter case, reciprocity is indirect

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138  Handbook of the sharing economy

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Table 11.1  Timebanking in the sharing economy Type of exchange

Reciprocity expected

Market versus non-market logics

The notion of ownership

Examples in the sharing economy

Restricted  mutual exchange Group  generalized exchange

Dyadic and direct, market pricing and balanced reciprocity None explicitly, communal sharing and notion of generalized reciprocity

Market logics, for-profit

Airbnb, Uber, BlaBlaCar, etc.

Network  generalized exchange

Indirect reciprocity at the network level, equality matching and balanced reciprocity

In-between logics

No transfer of ownership, access to assets granted Two types: A. Transfer of ownership through redistribution B. Common, shared ownership No transfer of ownership

Non-market logics, not-for-profit

Freecycle, not-for-profit recirculation networks Toys libraries, tools libraries, etc. Timebanking

since there is no one-to-one correspondence. There are different subtypes of generalized exchanges: group generalized exchanges and chain generalized (Ekeh 1974) or network generalized exchanges (Yamagishi and Cook 1993). In group generalized exchanges, the network members pool their resources and either collectively receive the benefits generated (group-focused) or specific individuals enjoy the collectively produced benefits (individual-focused). Here, reciprocity is not expected. For instance, tool libraries or the toy libraries described by Ozanne and Ballantine (2010) are non-reciprocal pool of resources. In network generalized exchanges, A gives to B, but B does not give to A but to someone else. In other words, the return is expected and received but it can be from a different member of the network. There is no expectation of immediate or direct reciprocity, nor is it linked to a benefactor (Levine and Shah 2003); rather it links all parties to the exchange together in an integrated transaction (Uehara 1990). Timebanks fit in the description of network generalized exchange. Indirect reciprocity implies a certain degree of uncertainty that reciprocity occurs (Molm et al. 2007), but this is reduced when members have equal structural power (this is the case in the timebanks) or when the network is of small size (Molm 2010). To further delineate timebanking when compared to other sharing economy initiatives, we draw on the typologies proposed by Sahlins (1972) and Fiske (1992). The absence of reciprocity is the main feature of communal sharing, one of the basic forms of sociality identified by Fiske (1992) in his seminal paper. Communal sharing follows the Marxist logic of “from each according to his ability to work to each according to his needs.” No record is kept of the contribution of each member; rather, “people take what they need and contribute what they can” (Fiske 1992, 693). This form is different from equality matching, whose main feature is the implicit obligation to reciprocate. In equality matching the main concern is to have a balanced relationship and participants keep track of

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The case of timebanking  139 exchanges to assess how balanced it is. Equality matching therefore works on a model of egalitarian distributive justice. Market pricing is based mostly on transactions with formal and informal contracts. Sahlins identifies the types of generalized and balanced reciprocity that differ regarding not only the expectation for reciprocity but also its immediacy and equivalence of returns. Generalized reciprocity has an altruistic notion, and the expectation for reciprocity is indefinite. For instance, material objects may be offered and, if possible and necessary, returned. To connect with Fiske’s forms of sociality, generalized reciprocity is expected in Fiske’s communal sharing and in group generalized exchanges. Balanced reciprocity equals to a balanced give-and-take. Here returns are stipulated in terms of time, amount and type. Balanced reciprocity could be expected in equality matching or market pricing although there might be differences regarding the immediacy, quality and quantity of returns. For example, well-known sharing ventures such as Uber and Airbnb are based on market pricing and balanced reciprocity that is specific in terms of immediacy and type of returns: one party consumes a service in exchange for payment that needs to be given within a specific timeframe. However, timebanks are also an example of balanced reciprocity given that reciprocity is explicitly expected and the type of returns is clear beforehand, for instance an hour of your time for an hour of my time. However, as aforementioned the reciprocity is neither dyadic nor direct and there are no stipulations regarding the immediacy of the return.

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METHOD This chapter is the result of a three-year research project carried out by the authors during the years 2014‒16. The remaining sections are built on our findings. The tenets of grounded theory were adopted for the data collection and analysis. Nevertheless, we initially carried out an exhaustive literature review of Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS) and timebanking to gain theoretical sensitivity (Strauss and Corbin 1990). As established in grounded theory the process of analysis was iterative and intertwined with data collection and literature review in order to interpret the findings. Themes emerging from the data analysis led to subsequent rounds of data collection (Strauss and Corbin 1990). Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered, as summarized in Table 11.2. Our fieldwork was conducted during the economic crisis that severely hit Greece and Spain. At this time, timebanking gained momentum: the majority of timebanks that participated in our fieldwork were created after 2008; at the peak of the recession (2011‒12) they attracted much media attention and gained visibility. However, the prototypical user was not one of the crisis victims: the average timebank user is not unemployed or under threat of social exclusion.

TIMEBANKING AND PLURALISM OF LOGICS Following Thornton and Ocasio (2008, 101, citing Thornton and Ocasio 1984) institutional logics are defined as “the socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs and rules by which individuals produce and

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140  Handbook of the sharing economy Table 11.2  Data sources Research data techniques

Description of fieldwork

In-depth interviews

51 semi-structured phone or personal interviews with members and timebank brokers/managers of Spanish and Greek timebanks (38 with timebanks brokers) Participation in three regional or national meetings of the Spanish Association of Timebanks (http://adbdt.org); participant observation in three timebank meetings and as followers of 14 timebank Facebook fan pages Analysis of posts by the Spanish timebank Development Association, texts and images found on websites, norms and handbooks of 20 timebanks There are no studies that have quantified the universe of users of timebanks; yet, according to timebank managers, the prototypical profile of their timebank is a middle-aged, graduate woman

Participant observation

Archival data 225 self-administered online questionnaires

reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space and provide meaning to their social reality.” More specifically, field logics should be understood here as shared, taken-for-granted guidelines about what goals to pursue and the adequate means to do it that inadvertently shape the cognition and behavior of actors (Pache and Santos 2010). Our findings led us to identify four main logics or ideals for timebanking. Instances of most of these logics have been found in other studies and countries (see a summary in Table 11.3).

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The Social Logic This logic aims at tightening ties among neighbors and encouraging community development. Timebanks adopting this logic emphasize the social role that timebanking plays as it fosters bonding and bridging, the two mechanisms of social capital. For example, the importance of bringing together people of different ages, backgrounds and nationalities is often emphasized. In the case of Spain, these timebanks could be nested in other organizations, such as schools, local or neighbourhood associations, town council family services, or non-governmental organizations (for example, the Red Cross). One of the interviewed timebank managers explains their goals in these terms: “[This timebank] is an instrument of mutual aid, a space where people can experience the renovating experience of exchange, encouraging the relationship between different individuals.” Under the social logic, managers see timebanks as instrumental to foster caring relationships and to create social capital. Timebanks facilitate the creation of communitarian spaces where everyone is needed and appreciated. The Political Logic The political logic is associated with political and ideological goals: timebanking is promoted as form of resistance to global capitalism (North 2018) and/or as a way to contribute to the transition to a post-growth economy (Dittmer 2013), or at least to an economy

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The case of timebanking  141 Table 11.3  Institutional logics and timebanking Logic type

Main objective of timebanking

Examples in previous literature

Social logic

Strengthen ties among neighbors, nurture bonding and trust, develop caring relationships

Political logic

Resistance to neoliberal globalization and capitalist ethos, instrumental in a transition to sustainable, post-growth regimes Timebanking as an instrument to fight poverty and exclusion

Instances of this logic are found in Italy and France (Amorevole et al. 1998; Boyle 2014; Del Moral 2013), Japan (Hayashi 2012; Miller 2008), the United States (US) and New Zealand (Ozanne and Ozanne 2011, 2016) Instances of this logic are found in Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (UK) (Laamanen et al. 2015; North 2018), US (Collom 2011) Instances of this logic are found in UK (e.g., Seyfang 2003), Sweden (Molnar 2011), US (Collom 2008), Canada and France (Blanc 2009), and Japan (Boyle 2014)

Social welfare logic

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Market logic

Timebanks created by start-up firms as transactional spaces devoid of social or political goals; timebanks promoted as a space to develop and nurture entrepreneurial and selfemployment capacity

based on ethical values (Cahn 2001). Timebanks created by social movements, such as assembly-based square movements in Spain (15M movement) and Greece (Syntagma square movement), are moulded into such logics. Managers of these timebanks echo the well-established discourse (e.g., Dittmer 2013; Seyfang and Longhurst 2013) of community currencies, including timebanking, as instrumental in a transition to sustainable socio-economic regimes (Collom 2008; Del Moral 2013). For instance, the manager of a timebank created by the neighborhood assembly in the aftermath of the 15M movement explains that the timebank “allows solving needs without resorting to the market.” Thus, timebanking is celebrated and appropriated as a form of resistance to neoliberal markets. This view of timebanks as a symbolic and functional place of resistance is justified on the basis of the type of money used. “Monetary speculation” is the founding principle of the current financial system and seen as the main reason for the concurrent crisis. Thus, the time-dollar system, insofar as it prevents accumulation and speculation, is praised as the founding block of new exchange spaces and markets. In timebanks it is not possible to “amass capital by detracting it from the work of other people,” continues this timebank manager. Thus, the horizontalism and equality of timebanks is inherently linked to a vision of timebanking as an institution that could facilitate the transition to non-capitalist pro-common societies. Also, the political logic emphasizes a more egalitarian and communitarian economic habitus, which is, per se, seen as a confrontation to capitalist markets embedded in a view of actors as utility-maximizers, competitive and selfish. As another timebank manager explains:

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142  Handbook of the sharing economy [in the assembly] we decided to promote this type of economy as a complementary or alternative space, to solve the problems we find in the market economy . . . It is an extraordinary tool to encourage non-commercial relationships within the community, and to put into practice the equality principle, since the time of everyone is equally valuable. Value is not defined by the invisible—and often unfair—market’s hand.

Also, timebanking is celebrated as a solution to the political crisis: the erosion of trust in institutions, the increasing disaffection with traditional democratic structures, make citizens turn to other spaces such as timebanking where decision-making is more assembly-based, and citizens feel they can regain control and autonomy over local matters (North 2018). Finally, in the context of the severe ecological crisis, aggravated by markets that accelerate rather than reduce consumption, timebanking is mythologized as an ideal type of market for more sustainable and democratized economies (Dittmer 2013; Laamanen et al. 2015). This is why ecological groups and new political movements arising from recent assembly-based movements promoted the creation of timebanks as an experimental field for new economic structures and new forms of solidarity.

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The Social Welfare Logic Initially, timebanks were promoted as a tool to facilitate inclusion and equality among the unemployed and the socially excluded (for example, the elderly or the disabled) (Collom 2008). To a large extent, timebanking tries to fill the social problems created by the current system: the erosion of the “economy of care” due to the impossibility of reaching full employment and the criminalization or denigration of non-paid jobs (Collom 2008; Seyfang 2006). In a context of growing dismantlement of the welfare state, there is a parallel growth in the attractiveness of timebanking as a replacement, as it facilitates mutual aid, empowers communities and contributes to greater social resilience (Ozanne and Ozanne 2011). For these reasons timebanking was also promoted politically by neoliberal governments in other countries. Timebanking was a central instrument in UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society scheme (Del Moral 2013), although this political support has been heavily criticized for moving the responsibility for social inclusion to informal social networks, thus accelerating the demise of the welfare state. Our fieldwork in Greece revealed that some timebanks were explicitly oriented towards the poorest and more marginalized segments of the population (for example, homeless and long-term unemployed) which grew with the crisis, as the following quote shows: “You would think that in Kifissia [a typically upper class neighborhood of Athens] there is no poverty. But we have people [in the timebank] that may have no electricity to pay their bills and they are ashamed of saying it.” These timebanks were created as part of the Social Structures program which was initiated by local governments to fight poverty and encompasses other initiatives, such as the Social Pharmacy, Social Gardens and Social Dining. The Market Logic The market logic does not feature in existing studies; probably, as we have argued elsewhere (Valor et al. 2017), because the other logics may obscure the fact that at the core of the timebanking is the creation of a marketplace where peers exchange with one another.

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The case of timebanking  143 Yet, references to timebanks as a exchange platform or network are commonly found in the web descriptions of the studied timebanks. For instance, one of the studied timebanks explained timebanking in its website as “an infrastructure to exchange knowledge and activity time among its members.” Yet, the interviews show that the market logic is peripheral: the set-up of a system for exchange is seen as instrumental to achieve other political, social and/or economic goals (Collom et al. 2012). The market logic is best identified in the timebanks created by entrepreneurs (for example, CronoBank) or for-profit firms (for example, InfoJobs) with the intention of better preparing their users for the market through either employment or entrepreneurship. Therefore, the services provided by these timebanks are oriented to professionals and may involve reviewing curricula vitae, job interview practice, or teaching web design, for example. These timebanks are not promoted to the socially marginalized and are not envisaged as an “alternative market space.” Instead, they are complementary to the market because they aim to prepare users to better compete in the conventional marketplace. Certainly, although different logics are delineated here, this does not mean that they are not blended at times. The social and political nature of timebanking is usually blended. Only in market timebanks are social connections not pursued, as most exchanges are carried out online without users ever meeting each other, which further emphasizes its utilitarian purpose.

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THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF TIMEBANKS: NORMS FOR DUAL-ROLE AND RECIPROCITY, PRICING AND ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS Following the model of institutionalization outlined by Hasselbladh and Kallinikos (2000), we examined the objectification processes whereby ideas are developed into discourses and supported by “systems of measurement and documentation” (ibid., 704). In other words, objectification is the process whereby logics are instantiated in particular organizations via the establishment of objects (that is, norms, roles, procedures and devices). These objects create the structure that will in turn frame human action in the context of timebanking. As previously explained, timebanks are an example of generalized systems of exchange. Previous research has showed that such systems build trust, allow a greater solidarity and perceived support, and create generalized rights and duties (Cook and Rice 2006; Levine and Shah 2003; Molm et al. 2007). However, they also present coordination problems and have a strong potential for free-riders. These problems are usually solved by socialization and formal control mechanisms, normally “network structures that provide some sort of localized information and accountability” (Cook and Rice 2006, 69). As we will see, the objectification procedures carried out here are, on the one hand, permeated by the logic into which the particular timebank is moulded and, on the other hand, they need to take into account how exchanges are coordinated and incentivized, and free-riders eliminated. The objectification procedures are fundamental to instantiate the logic into which the timebank is moulded. Timebanks’ rules shape how exchanges should be carried out and are formally presented in handbooks, on timebanks’ websites and orally explained to new

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144  Handbook of the sharing economy and, occasionally, older members. Given the great diversity of logics among timebanks, similarities and variations regarding the established norms, practices and devices are observed. Here, we present the three core objectification processes that most impinge on the interactions among users.

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The Double Role of Timebank Members and Reciprocity Timebank members are expected to enact a double role as givers and demanders of services. This characteristic demarcates timebanking from other related fields, such as volunteerism, but it also makes timebanking different from other sharing economy ventures where participants may choose to enact one of the two roles; contrary to them, timebanks require from their members both to offer and to ask for services, or the market will collapse. Thus, the enactment of the double role is key to the survival of timebanks. The rationale lies in: (1) dealing with the issue of free-riders; and (2) incentivizing exchanges at the network level. Simultaneously, and especially in social timebanks, timebank managers often emphasize that services are not professional, while participants are discouraged to exchange repeatedly with the same peer. It is explained that timebanking does not want to impinge on the self-employed and small and medium-sized enterprises. Hence, it is accepted to have an exchange for occasional English conversation, but if a participant seeks a regular English teacher they are encouraged to seek this service outside the timebank, in the conventional market. In most timebanks, participants are encouraged to have a zero-credit balance, avoiding being “indebted” or with too much “surplus.” This is a widely used norm to ensure that participants enact the dual role and engage in network generalized reciprocity. Some timebanks forbid doing exchanges if the account reaches a given amount of time credits. In those cases, these users are forced to “spend” the time credit. Likewise, if a participant has minus 10 time-points, they are forced to provide a service to another participant to reduce the debt. Until the debt is dealt with, the indebted timebank member cannot ask for other services. To prevent accumulation, smaller quantities are set. So, often if a person has a non-balanced account they will be contacted by the time broker and a solution will be found to restore the balance. This norm needs, in turn, that exchanges are carefully accounted for through a number of devices that can be found in commercial or market-mediated exchanges: check books, online accounts, and records of total and individual exchanges. Pricing Systems Two pricing methods are found: an egalitarian pricing system (one hour equal one hour, regardless of the service paid) or a non-egalitarian pricing system. The egalitarian accounting system is the most common system and was actually established as a foundational pillar of timebanking by Cahn (2001): everyone’s time has the same value, independently of users’ education, experience or background, and independently of how these are priced in the market. Hence, everyone’s contribution is of equal worth. Variations of the egalitarian model are found, since some timebanks use only the equal pricing system, whereas others have incorporated half-hour credits and hour-and-a-half

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The case of timebanking  145 credits to better represent the exact time spent in certain exchanges. Some social and most political timebanks reject such careful accounting and exact pricing, and embrace a broader and more fluid notion of exchanges. Nevertheless, social welfare Greek timebanks constitute the exception as they adopt a non-egalitarian pricing system, similar to that used in the commercial market. For example, they might “charge” 15 time-points for a haircut and 40 time-points units for a medical examination. All the social welfare timebanks in our fieldwork use this system, but the prices of services vary among them. For instance, an English lesson may be priced with 20 time-points by a timebank in Athens, versus 35 time-points in a timebank in a smaller provincial city. Prices are defined in a centralized top-down market by timebank brokers who claim to “follow the market rules,” for example, less supply of English lessons in smaller cities and higher prices. This pricing strategy is justified in order to attract a more diverse profile of professionals. Indeed, previous research (Dittmer 2013; Seyfang 2006) has suggested that an egalitarian pricing of time may deter certain types of professional services from joining the timebank, because they might see their work as “undervalued.” Indeed, some of our informants were reluctant to offer services for which they were paid outside the timebank. To illustrate, one of the users was a professional photographer. He offered to teach photography but refused doing professional photographs, so to demarcate his professional life from his activity at the timebank.

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Peers’ Evaluation A common challenge in most sharing economy ventures is how to build trust among participants so that they will proceed to exchange with strangers (Ert et al. 2016). Devices such as identity checks, photo-sharing and online peer evaluations can be found in the BlaBlaCar or Airbnb platforms. Although market and some social timebanks have incorporated such tools to address the lack of trust, others have criticized these practices. Their argument is that this type of evaluation could potentially marginalize some members and limit activity, whereas at the same time it assimilates timebanks to conventional markets, a move that is severely rejected.

CONFLICTS THAT DESTABILIZE TIMEBANKING The previous discussion has shown that the objectification processes that could facilitate institutionalizing one logic (for example, the market logic) are rejected as they collide with another logic (the social or political logic). Thus, we observed tensions among logics that jeopardize the institutionalization of timebanking. Logics pluralism is pervasive in all fields and does not necessarily imply the demise of the institution (Besharov and Smith 2014; Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016). However, in timebanking, the inherent tensions between the political or social logic and the market logic are so far unresolved. As previous research has found, unless organizations hybridize or blend oppositional logics, the market may be destabilized (Scaraboto 2015). This section explores conflicts around three main issues: the users’ enactment of the double role, the functional value of timebanks, and trust-building. Unresolved conflicts among logics lead to the failed objectification of these three aspects that are critical

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146  Handbook of the sharing economy antecedents of exchanges. As emerged during the interviews and was later confirmed by the survey, these were the main reasons why users do not exchange with one another, remaining inactive, which eventually leads managers to shut down the timebank due to lack of activity.

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Enactment of a Double Role According to the interviews with timebank managers the main problem encountered is that they attract many users who wish to provide services but are reluctant to demand them. This problem shows a failure to institutionalize the double role of timebank users and the type of reciprocity expected. Timebank users are attracted by the social and political logic of timebanking but do not necessarily want to engage in transactions with other users. This ambivalence is partly explained by the tensions in the institutionalization of timebanking. Timebanks make much use of a communal sharing rhetoric (Fiske 1992) on their websites, as the emphasis is put on pooling resources and improving the social fabric of the neighborhood, or on resisting capitalism and constructing more sustainable socio-economic regimes. This rhetoric successfully appeals to users, as the survey showed: users joined the timebank seeking social and political goals, rather than utilitarian goals. Such goals may be satisfied just by adopting the provider role or by being members of the timebank even when they do not carry out a single exchange. Obviously, if all users provide services and none of them demands, activity is limited at the network level, which in turn jeopardizes the survival of the timebank not only as a market but also as a social and political project. As one of the timebank managers explains: “They don’t understand that time is a currency, they think they are asking for a favour. They see it as assistance, but it is not.” This quote evidences the difficulties of users to blend or hybridize the social and market logic, which results in fewer or no transactions. Although norms are put in place to ensure the double role, such as the zero-credit account, their intention is to deal with the free-riders threat. Locking the accounts may have proven successful in preventing the free-rider problem, as timebank managers acknowledged, since users find themselves obliged to reciprocate to maintain access to the network. This was corroborated in the interviews with timebank users. One of them explained that when she had a 10 time-points credit she would stop demanding services, as she did not want to be “in debt.” However, such norms do not allow for preventing the reverse problem: participants do not demand services. Our findings suggest that the main reason for this missing demand is that timebanks do not cover users’ utilitarian needs; or, in other words, they have failed in constituting themselves as attractive markets. Past literature has also hinted at limited demand as the main reason for timebank failure (Dittmer 2013; Ozanne and Ozanne 2011); yet, it has been interpreted as a result of shame, of reluctance to be in a dependency position, or lack of understanding of the nature of exchange in timebanking. Our work, in contrast, suggests that the competing institutional logics affect the objectification processes and may also explain why users do not enact the dual role: although users are forced to demand, other norms minimize the perceived functional value, which leads to fewer exchanges. We explain this next.

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The case of timebanking  147 Functional Value of Timebanking One of the main reasons why users do not carry out exchanges is that they do not find the services they are looking for; or when they do, arranging for the exchange may be effortful and time-consuming, implying negotiations to find the right time and place for the exchange. The mismatch between the demanded and the offered services is apparent in our study. Also, the expectations about the quality of service are low, so some timebank participants claim to end up using commercial services. The norms discussed above create, in part, these tensions. As other authors have also claimed (Dittmer 2013), the one-for-one pricing system crowds out professional services from the timebanks. In addition, the insistence on demarcation from commercial services leads to emphasis on the non-professional nature of the services provided, which reduces the quality expectations even more. Users are afraid of asking for services in the timebank because, as one of them confessed, “if I pay, the service will be more professional.” This shows that users do not see time-points as a valid form of payment and, more broadly, fail to see that the timebank creates functional value. The limited engagement with the market logic further explains why the exchanges are neither satisfactory nor convenient, whereas these two criteria are highly valued by users. In line with Ozanne and Ozanne (2011), users evaluate the timebank in terms of the traditional marketplace and the exchanges that take place within it. This seems logical, as timebank members have been socialized as consumers in the traditional marketplace, whereas timebanking proposes a different model of exchange in which they are yet to be acculturated. In sum, tensions between the social and political logic versus the market logic are resolved in favour of the former; this thwarts the utilitarian dimension of timebanking, as it fails to institutionalize a veritable alternative market system.

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Trust-Building Trust is essential for any market to work. Trust is a recurrent issue in sharing economy studies, since “stranger sharing” may be avoided (Schor 2014). In fact, according to Arcidiacono et al. (2018), reputation becomes the equivalent of value in the sharing economy. Different platforms such as Airbnb aim to deal with this issue by using a number of practices such as ratings or the use of personal photos (Ert et al. 2016). Undoubtedly, trust can be created by hard regulatory systems with explicit norms and tight enforcement systems in case of breaching. However, the nature of timebanking, as it is the case of other sharing-based systems, prevents it from implementing such enforcement mechanisms. If a user does not show up for an exchange or performs it badly, the only possible “penalty” is to eventually remove them from the user base. In this context, sharing platforms resort to soft measures, such as the aforementioned identity checks, photo-displays and peer evaluations. Some timebanks have implemented the use of a personal profile with photo included, but many are reluctant to implement the peer rating system, which has been proven to be the most successful in creating trust. The main reason for their reluctance is that it would negatively impinge on the cherished equality and horizontalism principles of timebanking. We find examples of both political and social timebanks that reject using an evaluation system because they deem it important to increase the exchanges of all members, not only the “best” ones, whereas this would assimilate the timebank to a company that adheres

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148  Handbook of the sharing economy to a market logic. These systems may lead to the type of concentration and accumulation that is found in neoliberal markets. It would imply a violation of the egalitarian principle, a cornerstone of timebanking as a form of resistance. However, this also implies that trust is not created, which leads to fewer exchanges. Once again, there are tensions between the political and social logic and the market logic which destabilize the institutionalization of timebanks. Timebank managers recognize the problem and aim to deal with it mainly through social gatherings or the implementation of group exchanges. In other words, trust emerges because of the social relations created among users that may also entail exchanges. Hence, instead of arranging for a dyadic exchange of a yoga lesson, the lesson is imparted to a group; each member of the group pays the instructor, who cashes the time-credit and can spend it on other services. In other timebanks, the timebank manager acts as trust mediator because managers are in charge of doing follow-ups after the exchange, informally evaluating the provider and recommending them to users for future exchanges. However, an up-side of tighter social relationships is that at times members refuse to price and keep track of the exchanges between them. So, what previously constituted an exchange between timebank members becomes a favour between friends that goes “unaccounted” and “unpaid,” which suggests that users may implicitly share Dittmer’s (2013) critique of timebanks commodifying personal relations.

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DISCUSSION This chapter has conceptualized timebanking as an alternative marketplace and situated it in the context of the sharing economy. While other ventures of the sharing economy, moulded more clearly into the market logic, are success stories, timebanking faces more difficulties in surviving. According to Benoit et al. (2017), more research should be carried out about why certain sharing platforms are successful and can efficiently manage the requirements of both customers and providers. In a similar vein, it is useful to understand why certain sharing economy initiatives fail. Building on the findings of three-year fieldwork in Spain and Greece, this chapter has provided an explanation of why timebanks collapse through the lens of neo-institutional theory and reciprocity. Timebanking is an institution in the making, moulded into plural logics. Although some of these logics are highly compatible with one another (for example, the political with the social logic), our findings unveil tensions especially between the market logic and these other two logics. These market and non-market logics imply divergent views about the goals to pursue and the means to pursue them (Besharov and Smith 2014). These incompatible views are usually resolved in favor of non-market logics, although institutionalization remains incomplete. In their present form, most norms, rules or accounting practices fail to instantiate the market logic and to constitute timebanks as successful marketplaces. This is partially intentional: when timebanking is perceived as opposing the neoliberal ethos, then users reject norms or practices that, in their view, resemble the neoliberal markets. Yet, by doing this, the market is not institutionalized, as users do not adopt the double role they are supposed to, they do not see functional value in the timebank and trust is not created. As a consequence, users do not exchange with one another, and the timebank may close down out of lack of activity.

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The case of timebanking  149 This chapter has shown that the institutionalization of markets nested in multiple logics is problematic when these are not compatible and prescribe contradictory fields of action (Besharov and Smith 2014). In this case, the political and social goals of timebanking can only be met if the market works, but if the market logic is adopted then the political and social values are questioned. The rules and practices that could facilitate the establishment of the market are not always respected or fully understood by users, and may even be seen as a transgression of the non-market logics. Thus, timebank promoters reject the replication of market logics and dismiss devices and norms that are normally used in the marketplace. Furthermore, when social objectives are reached (that is, creation of social bonds among members) this has implications regarding notions of reciprocity and may lead to norm transgression related to the market logic. Our fieldwork shows that timebanks are often “stuck in-between” institutional logics and their institutional arrangement does not create a clear field of action for their members. In other words, the pragmatic and idealistic aspects of timebanking may coexist in theory, but create stress and institutional complexity in practice (Battilana et al. 2017). Timebanking would fit in the contested organizations discussed by Besharov and Smith (2014). The field is subject to incompatible market and non-market logics that are equally central to the organization. Moreover, the political and social goals of timebanking can only be achieved if the market is successfully enacted. Thus, as the market logic is not instantiated, timebanking is not institutionalized. The failed attempts at reconciling the opposing logics when designing the rules and practices of timebanking explain the already observed demise of the timebanks. Timebanks have not yet institutionalized a hybrid system that successfully bridges these logics, so that a fully functioning market is created without conflicting with the social and political ideology behind timebanking. This chapter has shown crucial elements to be taken into account when such markets are put into practice, especially the dual role of participants and how to ensure that it is enacted; the potential conflict between logics if norms are not successfully hybridized; and the need to socialize participants in exchanges based on network generalized reciprocity so that the market is sustainable and, with it, the social and political project. Further research can delve deeper into other sharing economy platforms and their institutionalization, namely the existence of various logics, how they are instantiated and how these affect the functioning of the platforms and their success.

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150  Handbook of the sharing economy Blanc, Jérôme (2009), “Contraintes et choix organisationnels dans les dispositifs de monnaies sociales,” Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 80, 547‒57. Boyle, David (2014), The Potential of Timebanks to Support Social Inclusion and Employability, Brussels: European Commission, Joint Research Centre. Cahn, Edgar S. (2001), “On LETS and Time Dollars,” International Journal of Community Currency Research, 5, 1‒4. Collom Ed (2008), “Engagement of the Elderly in Time Banking: The Potential for Social Capital Generation in an Aging Society,” Journal of Aging and Social Policy, 20 (4), 414‒36. Collom, Ed (2011), “Motivations and Differential Participation in a Community Currency System: The Dynamics within a Local Social Movement Organization,” Sociological Forum, 26 (1), 144‒68. Collom, Ed, Judith Lasker, and Corinne Kyriacou (2012), Equal Time, Equal Value: Community Currencies and Time Banking in the US, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. 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Hayashi, Mayumi (2012), “Japan’s Fureai Kippu Time-Banking in Elderly Care: Origins, Development, Challenges and Impact,” International Journal of Community Currency Research, 16, 30‒44. Laamanen, Mikko, Stefan Wahlen, and Mario Campana (2015), “Mobilising Collaborative Consumption Lifestyles: A Comparative Frame Analysis of Time Banking,” International Journal of Consumer Studies, 39 (5), 459‒67. Levine, Sheen and Sonali Shah (2003), “Towards a Theory of Large-Scale Generalized Exchange,” paper presented at the Summer Conference on Creating, Sharing and Transferring Knowledge: The Role of Geography, Copenhagen, Denmark. Meelen, Toon and Koen Frenken (2015), “Stop Saying Uber is Part of the Sharing Economy,” https://www. fastcompany.com/3040863/stop-saying-uber-is-part-of-the-sharing-economy. Miller, Elizabeth J. (2008), “Both Borrowers and Lenders: Timebanks and the Aged in Japan,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Molm, Linda D. (2010), “The Structure of Reciprocity,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 73, 119‒31. Molm, Linda D., David R. Schaefer, and Jessica L. Collett (2007), “The Value of Reciprocity,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 70, 199‒217. Molnar, Stefan (2011), “Time is of the Essence: The Challenges and Achievements of a Swedish Time Banking Initiative,” International Journal of Community Currency Research, 15, 13‒22. North, Peter J. (2003), “Timebanks: Learning the Lessons from LETS,” Local Economy, 18, 267‒70. North, Peter J. (2018), Alternative Currency Movements as a Challenge to Globalisation? A Case Study of Manchester’s Local Currency Networks, Abingdon: Routledge. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Paul W. Ballantine (2010), “Sharing as a Form of Anti-Consumption? An Examination of Toy Library Users,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 9 (6), 485‒98. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2011), “Building the Strength of Local Community through Time Bank Exchanges,” European Advances in Consumer Research, 9, https://www7511.ssldomain.com/acrwebsite/assets/ PDFs/European%20ACR%20Proceedings%20Vol%209.pdf. Ozanne Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2016), “How Alternative Consumer Markets can Build Community Resiliency,” European Journal of Marketing, 50 (3‒4), 330‒57.

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Pache, Anne-Claire and Filipe Santos (2010), “Inside the Hybrid Organization: An Organizational Level View of Responses to Conflicting Institutional Demands,” Research report, ESSEC, France. Papaoikonomou, Eleni and Carmen Valor (2017), “The Institutionalization of Alternative Economies: The Processes of Objectification in Time Banks,” Journal of Macromarketing, 37 (2), 167‒79. Sahlins, Marshall (1972), Stone Age Economics, Chicago, IL: Aldine, Atherton. Scaraboto, Daiane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything in Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (1), 152‒76. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” https://www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-thesha​ring-economy. Seyfang, Gill. J. (2003), “Growing Cohesive Communities One Favour at a Time: Social Exclusion, Active Citizenship and Time Banks,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27, 699‒706. Seyfang, Gill J. (2006), “Sustainable Consumption, the New Economics and Community Currencies: Developing New Institutions for Environmental Governance,” Regional Studies, 40 (7), 781‒91. Seyfang, Gill J. and N. Longhurst (2013), “Growing Green Money? Mapping Community Currencies for Sustainable Development,” Ecological Economics, 86, 65‒77. Strauss, Anselm and Juliet Corbin (1990), Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Thornton, Patricia H. and William Ocasio (2008), “Institutional Logics,” The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, ed. R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, R. Suddaby, and K. Sahlin, London: SAGE, 99‒128. Uehara, Edwina (1990), “Dual Exchange Theory, Social Networks, and Informal Social Support,” American Journal of Sociology, 96 (3), 521‒57. Valor, Carmen, Eleni Papaoikonomou, and Carlos Martínez-de-Ibarreta (2017), “Consumer-to-Consumer Exchanges: A Goal Theory Approach in the Timebanking Context,” Spanish Journal of Marketing—ESIC, 21 (1), 14‒24. Yamagishi, Toshio and Karin S. Cook (1993), “Generalized Exchange and Social Dilemmas,” Social Psychological Quarterly, 56, 235–48.

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12.  Crowdfunding: sharing the entrepreneurial journey* 5

Anirban Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang and Amitava Chattopadhyay

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse trap than his neighbors, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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INTRODUCTION Crowdfunding refers to obtaining “funding” for an entrepreneurial venture (the “project”) from a large community (the “crowd”). In online crowdfunding, an entrepreneur posts a project through an online crowdfunding platform. The crowd learns about the project through a description on its product webpage on this platform. Based on the project description posted, potential supporters decide whether they want to support (back) the project. While prior offline examples of crowdfunding exist, crowdfunding has come into prominence with the emergence of online crowdfunding portals such as Kickstarter (Huang et al. 2014; Vulkan et al. 2016). Crowdfunding is a unique example of the sharing economy as it involves consumers sharing intangible assets—their resources, experience, and expertise—with an entrepreneur, rather than just their material possessions (Belk 2014). In contrast, typical examples of the sharing economy involve tangible assets: sharing accommodations, workspaces, transportation, and consumer goods (Belk 2014; PricewaterhouseCoopers 2015). For example, Airbnb and HomeAway are popular examples of internet-mediated peer-to-peer platforms that allow consumers to share their home, while Uber and Lyft are popular examples of internet-mediated peer-to-peer platforms that allow consumers to share their car. In crowdfunding, consumers engage with an entrepreneur, an innovation, and other consumers, as well as act as an investor, supporter, co-creator, consumer, and evangelist; all at the same time. Why do consumers spend time, effort, and personal funds on the early-stage development and promotion of an innovation? There are inherent, nonnegligible risks with such early-stage innovations. Many early-stage projects fail to reach commercialization; a crowdfunding project that reaches commercialization may still fail to achieve commercial success. Even if the venture achieves commercial success, consumers who back a project might still not benefit financially from the commercial success of *  Preparation of this chapter was supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 2 grant, MOE2018-T2-1-181, to the second author. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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Crowdfunding: sharing the entrepreneurial journey  153 the innovation given the temporal gap between the time consumers support an early-stage venture and the time the venture comes to its fruition for pay-offs to occur.1 Note that this is distinct from Airbnb, Uber, and many other similar examples of the sharing economy where participation is more likely to lead to direct, immediate financial benefits for the participants with the completion of each transaction or exchange. In sum, despite the prevalence and importance of crowdfunding, relatively little is known about the economic, psychological, and sociological motivations for participation in crowdfunding (Kuppuswamy and Bayus 2018). Our chapter addresses this research gap. We focus on reward-based crowdfunding,2 which is the most widespread form of crowdfunding (Ordanini et al. 2015) and has the largest number of online platforms (Massolution 2015). First, we describe reward-based crowdfunding and the motivations of its participants. In the next section, we describe the current role of crowdfunding in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and speculate on the future role of crowdfunding, given the motivations of its participants. The final section draws conclusions.

CROWDFUNDING AND MOTIVATIONS OF ITS PARTICIPANTS

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What is Reward-Based Crowdfunding? Online crowdfunding is the practice of obtaining funding for an entrepreneurial venture or a project from a large, anonymous crowd of people through internet-mediated platforms; it occurs without standard financial intermediaries (Mollick 2014). The scope of online crowdfunding has widened significantly because internet-mediated interactions scale more efficiently than offline interactions (see Ordanini et al. 2015, 2). Given the scope of online crowdfunding, scholars have theorized that online crowdfunding may help to “democratize” innovation: it may enable small entrepreneurs, who would otherwise lack the resources to find funding and markets, to erase geographic, social, and economic boundaries of innovation (Mollick and Robb 2016). Hence, crowdfunding has been theorized to hold the potential of turning Emerson’s quote to reality, with the world making a (virtual) beaten path to the (metaphorical) door of an innovator (Sorenson et al. 2016). One of the most widespread forms of crowdfunding is reward-based crowdfunding (Ordanini et al. 2015). It is one of the fastest-growing forms of crowdfunding and has the largest number of online platforms (Kuppuswamy and Bayus 2018; Massolution 2015). Prominent examples of reward-based crowdfunding include Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In this form of crowdfunding, a project creator (the entrepreneur requesting funding) builds a webpage describing the project (the proposed venture). Individuals in the community see the project webpage and decide whether to fund (or back) the project. 1   There are different forms of crowdfunding. Some crowdfunding communities, such as rewardbased and donation-based crowdfunding, involve no financial compensation for participation. 2   Forms of crowdfunding vary based on what backers get in return for their contribution. For example, in equity-based crowdfunding, backers get equity in the venture in lieu of financial support. In donation-based crowdfunding, backers do not get anything (at least, not of significant monetary value) in return for their support of a charitable cause.

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154  Handbook of the sharing economy The size of the funding each individual contributes to the project is typically small. In return for their financial support, when the product or idea comes to fruition, backers get a non-financial “reward.” The reward is typically a token of appreciation (for example, a thank-you message, artist’s autograph) or the pre-purchase of the innovation itself at a modest discount (Kuppuswamy and Bayus 2018). For example, when the Pebble watch project was launched on Kickstarter in 2012, backers were promised a watch for each successful pledge of US$99. The watch was forecast to retail at US$150. The project was successful (it raised more than US$10 million), leading to the commercial launch of the Pebble watch. In addition to providing relatively small financial support, consumers of a crowdfunding project (backers) provide other inputs to help develop the ventures they deem interesting or promising. These non-financial resources include sharing backers’ knowledge and expertise through advice on improving the project, as well as promoting the project to backers’ social networks. We explore backers’ motivation to contribute their valuable resources to entrepreneurial ventures on reward-based crowdfunding platform in the next sections.

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Motivations of Backers In general, people participate in the sharing economy due to a host of motivations: economic, social, and environmental (Böcker and Meelen 2017). For example, they wish to share their underutilized resources (for example, house, car) rather than see those being idle, in exchange for economic gains (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). Or, they want social company, which is why they share their house or car, to entertain people (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Ozanne and Ozanne 2011). People also share to reduce their use of scarce natural resources and contribute toward environmental sustainability (Heinrichs 2013; Lawson et al. 2016; Hamari et al. 2015). However, prior studies have found that, while such motivations coexist across sharing of various physical assets, participation in the sharing economy is mostly driven by extrinsic, economic benefits (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Böcker and Meelen 2017). What motivates consumers to back an entrepreneur in reward-based crowdfunding? The chief economic motivation for consumers is to be able to purchase the innovation at a modest discount on the (expected) retail price. This benefit pales in comparison to the risks of a project not actualizing. For example, Agrawal et al. (2014) discuss three reasons that projects default in online crowdfunding: creator incompetence, fraud, and project risk. In addition, most crowdfunding projects involve significant temporal delay between the time an innovation seeks support from the crowdfunding community (early stages of new product development) and the time the innovation is actualized so that its rewards are ready to be distributed to the backers (late stage of new product development). Therefore, unlike other instances of the sharing economy where individuals’ participation is directly and immediately tied to compensation for sharing a major physical asset (which actualizes with the completion of each individual transaction), economic incentives might not be the main driver of consumers’ participation in online crowdfunding. Instead, the chief motivation for consumers is that backing a venture guarantees that they will be part of a group that supported the project and, as a result, be amongst the first to obtain the product, prior to its being launched in the mass market (Gerber and Hui

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2013). This could tap into two key human motivations: (1) affiliation or belongingness (Maslow 1943, 1968; McClelland 1961; Baumeister and Leary 1995); and (2) status or power (McClelland 1961) in a community. Beyond economic motivation: crowdfunding and belongingness One key motivation for participating in crowdfunding is the desire to belong to a social (backer) group. According to psychologists, the need for affiliation (McClelland 1961) or belongingness (Maslow 1943; Baumeister and Leary 1995) is a fundamental human need. Baumeister and Leary (1995) go as far as to say that this need to form and maintain social bonds is expressed universally across cultures. Extant research suggests that belongingness needs can be satisfied not only through bonds with familiar others (for example, family members and friends) but also by forming bonds with unfamiliar others (for example, strangers at a sporting event; Baumeister and Leary 1995; Cremer et al. 2008). Being part of a community with other individuals who share similar interests and help in co-developing a project idea can give people a sense of belonging. Therefore, the belongingness need may be satisfied by meeting other likeminded individuals, participating in an entrepreneurial venture, and sharing the entrepreneur’s vision and journey. For example, some preliminary evidence shows that being around other individuals with similar interests may drive participation in crowdfunding (Van Wingerden and Ryan 2011). It is noteworthy that people with a strong motivation to belong tend to seek the opinions of others about products and services, and also attempt to influence others’ opinions. Thus, backers may further satisfy their belongingness needs by engaging with other backers and with the backed entrepreneur to influence them as well as try to help them succeed in their venture. Indeed, Steinberg (2012) suggests that participants may also help an entrepreneur in order to be a part of their entrepreneurial journey. Participants base their support on an entrepreneurial pitch on a project homepage. Creators make personal appeals in the pitch: they describe their journey, how the business was conceptualized, and how it is being brought to life. In addition, rewards in reward-based crowdfunding often have little to no commercial value (for example, getting to meet the entrepreneur). Participants thus likely choose such rewards if they seek to be emotionally associated with innovation and entrepreneurship, without necessarily having the financial pressures and responsibilities of becoming an entrepreneur (Lin and Viswanathan 2016, for similar findings in the context of crowdlending). Crowdfunding often attracts individuals who seek fairness and equity; fairness and equity can be seen as instrumental in helping one to belong (Van Prooijen et al. 2004). Thus, individuals may support small entrepreneurs to ensure that innovation activity is not just limited to big companies, due to deficiencies in the banking and investing (funding) system. For these participants, crowdfunding represents a path to fairness in today’s world. This is perhaps why, when big corporations and Hollywood stars (for example, Spike Lee) try to use crowdfunding, they face a backlash from people who claim that crowdfunding is only for those who do not have access to other resources, and not for those who have been successful and can obtain other forms of funding. Likewise, scholars have suggested that online crowdfunding may help to “democratize” innovation. Although there is little empirical evidence to date formalizing the relationship between fairness and online crowdfunding, some recent evidence suggests that pressure from the

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crowd may lead the social system to become more equitable. For example, Mukherjee et al. (2017a) find that community oversight made the choices of an iconic crowdsourcing firm, Threadless, somewhat less dependent on stardom. Finally, altruism is another major driver in why consumers participate in online crowdfunding (Burtch et al. 2016). Altruism is “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare” (Batson and Shaw 1991, 108), a form of unconditional kindness without expecting returns (Fehr and Gächter 2000). Consumers might support a project simply out of their selfless concern to help an entrepreneur succeed. While altruism is different from belongingness, altruism often fosters reciprocity and cooperative behavior, leading to group formation and the satisfaction of the need to belong (Ma and Chan 2014). Thus, not surprisingly, people support ventures that speak to social causes that they value and/or solve social problems that they find important (Gerber and Hui 2013). For example, people may support a business that manufactures locally, rather than outsourcing manufacture to a different country, in order to both lower the carbon footprint and help the local economy. Alternatively, for example, they may support a firm that has developed a better recycling machine to ensure that the product is successfully commercialized and helps to reduce waste. Preliminary findings are consistent with an altruistic motive underlying consumers’ (backers’) support for certain crowdfunding projects. For example, extant findings suggest that non-profits primarily engaged in prosocial activities are more successful at crowdfunding than for-profit entities (Belleflamme et al. 2013). Other recent findings show that altruistic, prosocial motives can drive backers’ support in reward-based crowdfunding; moreover, these motives can outweigh the opposing effects of economic considerations, such as herding, and certainty about crowdfunding campaign success (Dai and Zhang 2018). Beyond economic motivation: crowdfunding and social status Crowdfunding appeals to consumers who are motivated by a need for self-expression through social status and power (McClelland 1961) and through the early ownership of innovative products. Technology, design, and fashion have become intermingled, in part due to the influence of firms such as Apple with products they have introduced in recent years. As a result, for some consumers, owning new technology products has become a means to conspicuous consumption: new purchases, such as smartphones and wearables, flaunted akin to luxury or fashion accessories. Thus, purchases on crowdfunding can be driven by social status concerns, as crowdfunding confers a guarantee of exclusivity, with the product reaching the backer before being released commercially (Anderson et al. 2015). Some implications for entrepreneur in reward-based crowdfunding Consumers (backers) are encouraged to participate and support a crowdfunding project due to various motivations. Given these various motivations, what can entrepreneurs or project initiators do to gather or strengthen support from the online crowd? We describe some tactics for entrepreneurs to help garner support in crowdfunding on the basis of various backer (non-economic) motivations discussed earlier. In general, entrepreneurs can appeal to the online crowd with various motivations through project descriptions and perks or rewards provided. First, entrepreneurs can frame innovations according to different backer motivations. This tactic may draw support from consumers with that particular motivation, without

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Crowdfunding: sharing the entrepreneurial journey  157 increasing economic cost for the entrepreneur. For example, to appeal to consumers with social status concerns through framing, entrepreneurs can focus on the exclusiveness of the innovation in the early months, before it is launched commercially, in the project description. In addition, the entrepreneur can emphasize the design and fashion elements of the product. Second, entrepreneurs can offer rewards which satisfy the different motivations of backers to participate in reward-based crowdfunding. For example, to appeal to backers with affiliation or belongingness needs, entrepreneurs often post rewards that allow the backer to meet the product development team and to provide early-stage feedback on the project. Many other rewards commonly offered in crowdfunding projects also appeal to the motivation of affiliation of belongingness: backer team jerseys and accessories, social connections on Twitter, group Skype sessions, and so on. These forms of rewards tap into the desire of the backer to identify with the project and its creators. Third, entrepreneurs can demonstrate that they are good citizens of the broader crowdfunding community by actively participating in funding other entrepreneurs. For example, it is interesting to note that Kickstarter displays a proxy for active participation in the public profile of each member: the total number of other people’s projects that the member has supported or backed in the past. In the entrepreneur’s public profile, this information is also visible to potential backers of the entrepreneur’s project. Colombo et al. (2015) found that this information makes backers more willing to pledge money to support entrepreneurs who have behaved as good members of the crowdfunding community. Finally, to appeal to backers motivated by altruism, entrepreneurs can highlight the social and environmental benefits of the innovation and venture. For example, entrepreneurs can highlight that the manufacture and use of the innovation reduces waste. Alternatively, entrepreneurs may list where the product will be manufactured, to tap into a motivation to help a local economy. In the next section, we discuss the role of crowdfunding in the current entrepreneurship ecosystem and speculate on the role of crowdfunding going forward.

CROWDFUNDING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP Crowdfunding in the Current Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Since the inception of Kickstarter, entrepreneurs have raised a total of US$3.7 billion from 14.8 million participants supporting about 145 000 innovations on this crowdfunding portal (Kickstarter 2018). Crowdfunding is an integral part of the current entrepreneurship ecosystem as a source of market research, market exposure, and advice, in addition to early-stage funding (Stanko and Henard 2016). Market research is often too expensive for small entrepreneurs who are on a shoestring budget and who do not have the information and analysis assets required for research. On Kickstarter, entrepreneurs only honor pledges if sufficient funding is pledged by the community; if the pledged amount is lower than the goal chosen by the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur is able to pivot to a new idea without incurring additional expense. Thus, crowdfunding provides a simple mechanism for entrepreneurs to learn consumers’ needs and to gauge if there is sufficient interest

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158  Handbook of the sharing economy and market demand for a product, before investing a substantial amount of resources to launch the actual product. In addition to forecasting demand, crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to directly get feedback and advice from other participants in the crowdfunding community. On many crowdfunding portals, crowdfunding participants explicitly communicate to the entrepreneur what they like or do not like about a product. Thus, in addition to funding, participants provide their inputs on how to commercialize a product. As crowdfunding participants are interested in innovation, they are often experienced and knowledgeable about building and commercializing new products. Hence, they are able to provide relevant feedback, comments, and suggestions. However, some evidence suggests that the efficacy of the opinions of the community (the voice of the crowd) is unclear in new product development. For example, Mukherjee et al. (2018) find that the empirical relationship of the opinion of the community with commercial success is contingent on the nature of the product that is under development. If a crowdfunded product is launched commercially, the support of the crowdfunding community is crucial to driving awareness and reducing uncertainty. Consumers perceive higher risk if a new product is offered by an unknown entrepreneur. Therefore, entrepreneurs use the validation of the crowdfunding community to drive adoption. Specifically, reviews by members of the crowdfunding community act as a guarantee of the product or service and allow the project creator to develop a brand. Potential consumers are able to see the reviews of crowdfunding backers and use these reviews as a credible signal of product quality. For example, SmashCup’s entrepreneurs launched their unique coffee cup on Kickstarter. They leveraged the positive word-of-mouth created on Kickstarter to both drive awareness and to signal quality, enabling them to build a brand. Thus, in sum, crowdfunding allows the entrepreneur to find a market for their products, in addition to obtaining funding. How do the decisions, comments, and feedback of the crowdfunding community compare to the decisions of individuals? The evidence is mixed. On the one hand, the literature finds that the crowd makes choices that compare favorably to those of experts (Mollick and Nanda 2015). On the other hand, the evidence suggests that it does not. For example, Mukherjee et al. (2017b) speculate that products that claim to be innovative—that is, novel and useful—may not be received well by the crowd. They suggest that this may be due to the uncertainty that is inherent in crowdfunding. In particular, in crowdfunding, participants back products that have not yet been released and manufactured and cannot be experienced in person. In addition, reward-based crowdfunded projects are often delayed or fail (the creator is unable to follow through on the promised rewards). For example, a recent study found that more than three-quarters of successfully funded projects (on Kickstarter) were either delayed or failed (Mollick 2014). In these cases, backers are neither guaranteed refunds (they may lose the entire amount pledged) nor guaranteed receipt of the product. This is because while in a purchase context consumer protection laws protect the consumer, in crowdfunding these laws do not hold. Moreover, projects on Kickstarter are designs of proposed products rather than descriptions of a final product. Therefore, as a project evolves, the creator may make significant changes to the product without the consent of backers. Prior evidence shows that when faced with uncertainty, consumers choose products that are more traditional over more novel options (Campbell and Goodstein 2001). Therefore, it is possible that the high level of

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Crowdfunding: sharing the entrepreneurial journey  159 uncertainty in crowdfunding drives backers to choose modest innovations and shy away from more radical innovations.

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Crowdfunding in the Future Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Currently, crowdfunding primarily focuses on the economic needs of the entrepreneurs. As a consequence, current crowdfunding portals almost exclusively focus on start-ups and new ventures, as this allows consumers to buy the new products and services. Therefore, not surprisingly, small entrepreneurs and established firms also turn to crowdsourcing websites. For example, Dell has a crowdsourcing website called Dell IdeaStorm, where consumers can provide Dell with feedback (for free) (Huang et al. 2014). The site allows consumers to post any idea they have for Dell, from suggesting a new advertising campaign to what products they should carry. Consumers also comment on others’ ideas. For Dell, this site provides a way to get direct feedback from consumers, in a manner similar to that on crowdfunding portals such as Kickstarter, but on a wider range of topics. The success of Dell IdeaStorm suggests that, in the future, crowdfunding portals can consider expanding the scope of their business model; in particular, should they want to change their approach to ensure that backers are able to build long-term relationships with a few brands, where they continue on the shared entrepreneurial journey, rather than cutting off their relationship at the launch of the new product. Currently, due to the stipulation that products on crowdfunding portals need to be new products, potential backers are required to back new innovations and new entrepreneurs, which may not fulfil the non-economic motivations of the backer. Indeed, some portals have taken steps in this direction. For example, Indiegogo allows firms to sell what was crowdfunded using their website. This ensures that the company has a continuing flow of information and funding as it grows. In contrast, on a competing portal (Kickstarter), less than one in eight entrepreneurs launch more than one venture. This makes it difficult to build a long-term relationship between the entrepreneur and the backer in most cases. In sum, while crowdfunding may so far have been focused on being an incubator for new ventures, it may want to evolve to be about sharing the success and enabling the growth of a company that the participants helped to build. More broadly, crowdfunding currently taps into a unique pool of expertise and experience that individuals are willing to share for economic benefit. However, the basic premise behind crowdfunding is likely also to be applicable to product development by mature companies. Therefore, it may be possible that crowdfunding and crowdsourcing websites could morph into a single overarching identity, where both start-ups and incumbents (like Dell) could use the insights of individual participants for product development and other activities.

CONCLUSION Crowdfunding, similar to many services in the sharing economy, derives its success from disintermediating the key intermediary in new product development: the company that funds the development of an innovation. By using technology to connect ­stakeholders,

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160  Handbook of the sharing economy and source funds directly from the final consumers of the product, crowdfunding leads to more efficient outcomes. The success of crowdfunding has changed the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Until recently, innovation was the sole domain of major corporations such as IBM. Technology has now made it easier and faster to source feedback, act on feedback, and develop new products and services. It is easier to commercialize new product ideas via contract manufacturing of products and the use of outsourced services. Today, if you have an idea, you can build a design, crowdfund the prototype, equity crowdfund the working capital and initial investments, and then launch the product; all from a laptop, sitting in a shared working space. These disruptive innovations have jointly made entrepreneurship more widely accessible, which has led to the world becoming “flatter,” with new brands coming from cities and countries that are not known for innovation (see Sorenson et al. 2016). In addition, crowdfunding has “flattened” the consumption and diffusion of innovation. Historically, only consumers who lived in major cities, particularly those that were technology hubs (like San Francisco), had access to new products. With online crowdfunding, any consumer in any city can be at the vanguard of pop culture and innovation. In sum, crowdfunding, and more broadly the sharing economy in the context of new product development, is transforming the economic landscape. Given the profound importance of new product development and innovation to value creation, these changes have significant implications for both academics and practitioners. Yet, relatively little academic work has investigated the sharing economy in the context of knowledge and expertise, rather than material goods and services. Therefore, we hope our chapter spurs further research into this domain.

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REFERENCES Agrawal, Ajay, Christian Catalini, and Avi Goldfarb (2014), “Some Simple Economics of Crowdfunding,” Innovation Policy and the Economy, 14 (1), 63‒97. Anderson, Eric, Song Lin, Duncan Simester, and Catherine Tucker (2015), “Harbingers of Failure,” Journal of Marketing Research, 52 (5), 580‒92. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 29, 881‒98. Batson, C. Daniel and Laura L. Shaw (1991), “Evidence for Altruism: Toward a Pluralism of Prosocial Motives,” Psychological Inquiry, 2 (2), 107‒22. Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary (1995), “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin, 117 (3), 497‒529. Belk, Russell (2014), “You Are What You Can Access: Sharing and Collaborative Consumption Online,” Journal of Business Research, 67 (8), 1595‒1600. Belleflamme, Paul, Thomas Lambert, and Armin Schwienbacher (2013), “Individual Crowdfunding Practices,” Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, 15, 313‒33. Böcker, Lars and Toon Meelen (2017), “Sharing for People, Planet or Profit? Analyzing Motivations for Intended Sharing Economy Participation,” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 23, 28‒39. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, New York: HarperCollins. Burtch, Gordon, Anindya Ghose, and Sunil Wattal (2016), “Secret Admirers: An Empirical Examination of Information Hiding and Contribution Dynamics in Online Crowdfunding,” Information Systems Research, 27 (3), 478‒96. Campbell, Margaret C. and Ronald C. Goodstein (2001), “The Moderating Effect of Perceived Risk on Consumers’ Evaluations of Product Incongruity: Preference for the Norm,” Journal of Consumer Research, 28 (3), 439‒49. Colombo, Massimo G., Chiara Franzoni, and Cristina Rossi-Lamastra (2015), “Internal Social Capital and

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Crowdfunding: sharing the entrepreneurial journey  161 the Attraction of Early Contributions in Crowdfunding,” Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 39 (1), 75‒100. Cremer, David D., Lieven Brebels, and Constantine Sedikides (2008), “Being Uncertain about What? Procedural Fairness Effects as a Function of General Uncertainty and Belongingness Uncertainty,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44 (6), 1520‒25. Dai, Hengchen and Dennis Zhang (2018), “Vicarious Goal Pursuit Outweighs Herding in Crowdfunding: Evidence from Kickstarter.com,” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954217. Fehr, Ernst and Simon Gächter (2000), “Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14 (3), 159‒81. Gerber, Elizabeth M. and Julie Hui (2013), “Crowdfunding: Motivations and Deterrents for Participation,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 20 (6), 677‒80. Hamari, Juho, Mimmi Sjöklint, and Antti Ukkonen (2015), “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (9), 2047‒59. Heinrichs, Harald (2013), “Sharing Economy: A Potential New Pathway to Sustainability,” GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 22 (4), 228‒31. Huang, Yan, Param Vir Singh, and Kannan Srinivasan (2014), “Crowdsourcing New Product Ideas under Consumer Learning,” Management Science, 60 (9), 2138‒59. Kickstarter (2018), https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats. Kuppuswamy, Venkat and Barry L. Bayus (2018), “A Review of Crowdfunding Research and Findings,” in Handbook of New Product Development Research, ed. Peter N. Golder and Debanjan Mitra, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 361‒73. Lawson, Stephanie J., Mark R. Glein, Rebeca Perren, and Jiyoung Hwang (2016), “Freedom from Ownership: An Exploration of Access-Based Consumption,” Journal of Business Research, 69, 2615‒23. Lin, Mingfeng and Siva Viswanathan (2016), “Home Bias in Online Investments: An Empirical Study of an Online Crowdfunding Market,” Management Science, 62 (5), 1393‒1414. Ma, Will W.K. and Albert Chan (2014), “Knowledge Sharing and Social Media: Altruism, Perceived Online Attachment Motivation, and Perceived Online Relationship Commitment,” Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 51‒8. Maslow, Abraham H. (1943), “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review, 50 (4), 370‒96. Maslow, Abraham H. (1968), Toward a Psychology of Being, New York: Van Nostrand. Massolution (2015), “2015CF The Crowdfunding Industry Report,” http://www.crowdsourcing.org/editorial/ global-crowdfunding-market-to-reach-344b-in-2015-predicts-massolutions-2015cf-industry-report/45376 (accessed October 12, 2018). McClelland, David (1961), The Achieving Society, Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. Mollick, Ethan (2014), “The Dynamics of Crowdfunding: An Exploratory Study,” Journal of Business Venturing, 29 (1) 1‒16. Mollick, Ethan and Ramana Nanda (2015), “Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts,” Management Science, 62 (6), 1533‒53. Mollick, Ethan and Alicia Robb (2016), “Democratizing Innovation and Capital Access: The Role of Crowdfunding,” California Management Review, 58 (2), 72‒87. Mukherjee, Anirban, Ping Xiao, Hannah H. Chang, et al. (2017a), “Plebeian Bias: Selecting Crowdsourced Creative Designs for Commercialization,” https://ssrn.com/abstract=3038775 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3038775. Mukherjee, Anirban, Ping Xiao, Li Wang, and Noshir Contractor (2018), “Does the Opinion of the Crowd Predict Success? Evidence from Threadless,” Working paper, INSEAD. Mukherjee, Anirban, Cathy L. Yang, Ping Xiao, and Amitava Chattopadhyay (2017b), “Does the Crowd Support Innovation? Innovation Claims and Success on Kickstarter,” HEC Paris Research Paper No. MKG2017-1220, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3003283; http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3003283. Ordanini, Andrea, Michael Trusov, P.K. Kannan, et al. (2015), “Co-Investment Network Dynamics in Crowdfunded Ventures,” Robert H. Smith School Research Paper No. RHS 2657674, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2657674. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2011), “A Child’s Right to Play: The Social Construction of Civic Virtues in Toy Libraries,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 30 (2), 264‒78. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2015), “The Sharing Economy,” https://www.pwc.fr/fr/assets/files/pdf/2015/05/pwc_etu​ de_sharing_economy.pdf. Sorenson, Olav, Valentina Assenova, Guan-Cheng Li, et al. (2016), “Expand Innovation Finance via Crowdfunding,” Science, 354 (6319), 1526‒8. Stanko, Michael A. and David H. Henard (2016), “How Crowdfunding Influences Innovation,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 57 (3), 15‒17. Steinberg, Don (2012), The Kickstarter Handbook: Real-Life Crowdfunding Success Stories, Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books.

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Van Prooijen, J.-W., K. Van den Bos, and HA.M. Wilke (2004), “Group Belongingness and Procedural Justice: Social Inclusion and Exclusion by Peers Affects the Psychology of Voice,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 66‒79. Van Wingerden, R. and J. Ryan (2011), “Fighting for Funds: An Exploratory Study into the Field of Crowdfunding,” School of Economics and Management, Lund University. Vulkan, Nir, Thomas B. Astebro, and Manuel Fernandez Sierra (2016), “Equity Crowdfunding: A New Phenomena [sic],” Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 5, 37‒49.

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13.  Crowdfunding the development of new products and services Natalia Drozdova, Seidali Kurtmollaiev and Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe

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INTRODUCTION When referring to the sharing economy, we tend to focus on new ways to consume particular services or products that are already present in the marketplace (e.g., Belk 2014; Scaraboto 2015). Examples include access-based consumption, collaborative consumption, and co-owning, which belong to the later stages of the value chain, as they imply the availability of assets in finished form (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Benoit et al. 2017). However, consumers can also participate in the sharing economy at the other end of the value chain, that is, in the idea generation and development of products or services (Humphreys and Grayson 2008). Consumers can also take on some of the institutional work previously done primarily by paid actors and, through their engagement, contribute to the transformation of existing markets and the formation of new ones (Dolbec and Fischer 2015). Crowdfunding represents an interesting case of the sharing economy, in which consumers and other interested parties (for example, investors, philanthropists, evangelists) participate in the development of products and services at the stage in which these are merely a future promise of a marketplace offering (Huang et al. 2014). Crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to have their ideas funded directly by interested parties regardless of geographic location (Mollick and Robb 2016). In addition to financing, founders receive an opportunity to spread knowledge about future products and services long before these come into existence (Mollick 2014). From a broader perspective, crowdfunding may be viewed as a unique early stage of the innovation process. In contrast to the early stages of the traditional innovation process in which an entrepreneurial idea is typically backed by concrete individuals and organizations, a crowdfunding project receives support from a large, anonymous number of people (crowd) who interact with one another in a facilitated digital space (Belleflamme et al. 2013). Thus, crowdfunding involves three main types of participants: entrepreneurs presenting their ideas (founders), the financial supporters of the ideas (crowdfunders or backers), and the facilitating organization (platform) (Ordanini et al. 2015). Crowdfunders are a particularly interesting type, as they are different and a far more heterogeneous group than are investors and funders in the traditional innovation process (Lin et al. 2014). Neither can crowdfunders be viewed as consumers in the usual sense. In this chapter, we focus on uncovering the characteristics and the role of crowdfunders in the innovation process, specifically in the diffusion of innovations. Understanding the nature of this group of crowdfunding participants is important for both theory development and practice because it may help in explaining the underlying processes of 163

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164  Handbook of the sharing economy crowdfunding and in building mutually beneficial relationships between interested parties in a better way. Using Rogers’s diffusion of innovations theory, we demonstrate that crowdfunders represent a novel group of innovation adopters. We also discuss how their innovation-decision process differs from that of other adopter categories, and how their heterogeneity may influence the societal effects of innovation.

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THE PHENOMENON OF CROWDFUNDING While many innovations are driven and financed by companies, some of them are developed by entrepreneurs, who use various external sources of finance for their ventures. One such source is crowdfunding, which allows entrepreneurs to back the development of new products and services without receiving support from traditional sources of finance (venture capital, angel investments, government funding). Crowdfunding is defined as “an open call, essentially through the internet, for the provision of financial resources either in the form of donation or in exchange for some form of reward and/or voting rights in order to support initiatives for specific purposes” (Schwienbacher and Larralde 2012). Crowdfunding typically relies on relatively small contributions from a relatively large number of individuals by using the internet (Mollick 2014). Referring to these individuals as the “crowd” is common. A crowd can be defined as “a large, organized group who gather or are gathered together specifically to plan, manage, and/or complete particular tractable and well-defined projects” (Kozinets et al. 2008, 345). Thus, crowds are organized, focused, purposive, and centered on the achievement of a particular objective, after which they usually disband. This definition of a crowd seems to reflect the nature of the backers in crowdfunding, who gather together to fund a project and then dissemble after the project is completed. Crowdfunding is not a new phenomenon, and there are various historical examples of communities gathering financial resources for common purposes. For example, back in 1885, Joseph Pulitzer funded the completion of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal by soliciting investments from the readership of his New York World newspaper (Short et al. 2017). Practices similar to crowdfunding were used to fund public parks in the United Kingdom in the 19th century (Short et al. 2017), and to finance the development of independent movies in India (Stafford 2015). With the introduction of interactive internet (Web 2.0), the world has experienced a remarkable boom in crowdfunding platforms. The first modern crowdfunding projects were run by artists who were either not able to obtain financial support through traditional sources of funding or were purposely against receiving money from record labels because of ideological reasons (for example, art should be free and not sponsored by large commercial corporations) (Morozov 2013). ArtistShare, the first crowdfunding platform, was registered in 2003, and by 2015, 375 crowdfunding platforms were registered in North America alone (Statista 2017). Now, crowdfunding is used by entrepreneurs from many areas and seems to present a valuable alternative to venture capital, angel investments, and government funding (Hornuf and Schweinbacher 2014). It also represents an attractive alternative for those entrepreneurs and investors who avoid using the conventional financial system for cultural reasons that prohibit or limit interest (such as Sharia law or Halacha law) (Taha and Macias 2014). In 2015, US$34.4 billion was raised through

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Crowdfunding the development of new products and services  165 crowdfunding (Statista 2017). Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. described crowdfunding as “potentially the most disruptive of all the new models of finance globally” in the “Future of Finance” report (Nash and Beardsley 2015). As of September 2017, 372 656 projects with a total value of US$3.3 billion were launched on Kickstarter, one of the most popular crowdfunding platforms (Statista 2017). Distinguishing between the following three parties in the crowdfunding process is possible: the platform organization, the founders, and the crowdfunders (Tomczak and Brem 2013). The platform provides the rules of the game and facilitates the relations between funders and founders. Typically, each platform specializes in a specific crowdfunding type. The roles of a platform include being the relation mediator (the intermediary between the supply and demand sides) and the social gatekeeper (Ordanini et al. 2015). The founders are the project creators. They can be motivated not only by a desire to raise funds for their projects but also by other benefits associated with crowdfunding. While the obvious goal of crowdfunding is to raise money, it can also be to pursue other goals, including promoting the project from the early stages of development, gaining deeper knowledge of consumers, and obtaining feedback on new ideas (Stanko and Henard 2016). Crowdfunders provide financial support to projects and can participate in crowdfunding for various reasons, such as a desire to support a certain cause, a desire to be a part of a community, and a desire to receive financial rewards (Ordanini et al. 2015). Crowdfunders are brought into the project at an early stage and participate not only in the adoption of innovations but also in the development of goods and services; therefore, they play a significant role in the process of bringing new products to the market. In addition to anticipated extrinsic goals, such as securing funding (for founders), and consuming products and experiences and collecting rewards (for funders), crowdfunding participants might also be motivated by the social interactions within the platform (Gerber and Hui 2013). The interactions between crowdfunders and founders rely on different approaches to governance from the platform side: whereas the former enjoy loose control, the latter usually have to comply with some regulations and continuously compete for the resources and time of backers (Constantiou et al. 2017; Tomczak and Brem 2013). Researchers distinguish between various types of crowdfunding, such as equity crowdfunding, lending, donation-based crowdfunding, and reward-based crowdfunding (Mollick 2014). In the equity type of crowdfunding, funders receive equity in a venture they support (Ahlers et al. 2015; Vulkan et al. 2016). The lending type of crowdfunding (often called peer-to-business or peer-to-peer crowdfunding) represents a type of peer-topeer loan in which funders expect to receive a fixed periodic income, as well as repayment (Paschen 2017). In donation-based crowdfunding, funders donate money to support a certain cause with no expectation of monetary compensation (Mollick 2014). In contrast to these types, in reward-based crowdfunding, backers are interested primarily in the development of a product idea per se, rather than in obtaining financial remuneration (as in equity and lending crowdfunding) or supporting a social cause (as in donation-based crowdfunding). The primary interest of crowdfunders in the development of new products and services makes this crowdfunding type particularly relevant for the purpose of this chapter. As founders offer crowdfunders various non-financial benefits in exchange for their participation in reward-based crowdfunding, this type of financing is especially popular among resource-hungry start-ups or early-stage businesses (Pope 2011; Ziegler et al. 2018). Instead of receiving a financial return on the i­nvestment, ­crowdfunders get

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166  Handbook of the sharing economy a non-pecuniary reward that can often have a low market value (for example, T-shirts, signed photographs, an opportunity to dine with the founder). Crowdfunders may also receive purely symbolic rewards, such as thank-you cards and acknowledgements. Sometimes, backers can contribute to the full cost of future products and receive a product prototype as a reward (if the project is successful) (Belleflamme et al. 2013). In this case, crowdfunders act as advanced purchasers who pre-order a forthcoming new product before it is available for sale in the open market (Byun et al. 2017). As a group, backers in reward-based crowdfunding represent a heterogeneous crowd. They are not investors (as in equity crowdfunding), nor philanthropists (as in donationbased crowdfunding), nor creditors (as in lending crowdfunding). They have various funding experiences and expectations, and their financial contributions vary from as low as a few US dollars to thousands. Often, the only characteristic they share is their decision to finance a specific new product or service within a limited time period. Financing new ideas is basically the manifestation of a decision to accept a future innovation; that is, a decision to adopt (Rogers 2003). This allows us to analyze crowdfunders as an adopter category.

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CROWDFUNDERS AS AN ADOPTER CATEGORY An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that the members of a social system perceive as new (Rogers 2003). Innovation is at the heart of crowdfunding projects (Chan and Parhankangas 2017), and the crowdfunding process shares many similarities with the innovation adoption process because it depends on crowdfunders’ willingness to accept new products that require funding. Adoption processes rely on information exchange, which involves the communication of a new idea by an individual to other members of the social system (Rogers 2003). As the primary communication channel in the diffusion process, crowdfunding platforms facilitate the relations between founders and crowdfunders. In addition, founders often use other communication channels (for example, Facebook community pages, Twitter, Instagram) to reach a broader audience and create awareness about their product concepts. Founders also use these channels to target people with specific interests or those who are relevant for a concrete innovation idea. Thus, adoption and diffusion always occur within a social system, which normally constitutes a boundary within which an innovation diffuses. However, crowdfunding platforms facilitate relations between actors in the online world, which blurs the boundaries of their social system. Nevertheless, despite their differences and geographic distances, funders are still united by a common objective. For instance, many crowdfunders of one of the most well-known Kickstarter projects, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, decided to finance the idea because it allowed them to participate in the development of a radically new technology. This is particularly apparent in the following examples of their online comments on Kickstarter: “Great, now I’m a part of this possible breakthrough!”; “10 dollars’ donation for what is probably the most important revolution in gaming since 3D graphics. Easy decision”; “I believe this effort is the first to have realistic chance of success, and I want to do as much as I can to make it happen.” Later, Facebook acquired Oculus Rift for $2 billion. This event caused strong reaction from the crowdfunders, as many of them felt betrayed and frustrated: “I feel betrayed”; “I will never ever participate in the crowdfunding again.”

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Crowdfunding the development of new products and services  167 Research shows that the individuals in a social system do not adopt an innovation all at the same time but in a gradual manner (Young 2009; Henrich 2008). Based on the degree to which an individual or another unit of adoption is relatively early in adopting new ideas, five adopter categories are used: innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority, and laggards (Rogers 2003). Innovators, as the earliest to adopt innovation (according to this framework), are of special relevance to our discussion. As Rogers (2003) describes, innovators actively seek information about new ideas and enjoy high degrees of mass media exposure and interpersonal communication. One of the most distinct characteristics of innovators is venturesomeness, which makes them most able in coping with high levels of uncertainty about innovation compared with Rogers’s other adopter categories. High uncertainty implies that innovators must possess sufficient financial resources to absorb the loss from occasional innovation failures. Innovators acts as gatekeepers in the flow of new ideas into a system. This leads them out of a local circle of peer networks and into more cosmopolitan social relationships, in contrast to early adopters who are a more integrated part of the local social system. As the most daring members of a system, innovators may often be perceived as deviants and as having low credibility by other members of a local community. According to Rogers (2003), this may hinder innovators from acting as opinion leaders in their communities. Crowdfunders obtain information about the development of products at a very early stage (often when the product exists only as an idea or a concept) (Figure 13.1). Although crowdfunders do provide funding to entrepreneurs, they tend to behave like consumers making product pre-order decisions instead of behaving like new venture investors (Chan and Parhankangas 2017). Essentially, backers are not only financial contributors to the development of innovations, but are also the first to form a positive attitude toward innovations and to adopt them. As a result, crowdfunders’ role is a complex amalgamation of their unique characteristics and some of the characteristics of investors, innovators, and early adopters. Crowdfunders share some characteristics with innovators because both categories belong to the earliest stages of the adoption process. However, they also have some important differences. Similar to innovators, crowdfunders are usually active information-seekers about new ideas and have a personal interest in having new products on the market (Gerber and Hui 2013). Unlike innovators, however, crowdfunders are, first of all, adopters of product concepts rather than finished products. They do not normally make large investments into new products and do not need to spend much time and energy in investigating products’ functional characteristics. In fact, the detailed technical specifications of a new product may not even be available for crowdfunders. As a result, they do not need substantial financial resources to absorb the possible losses from an innovation flop; neither do they need complex technical knowledge. Instead, crowdfunders base their decision on supporting innovation on other factors, such as the personality of the project’s founder, the quality of the crowdfunding video, or the founder’s gender and race (Greenberg and Mollick 2017; Younkin and Kuppuswamy 2018). Crowdfunders must cope with an even higher degree of uncertainty than innovators do, because at the time of their decision-making the products do not yet exist, and may never come into existence. This is especially applicable to futuristic products, such as the Air Umbrella project posted on Kickstarter in 2014, in which the founders intended to create an invisible umbrella that takes advantage of air flow as shelter from the rain.

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168

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Crowdfunding process

Crowdfunders evaluate the idea and make a decision to accept or reject it

Figure 13.1  The place of crowdfunding in adoption process

Pre-crowdfunding

Founders come up with an idea and communicate it to potential crowdfunders

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Innovation is adopted by the early majority, the late majority, and laggards

Post-crowdfunding (stages after the product launch)

Innovators and early adopters consume the product and act as opinion leaders for their local community

Crowdfunding the development of new products and services  169 The founders mentioned that at that stage, Air Umbrella existed only as an idea, but this did not stop 825 backers from giving US$102 000 to support the project. As of May 2019, the project was still not completed. This uncertainty is aggravated by the fact that crowdfunders often receive pre-launch information cues from unreliable sources, such as videos produced by the founders. Despite the high uncertainty involved, crowdfunders have a low failure risk because an unsuccessful project does not typically lead to their loss of face or to significant financial losses for them. On the other hand, while the individual contributions of each crowdfunder can be rather insignificant, crowdfunders are in control of substantial financial resources as a crowd. This means that the risk of failure is not assumed by individual crowdfunders but by the whole crowd, which consists of people who are often geographically separated and unfamiliar to one another. Table 13.1 summarizes the similarities and differences between innovators and crowdfunders. As Table 13.1 demonstrates, crowdfunders represent an adopter category that is sufficiently different from innovators and that is faster than innovators in their decision to adopt new products. However, Table 13.1 also shows that crowdfunders are a heterogeneous group, which includes individuals with various backgrounds and goals and with varying amounts of resources and knowledge. These differences may manifest in their choices of projects to support (Chan and Parhankangas 2017). We suggest that those projects characterized by radical newness may attract visionary crowdfunders who are not like innovators in their venturesomeness and reputation for being original. Instead, crowdfunding projects that are characterized by incremental newness and/or lower complexity may be supported by pragmatic crowdfunders, who prefer financing those ideas that are easier to implement in time.

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Table 13.1  Innovators versus crowdfunders Characteristic

Innovators

Unit of adoption Innovativeness

New product New product concept The first ones to adopt a new The first ones to adopt a new product product idea Benefits from using a new Satisfaction from contributing to a new product product launch and success Typically large Typically small Play a gatekeeping role in the flow of new ideas into a system Cosmopolitans, have substantial Cosmopolitans, do not necessarily have financial resources, time, and substantial financial resources, time, technical knowledge and technical knowledge High Very high High Low Personal/collective Diffused Venturesomeness Openness, curiosity, variety-seeking, empathy May not be perceived as deviant from Lack opinion leadership; often the social system; do not suffer loss of perceived as deviant from the social system and are accorded a face in the case of project failure, but status of low credibility by other may be considered prophetic in the case of project success members of the system

Primary motivation Contribution Role Socio-economic  status Uncertainty Risk of loss Responsibility Personality value Relation to other  members of the social system

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170  Handbook of the sharing economy

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CROWDFUNDERS’ INNOVATION-DECISION PROCESS The adoption of innovation involves a series of choices and actions over time. Rogers (2003) presents this as a process that consists of the following five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Knowledge occurs when an individual is exposed to an innovation’s existence. Persuasion happens when an individual forms a favorable (or an unfavorable) attitude toward the innovation. A decision takes place when an individual makes a choice to adopt or reject the innovation. Implementation occurs when an individual uses the new idea (product or service). Confirmation happens when an individual seeks reinforcement of their innovation decision or, in some cases, when they change a previous innovation decision. In some cases, the steps of innovation decision-making may follow a different sequence (Rogers 2003). Because of crowdfunders’ specific role and characteristics, their innovation-decision process differs from that of other adopter categories. Crowdfunders are essentially the first members of the social system to be exposed to a new product concept. They can actively seek information themselves by monitoring new projects on crowdfunding platforms, or can be informed via their local networks. Sometimes, founders attempt to reach potential crowdfunders via specialized online communities or industry events (for example, Electronic Entertainment Expo). Their innovation-decision period, or the length of time required for an individual or organization to pass through the innovationdecision process, is limited by the call for crowdfunding. For example, the typical length of a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter is one month, during which potential funders should make their decision regarding support of a project. If potential crowdfunders form a positive attitude toward a product concept, they can make the decision to fund the project. Importantly, while operating in the context of high uncertainty, backers may form their decision based on their attitude toward the founder rather than toward the innovation itself. Such factors as the quality of the call for crowdfunding, the founder’s social network, or the perceived risks can also affect crowdfunders’ attitudes and alter their decision (Ahlers et al. 2015; Belleflamme et al. 2013). Crowdfunders participate in the development of products and services at the stage when these exist only as ideas; the production of a product can take up to a few years. This leads to a potentially long waiting time between such steps of the innovation-decision process as decision and implementation. For example, for crowdfunders of the Oculus Rift project, the time between the decision and implementation stages took more than one year; whereas for the crowdfunders of Air Umbrella, the waiting period from 2014 still continued as of May 2019. During the waiting stage, some of the crowdfunders may change their attitude toward the product. For example, in the case of LOONCUP, the smart menstrual cup, the long waiting period invoked anger and a request for refund (for example, “I invoke my rights under Kickstarter’s Terms of Use . . . I demand a full refund for my pledge amount”). Other reactions included sarcasm (for example, “This was originally for my wife before we eventually got pregnant. According to shipping estimates, this will be a great gift for my daughter once she hits puberty.”) and disengagement (for example, “I forgot all about this! How many years has it been? I don’t expect to ever get a Looncup at this rate, but maybe it will benefit someone one day. I’m not even looking for a refund at this point. Good luck to you guys.”). In some cases, crowdfunders switched between their decisions: “I had requested for a refund a long time ago and never received

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Crowdfunding the development of new products and services  171

Knowledge

Persuasion

Decision

Waiting

Implementation

Confirmation

Disengagement

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Figure 13.2  Crowdfunders’ innovation-decision process [it], BUT now I have been thinking I do not want a refund. I hope my pledge can be useful to you guys, even if I may never get Looncup in my mailbox. I think [that] what you are trying to create and accomplish is incredible.” Such changes in attitude happen for various reasons. Some crowdfunders may simply be unsatisfied with the long waiting time, considering it as a violation of their consumers’ rights. Others change their mind based on the new information they receive about the project’s founder (for example, during the product development process, the founder decides to collaborate with a questionable or unethical organization). Therefore, in the context of crowdfunding, backers as adopters may switch between acceptance and rejection decisions before the actual implementation of the innovation, or they may even disengage from the adoption process altogether. Moreover, some crowdfunders, wanting to see the new product on the market, may not aim to use the innovation themselves, especially if they make small contributions or are simply unable to use the future product (for example, men in the case of LOONCUP, or unskilled users in the case of Oculus Rift). Building on the innovation-decision process that Rogers (2003) suggested, we present the innovation-decision process of crowdfunders in Figure 13.2. As Figure 13.2 shows, crowdfunders’ innovation-decision process may consist of the following stages: 1. Knowledge: potential funders receive information about a project from the call for crowdfunding or other sources. 2. Persuasion: potential funders form a positive or negative attitude toward a project idea based on the information they have about a new product and/or founder. 3. Decision: funders engage in activities that lead to financing a project, which includes considering the size of the contribution and the pre-order option. 4. Waiting: funders wait for the project to be implemented and for the new product to appear on the market. 5. Disengagement: funders lose active interest in the further development of the project. 6. Implementation: funders patiently wait before they have an opportunity to buy or receive the product or its prototype. 7. Confirmation: funders seek the reinforcement of their innovation-decision or reverse this previous decision. Figure 13.2 differs from Rogers’s (2003) model mainly in three aspects. First, there is a (potentially long) waiting period between the decision and implementation stages. Second, funders may disengage from a project before the implementation stage (because

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172  Handbook of the sharing economy of the waiting period, the insignificant size of the contribution, and the irrelevance of the product). Third, funders may reverse their decision to adopt the product before the implementation stage (for example, when they grow impatient and become unsatisfied during the waiting period, requesting a refund).

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DISCUSSION Crowdfunding represents a unique part of the sharing economy, focusing on the earlier stages of the value chain in contrast to other sharing practices involving assets in finished form (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Belk 2014; Benoit et al. 2017). As a new way to finance the development of innovations, crowdfunding alters the roles of consumers by bringing them to the earlier stages of value creation (Stanko and Henard 2016). Crowdfunders do not merely contribute to the development of new products financially, but they act as the first adopters because they decide whether to accept or reject a new product concept. This makes their role an interesting mixture of the role of an investor and that of an innovator. Yet, they also have unique characteristics, especially with respect to the size of their contribution, their motivation, risk, responsibility, and personality values. This is the reason why we view crowdfunders as a separate adopter category that makes an adoption decision even earlier than innovators do. Backers are a part of the crowd; therefore, crowd behavior mechanisms, such as diffusion of responsibility, audience inhibition, and pluralistic ignorance, can at least partly explain and predict funders’ behavior (Kuppuswamy and Bayus 2018). A crowd, rather than individual funders, is in control of substantial financial resources. This control, however, is rather illusory because as an unorganized formation, a crowd is susceptible to fads, the spread of rumors, herd mentality, and conventional wisdom (Kuppuswamy and Bayus 2018; Mollick and Nanda 2016). In other words, a crowd is easily influenced and is ready to accept any superficial idea, which results in what Gustave Le Bon (1896) called “madness of the crowd.” In some cases, this may lead to the support of projects that are attractive and populistic but are unrealistic, ineffective, or outright deceptive. In other cases, the crowd may favor projects with only incrementally new ideas just because such projects are easier to comprehend and less costly to adopt (Chan and Parhankangas 2017). Besides evaluating project potential, crowdfunders may base their decision to adopt an innovation based merely on their liking of the founder. Nevertheless, for many projects, the crowd can produce decisions that are even more effective than individuals’ decisions (Surewiecki 2005). Research shows that, as a crowd, backers have access to more diverse knowledge, competencies, and experiences; therefore, they are likely to choose projects with higher potential than individual experts are (Mollick and Nanda 2016). This diversity implies that backers are a heterogeneous crowd. Crowdfunders are not only geographically distinct, but they have different backgrounds and participate in the crowdfunding process for different purposes. Crowdfunders join the process not only for utilitarian reasons, such as the expectation to use a new product in the future (in some cases, they may not even be able to use the innovation themselves), but also for their interest in being a part of the process of bringing an innovation to the market. Thus, while some backers can act as advanced purchasers, others can be considered as enthusiasts who want to support the development of new products in general. Because

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Crowdfunding the development of new products and services  173 the boundaries of a social system are blurred in the case of crowdfunding, backers can have different expectations regarding the behavioral norms accepted by the members of a social system, particularly with respect to participation in the crowdfunding process. For example, some funders who use crowdfunding to pre-order a new product can perceive themselves as customers and expect customer treatment. Others can perceive themselves as the co-creators of a new product and expect higher levels of communication and engagement from the founder. Some crowdfunders can consider themselves as investors and expect higher accountability from founders. Being aware of this heterogeneity of crowdfunders is crucial for those founders who want to achieve effective communication and build mutually beneficial relationships with their backers. The innovation-decision process of crowdfunders has interesting differences from that of other adopter categories. For example, there is a waiting period between the decision and implementation stages, and it may be quite significant (more than a few years in some cases). During this stage, substantial changes may occur in crowdfunders’ attitude toward the project, including a complete reversal of their initial decision. The factors that can contribute to such changes include but are not limited to significant delays in the promised delivery times (for example, the LOONCUP project), collaboration with new actors (for example, the Oculus Rift project), failure to deliver (for example, the Air Umbrella project), and the emergence of a more advanced product in the market. It seems important that founders keep their connection with funders during the waiting period and ensure that they address rising issues before these negatively affect funders’ attitudes. Further studies may focus on exploring the roles of backers in other types of crowdfunding (for example, equity crowdfunding and donation-based crowdfunding). A more detailed investigation of the differences between visual and pragmatic crowdfunders may also be of theoretical and practical interest. Other potential areas for future exploration may include the factors influencing the various stages of the innovation-decision process of crowdfunders, and the specifics and dynamics of the interactions between various types of crowdfunders, founders, and crowdfunding platforms.

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Young, Peyton (2009), “Innovation Diffusion in Heterogeneous Populations: Contagion, Social Influence, and Social Learning,” American Economic Review, 99 (5), 1899‒1924. Younkin, Peter and Venkat Kuppuswamy (2018), “The Colorblind Crowd? Founder Race and Performance in Crowdfunding,” Management Science, 64 (7), 3269‒87. Ziegler, Tania, Rotem Shneor, Kieran Garvey, et al. (2018), “Expanding Horizons,” The 3rd European Alternative Finance Industry Report, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

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PART IV

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HYBRIDITY, INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS AND INSTITUTIONAL THEORY

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14.  Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy Andrea Geissinger, Christofer Laurell, Christina Öberg and Christian Sandström

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INTRODUCTION The notion of the sharing economy, that is, “ICT [information and communication technology]-enabled platforms for exchanges of goods and services” (Laurell and Sandström 2017, 63), has become riddled with tensions between a non-market order associated to idealism and a market order associated with platform capitalism driven by for-profit firms (Laurell and Sandström 2017; Murillo et al. 2017; Schor 2014). On the one hand, the term “sharing economy” has been used to advocate the shift toward a more sustainable economy and the emergence of collaborative commons (Parguel et al. 2017). This conceptualization adapts a non-market order where exchanges are not primarily coordinated via the price mechanism, and where actors are largely motivated by factors other than profit, for example altruistic values related to helping others and contributing to a more sustainable way of life (Prothero et al. 2011). On the other hand, a form of platform capitalism has emerged, positioned as an alternative description of the sharing economy. Firms such as Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit have received hundreds of millions in venture capital (Alsever 2013), are driven by profit (Slee 2016), and compete with established firms, often by generating conflicts and possibly by redefining notions of work and employment. Consumers using such services also motivate themselves in terms of economic gains (Hamari et al. 2016), while corporate firms increasingly emerge as suppliers. With this tension in mind, more knowledge is needed regarding how non-market and market orders govern the sharing economy and its development. In this chapter, we track the ways in which institutional logics related to the non-market and market orders of the sharing economy contribute to the formation, framing and development of the phenomenon at hand, where institutional logic refers to symbols and patterns of practices that guide repeated behaviors (Friedland and Alford 1991; Thornton and Ocasio 1999). More specifically, the purpose of this chapter is to explore field-level logics associated with the sharing economy and how these logics can be categorized in relation to different characteristic features of the sharing economy. With the aim to grasp various field-level logics and how these relate to the market and non-market orders of the sharing economy, social media analytics (Stieglitz et al. 2014, 2018) is used, through which user-generated posts from social media are analyzed as a way to capture the foundational cores of the sharing economy in terms of the access, platform and community-based economy (see Acquier et al. 2017). Through addressing the issue of field-level logics, a more pronounced understanding of the sharing economy is established, while the chapter also points at how logics appear in the intersection among platforms, users and providers, and how the various parties 177

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178  Handbook of the sharing economy need to follow similar logics to reduce tensions in operations. While research is extensive on institutional logics, the interplay between logics and orders is mostly neglected in empirical research, whereas this present chapter helps to create links between them and connect them to the core principles of the sharing economy. From a practical point of view, the growth of the sharing economy and the increased pluralism in terms of how parties operate as part of it means that it is important to understand those mechanisms that attract parties to operate in the sharing economy, let alone those problems that may occur when various logics collide. This chapter is structured as follows. First, tensions which have emerged during the development of the sharing economy are depicted, followed by a discussion of how the theoretical lens of institutional logics can inform our understanding of the evolvement of the phenomenon. Thereafter, the research design is detailed, followed by the presentation of analyses of data in the access, platform and community-based economy cores of market and non-market orders of the sharing economy. These analyses are then discussed on the overall level of field-level logics and institutional orders, and subsequently, concluding remarks are offered.

ELEMENTS OF THE TOPIC

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The Sharing Economy Formed with a set of accompanying terms such as “collaborative consumption,” “accessbased consumption,” “peer-to-peer platforms,” “collaborative economy” and “platform economy” (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Belk 2010, 2014; Kenney and Zysman 2016; Pattinson 2016; Scaraboto 2015; Sundararajan 2016), the sharing economy has developed into an umbrella term for business efforts powered by digital peer-to-peer platforms (de Reuver et al. 2016). Research on the sharing economy has been plentiful (Belk 2007, 2010; Botsman and Rogers 2010; Hamari et al. 2016; Slee 2016; Sundararajan 2016). Scholars have, for instance, described consumers’ motivations for engaging in peer-to-peer sharing, the sustainability connotation of the sharing economy, trust issues, and development trends including how the sharing economy becomes adopted in yet new industry sectors (e.g., Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Hartl et al. 2016; Hellwig et al. 2015; Hwang and Griffiths 2017; Lamberton and Rose 2012; Milanova and Maas 2017; Möhlmann 2015; Pisano et al. 2015; Schor 2014). Through, for instance, studying consumers’ various motivations, a multitude of perspectives come forth (Price and Belk 2016), which become all the more complicated as platforms and providers and their intentions for being part of the sharing economy are added. As a result, it becomes clear that the sharing economy is riddled with tensions (Murillo et al. 2017; Schor 2014). In an attempt to synthesize the pluralistic character (Dunn and Jones 2010) of the sharing economy and address these tensions, Acquier et al. (2017) offered an organizing framework that encompasses three fundamental cores of the sharing economy: access economy, platform economy and community-based economy (see Figure 14.1). The access economy is, similar to Botsman’s (2015) notion about “sharing underutilized assets (material resources or skills) to optimize their use” (Acquier et al. 2017, 4). The platform economy concerns intermediaries that enable exchanges between peers through

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Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy  179

Access economy

Access platform

Community-based access

Sharing economy ideal

Platform economy

Community-based platforms

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Community-based economy

Source:  Acquier et al. (2017, 4).

Figure 14.1  Combining the cores of the sharing economy digital platforms. These intermediaries are disintermediated and decentralized—they disrupt the legitimacy of established institutions and regulations (Edelman and Geradin 2015)—while at the same time they involve a number of actors, both providers and customers, in their platform ecosystem (Acquier et al. 2017). Finally, the communitybased economy is about initiatives to create social bonding and sharing for social change through “non-contractual, nonhierarchical or non-monetized forms of interaction (to perform work, participate in a project, or form exchange relationships)” (Acquier et al. 2017, 6). In addition to illustrating the three core principles of the sharing economy, the organizing framework provided by Acquier et al. (2017) highlights the tensions and paradoxes which have come to be associated with the sharing economy phenomenon. As Acquier et al. (2017) argue, the sharing economy—due to its multifaceted character—should be understood as a dynamic balancing act between the three different cores of the sharing economy. Still, in Acquier et al.’s (2017) presentation, the focus is on what could be

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180  Handbook of the sharing economy referred to as the non-market order, focusing on accessing rather than transferring, the community basis of social interaction rather than pure money transactions, and the noninstitutionalized platforms. A key question in this context, therefore, becomes the issue of what governs balancing acts among the cores of the sharing economy as well as tensions across market and nonmarket orders. One way to tackle this question is to draw from institutional theory, which has come to develop a well-refined terminology on how to explain the balance between actions of individual actors vis-à-vis their associated organizational field and institutional orders. In the next section, we address institutional logics and how this theoretical lens can inform the ways in which the dynamic balancing act among the three different cores of the sharing economy can be explained by tracking institutional logics embedded within the sharing economy.

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Institutional Logics As illustrated by Berg Johansen and Waldorff (2017), institutional logics are considered as the dominant approach within the so-called “third wave of institutional theory,” which focuses on institutional change and complexity. In their seminal text, Friedland and Alford (1991, 248) defined institutional logics as “a set of material practices and symbolic constructions—which constitute its organizing principles and which is available to organizations and individuals to elaborate.” Albeit different scholars have modified and expanded the definition of institutional logics over time, the significance of symbols and practices as a frame of reference for organizational actors is repeatedly emphasized (Berg Johansen and Waldorff 2017). Symbols become means to influence and manifest practices among actors through continuous behaviors. Indeed, logics are deemed more powerful than actual institutions, as they provide relevant guidance to institutions as a way of organizing. For instance, there is no principal logic of capitalism, but there are nevertheless certain practices and symbols that constitute numerous observable logics that, combined, enable capitalism (Berg Johansen and Waldorff 2017; Friedland and Alford 1991). However, institutional logics are not constant as they are enacted and shaped by individuals and organizations, which leads to the elaboration of symbols and practices (Friedland and Alford 1991). This creates ample opportunities for researchers to study how and when logics are altered, but due to the popularity of the concepts, this has resulted in definitional irregularities that infuse the theoretical debate (Thornton and Ocasio 2008). As a result, Berg Johnsen and Waldorff (2017) address a multitude of empirical studies that utilize and modify institutional logics, and provide two key avenues for further research on institutional logics in view of the current state of the field. First, the relationship and interplay between institutional order and institutional logic are mostly neglected in empirical analyses. Most notably, institutional logics and institutional orders are often used interchangeably, mixed or altered, which results in heightened confusion around the institutional logics perspective at large. A means to address these inconsistencies has been the creation of a typology of institutional logics which has expanded over the years, resulting in the “inter-institutional system” (Thornton et al. 2012). This framework consists of seven institutional orders (market, corporation, profession, state, family, religion and community), sometimes also called “meta-level

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Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy  181 logics” (Berg Johansen and Waldorff 2017), theorized across nine categories (Thornton et al. 2012). In a more specialized approach, Nigam and Ocasio (2010) investigated the concept of field-level logics in contrast to institutional logics. Field-level logics become relevant and apparent when exploring a particular organizational field since they guide competing actors in their particular field. More specifically, “as the organizing principles for action and interaction, field-level logics define the relationship between institutional actors, as well as an overarching model for governance practices in the field” (Nigam and Ocasio 2010, 825), which also “guide competition, cooperation, and coordination between diverse institutional actors” (ibid). Second, although numerous empirical studies explore the friction between different logics (Greenwood et al. 2010), most particularly on an organizational level (Besharov and Smith 2014), the wider societal implication of such a “battle of logics” on a phenomenon level is still underdeveloped (Berg Johnsen and Waldorff 2017). Relationships between institutional logics are broadly categorized into three categories: (1) competition and coexisting logics; (2) hybrid logics; and (3) institutional bricolage of logics. In the competition and coexisting logics category, competing institutional logics strive for dominance over one another, which means that they cannot be combined. It has been argued that such friction often leads to innovation. In contrast, coexisting logics represent a “constellation of logics” (Goodrick and Reay 2011) that indicate that actors can switch between various logics, depending on relevant issues or during various timeframes. Such cooperative logic can result in mutually beneficial practices. Hybrid logics is the bridging of two previously separated logics, fields or sectors. Common examples of hybrid logics are bridging logics from the non-profit sector and finance sector resulting in new organizational forms such as community banking, social entrepreneurship and microfinance. Lastly, institutional bricolage is defined as “multiple logics [that] provide different meanings for actors to choose and combine among or where actors consciously choose to pick certain elements from a given logic while leaving out other” (Berg Johansen and Waldorff 2017, 13). In this context, Berg Johansen and Waldorff describe the relationship among logics as a “fragmented tool box” with a high degree of agency for institutional actors, as those can “mold, resist, select, and transform the available logics in their micro practices.” Related to the sharing economy, Mair and Reischauer (2017) highlight how the sharing economy challenges current institutions; while Grinevich et al. (2017) report on how sharing economy platforms establish a separate green logic to challenge institutional logics, while also linking with the social and economic aspects of exchanges. While thus acknowledging institutional logics related to sharing economy research, and in the case of Mair and Reischauer (2017) pointing at the plurality of the sharing economy, these scholars do not link logics to tensions, but rather produce a somewhat linear process of the sharing economy developing separate logics. In the perspective of the organizing framework of the sharing economy and its three foundational cores (Acquier et al. 2017), which highlights the sharing economy’s associated tensions and paradoxes among cores, institutional logics provide a rich theoretical lens which enables the exploration of the dynamic balancing act among the three different cores of the sharing economy along the market and non-market order axis, and in which sharing economy actors dominantly engage.

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RESEARCH DESIGN To explore institutional logics related to the dominant market and non-market orders of the sharing economy, social media analytics (SMA) was utilized (see Stieglitz et al. 2014, 2018) as a means to systematically capture social media posts, revealing how a specific field is framed and which actors contribute to this framing that generates ample opportunities to unveil how institutional logics are manifested. Social media represents “a kind of living lab, which enables academics to collect large amounts of data generated in a real-world environment” (Stieglitz et al. 2014, 90), making it ideal for studying a contemporary phenomenon such as the sharing economy.

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Empirical Data A dataset collected within the frame of ongoing research projects was utilized within the scope of this study (e.g., Geissinger et al. 2018a; Geissinger et al. 2018b). The data were collected using an analytics tool named Notified to track user-generated content on social media in real time. The dataset covers all publicly posted user-generated content published on the dominant social media outlets (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, blogs, forums and YouTube) that included the keyword “delningsekonomi(n)”—the direct translation of “(the) sharing economy” in Swedish—between March 14, 2016 and September 14, 2017, together comprising a data set of 7362 social media posts over the 18-month period. Filtering data collection to a specific language and user origin allowed for a more focused approach. This is important because certain keywords can have several connotations in different languages, as well as being rare or common in the everyday vocabulary across languages. Table 14.1 presents the distribution of collected social media data per social media platform. To complement data captured through SMA, identified platform descriptions of their offers and services as published on their respective websites were also utilized. Table 14.1  C  ollected and publicly posted user-generated contents per social media platform Social media Blog Facebook Forum Instagram Twitter YouTube Total

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(The) sharing economy Frequency

Proportion (%)

493 673 27 691 5459 19 7362

6.7 9.1 0.4 9.4 74.1 0.3 100.0

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Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy  183

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Data Analysis In the analysis procedure, qualitative content analyses were performed in several steps (Silverman 2006). This was done for each of the foundational cores—access, platform and community-based—and along the axis of market and non-market orders. While the cores were preset as perspectives analyzed in the dataset (the dataset was run through three times to capture each core), characteristics of each were iterated from the data analysis process, meaning that field-level logics emerged as the core perspectives were addressed with their meaning for the market/non-market orders. Defining characteristics for each core in these orders helped to develop field-level logics and bring clarity to the balancing of foundational cores and the market/non-market order tension. For the access core, content analysis was applied by reviewing each social media post to identify ways in which user-generated content is related to collaborative and sharing economies. The reason for analyzing the material in this manner was that the first round of coding made it apparent that these two terms clearly denoted two categories of how the sharing economy was perceived, which were subject to tension and potential separation from the user’s (access) point of view (wording included “morals,” “commons,” and so on, for the collaborative economy; and “profit,” “cheap,” “use,” and so on, for the sharing economy). Thereafter, the frequency of ways in which these statements vis-à-vis these two categories manifested over time was studied. For the platform core, content analysis was applied by reviewing each social media post to identify sharing economy platforms and their associated sectors of the economy, thereafter analyzing the ways in which platforms described themselves on their websites as belonging to market and non-market orders (“payments,” “profits,” and so on, as terms for market order; “sustainability,” “accessing,” “giving,” and so on, for the non-market order). For the community-based core, content analysis was applied by taking the point of departure in the associated sectors of each sharing economy operation. By reviewing the different platforms and their associated sectors, it became clear that providers differed considerably with regard to whether they embraced a local or global ambition in their respective initiatives (local was associated with personalized groups, operations framed to a single city, and so on; while global followed from descriptions of scaling, multiple locations, professions, and so on). By doing so, the distribution between these two ambitions among the identified sectors was mapped. Thereafter, each identified field-level logic was contrasted to field-level logics in the same foundational core as well as their interrelationship to the dominant market and non-market orders of the sharing economy. This resulted in the logic of abundance in contrast to the logic of scarcity in the access core; the logic of profit in contrast to the logic of sustainability in the platform core; and the local logic in contrast to the global logic in the community-based core. These three pairs of field-level logics hence emerged through displaying market and non-market orders towards Acquier et al.’s (2017) framework of access, platform and community-based sharing economies (see Figure 14.1).

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184  Handbook of the sharing economy

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Access Economy The access economy as defined by Acquier et al. (2017) focuses on the user side of the sharing economy. Previous research has here denoted variety in motivations among consumers (Hamari et al. 2016), which also helps to guide how the access economy would have different logics. The dataset on the sharing economy revealed such a tension along the orientation of financial gains (lower prices) and transaction orientation vis-à-vis the for-doing-good and accessing/true sharing as a core of users. This resulted in what we refer to as the abundance and scarcity logics of the sharing economy. In the data material, these logics were captured as references to an increased focus on monetary-based platforms, and the early development along with some recent counter-movements arguing for a separation from the increasingly money-based sharing economy. Figure 14.2 illustrates the frequency of these logics in the dataset, also illustrating the existence of both a market and a non-market order in the access core. As the figure portrays, the abundance core dominates over the entire data capturing period, while it also fluctuates much more and describes a trend over time of decline in the number of posts. Yet, these fluctuations and decline do not indicate a corresponding rise in the scarcity logic, again suggesting that the field-level logics appear in parallel yet are represented by different users. 1200

Abundance Scarcity

800

600

400

200

ar c

h 1 Ap , 2 ril 01 6 1 M ,2 ay 01 6 Ju 1, 2 ne 01 6 1 Ju , 20 l 1 y A 6 1 Se ugu , 2 pt st 016 em 1, 20 b 1 O er 1, 6 ct 20 N ob ov er 16 e 1 D mb , 20 ec er em 1 16 b ,2 Ja er 016 nu 1, 2 Fe ary 01 1, 6 br ua 20 r 1 M y 1, 7 ar 2 ch 01 7 1 Ap , 2 0 irl 17 1 M ,2 ay 01 7 Ju 1, 2 ne 01 7 1 Ju , 20 A ly 1 17 Se ugu , 2 pt st 01 7 em 1 be , 20 1 r1 ,2 7 01 7

0

M

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1000

Figure 14.2  Abundance and scarcity logics of users

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Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy  185 Platform Economy Figure 14.3 presents the platform core (Acquier et al. 2017) as coded by putting a market/ non-market order lens on the different platforms’ associated sectors of the economy. This analysis revealed the profit versus sustainability logics of the platforms. The sustainability logic would here indicate that providers and users utilize resources in a way that increases their efficiency or, in the best of cases, without any material consumption at all. This would include an overlap of actors and blurriness of roles between providers and users. The profit logic would instead be transactional, focus on supply and demand as separate activities, and include the transfer of goods or services for the exchange of money. On the platform level, the former would include quite voluntary-based platforms often organized by parties also engaging as providers, while the latter would consist of organizations set up as companies with their own profit claims. As indicated by the figure, the for-profit platforms dominate in the dataset and are also associated with platforms in specific sectors, where Uber and Airbnb dominate in the mobility and hospitality sectors, respectively.

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Community-Based Economy The community-based core focuses on the provider side of the sharing economy and thus puts focus on those sharing their resources or engaging in the sharing economy by means to earn income. The literature indicates an increased presence of the latter (Hamari et al. 2016), also seen by how companies become providers in the sharing economy. With a focus on this issue when analyzing the dataset, it therefore helped to put focus on the variety of logics related to the community-based core. As field-level logics, and along the market/non-market orders, the dataset revealed two separate logics: the local logic and the global logic. Figure 14.4 displays the data by illustrating the degree to which sharing economy platforms’ associated sectors relate to the local logic throughout several sectors, while especially the sector of mobility relates strongly to the global logic. The global logic denoted in the figure represents scalable operations and providers taking on operations as an occupation. Linked to this, the anonymity of operations, and providers and users not knowing one another extensively was apparent; while for the local logic, overlaps were present, as was the resource transfer (such as the swapping of clothes) for sustainability reasons. Synthesis Taken together, the field-level logics of abundance and scarcity, profit and sustainability, and local and global follow the line of by-pair parties in the triadic construct (user, provider, platform) in the sharing economy set-up. For each core, these field-level logics would compete and coexist in how they represent opposing practices, yet also attract different actors. Table 14.2 interlinks these market/non-market orders, field-levels logics and functional cores of the sharing economy, and Figure 14.5 continues by refining the framework of Acquier et al. (2017). In view of Table 14.2 and Figure 14.5, the sharing economy can be understood to represent a novel organizational phenomenon that has the potential to bridge market/

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186

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Food

Logistics Kids & Children Leisure Finance Non-profit association Miscellaneous Housing Energy Construction Pets

57

42 31 29 13 11 10 7 5 2 2

Figure 14.3  Profit and sustainability logics of platforms

Business & Work

103

(On-demand) Services

211

Hospitality

Fashion & Clothing

252

151

Mobility

589

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467

26 n/a

1022

Sustainability logic

Profit logic

187

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Business & Work

Food

Logistics

100

57

42 31 27 13 11 9 7 4 2 2 1

Figure 14.4  Local and global logics of providers

Kids & Children Leisure Finance Non-profit association Miscellaneous Housing Energy Hospitality Pets Construction

(On-demand) Services

Fashion & Clothing

Mobility

183

248

458

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Sustainability logic

Local logic

483

712

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Table 14.2  I nstitutional orders, field-level logics and foundational cores of the sharing economy 1. Institutional orders

Market

Non-market

2. Field-level logics

Abundance Profit Global

Austerity Sustainability Local

3. Foundational cores

Access economy Platform economy Community-based economy

non-market orders if symbols and practices are similarly enacted by organizational actors (Berg Johansen and Waldorff 2017). This potential is dependent on the character of field-level logics and how sharing economy actors choose to enact these logics. On the one hand, the field-level logics of abundance and scarcity, profit and sustainability, and local and global may materialize as competing logics (Pache and Santos 2013; Reay and Hinings 2009), thereby reinforcing the distinction between the market and non-market orders. However, given that they instead manifest as coexisting logics, hybrid logics or as an institutional bricolage of logics due to the pluralistic character (Dunn and Jones 2010) of the sharing economy, such a scenario would arguably enable the bridging between market and non-market orders to shift away from the current dominance of the market order. As Figure 14.5 illustrates, the field-level logics may be better matched if they correspond to either of the orders. The field-level logics appear in the intersection between users and providers, providers and platforms, and users and platforms, which also means that there would be tension between platforms representing colliding logics to users, for instance, such as when profit meets scarcity field-level logics. Thus, tension occurs among field-level logics, as well as among actors and orders, that may lead to avoidance and multiple field-level logics, or challenges resulting in dominating orders. As such, the way in which practices and symbols manifest within the respective foundational cores of the sharing economy, and how these become enacted and shaped (Friedland and Alford 1991) by sharing economy actors, will be fundamental for the ways in which field-level logics in the respective foundational cores of the sharing economy will evolve vis-à-vis their associated institutional orders.

CONCLUSIONS This chapter has shed light on the institutional logics of the sharing economy by identifying three pairs of field-level logics. This is accomplished through separating field-level logics from the market/non-market orders and studying the intersections between users, providers and platforms in various sharing economy settings. Our analysis reveals that the sharing economy currently spans a wide variety of both market/non-market orderrelated field-level logics that provide explanations as to why the sharing economy is currently characterized by instability and tension (Acquirer et al. 2017). The sorting tool of field-level logics and their associated institutional orders thereby provide some clarity

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189

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Local logic

Sustainability logic

Scarcity logic

Platform economy Field-level logics

Institutional orders

Global logic

Profit logic

Abundance logic

Community-based economy

Access economy

MARKET ORDER

Figure 14.5  Framework of institutional orders, field-level logics and the foundational cores of the sharing economy

Community-based economy

Access economy

NON-MARKET ORDER

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Platform economy

190  Handbook of the sharing economy in ­relation to the blurred concepts of accessing, sharing and transferring, the variety of motives of users/consumers, and the reasons for parties to provide their services to the sharing economy (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Hartl et al. 2016; Hellwig et al. 2015; Hwang and Griffiths 2017; Lamberton and Rose 2012; Milanova and Maas 2017; Möhlmann 2015; Pisano et al. 2015). The main contribution of this chapter is the translation of the access, platform and community-based economy as previously described by Acquier et al. (2017) into six field logics (abundance, scarcity, profit, sustainability, local and global) along the market/ non-market order spectrum. More specifically, the translation of Acquier et al.’s (2017) framework into three sets of field-level logics associated to the market/non-market orders, as presented in Figure 14.5, helps to distinguish between set-ups, while they also indicate how logics appear in intersections between parties in their roles as users, providers and platforms to create common symbols and practices. The separation into access, platform and community-based foundational cores along the market/non-market orders implies that in the intersection between the provider and platform, the platform and the user, and the user and the provider, respectively, there would need to be a correspondence in logics to minimize tension and successfully engage in balancing acts between logics. However, it may not be the case that abundance/scarcity, profit/sustainability and local/global logics all need to be fulfilled for functioning operations to be in place. In light of the dynamic character of the sharing economy, we welcome further research on this specific topic, but also on how other theoretical lenses can enrich our understanding of how balancing acts among the foundational cores of the sharing economy are governed.

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REFERENCES Acquier, Aurélien, Thiebault Daudigeos, and Jonatan Pinkse (2017), “Promises and Paradoxes of the Sharing Economy: An Organizing Framework,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125 (1), 1‒10. Alsever, Jennifer (2013), “The ‘Mega Trend’ that Swallowed Silicon Valley,” CNN Money, http://fortune.com/20​ 12/10/03/the-mega-trend-that-swallowed-silicon-valley/. Bardhi, Fleura and Gianna M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39, 881–98. Belk, Russell W. (2007), “Why Not Share Rather Than Own?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611, 126–40. Belk, Russell W. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 715–34. Belk, Russell W. (2014), “You are What You Can Access: Sharing and Collaborative Consumption Online,” Journal of Business Research, 68 (8), 1595–600. Berg Johansen, Christina and Susanne Boch Waldorff (2017), “What are Institutional Logics—and Where is the Perspective Taking Us?” in New Themes in Institutional Analysis: Topics and Issues from European Research, ed. Georg Krücken, Carmelo Mazza, Renate E. Meyer, and Peter Walgenbach, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 51‒76. Besharov, Marya L. and Wendy K. Smith (2014), “Multiple Institutional Logics in Organizations: Explaining Their Varied Nature and Implications,” Academy of Management Review, 39 (3), 364‒81. Botsman, Rachel (2015), “Defining the Sharing Economy: What is Collaborative Consumption and What Isn’t,” Fast Company, https://www.fastcompany.com/3046119/defining-the-sharing-economy-what-is-collabora​ tive-consumption-and-what-isnt. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, New York: Harper Collins. de Reuver, Mark, Carsten Sørensen, and Rahul C. Basole (2016), “The Digital Platform: A Research Agenda,” Journal of Information Technology, 31, 1–12. Dunn, Mary B. and Candace Jones (2010), “Institutional Logics and Institutional Pluralism: The Contestation of Care and Science Logics in Medical Education, 1967–2005,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 55 (1), 114‒49.

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Tracking the institutional logics of the sharing economy  191 Edelman, Benjamin and Damien Geradin (2015), “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts: How Should We Regulate Companies like Airbnb and Uber,” Stanford Technology Law Review, 19 (2), 293‒328. Friedland, Roger and Robert Alford (1991), “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices and Institutional Contradictions,” in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 232‒63. Geissinger, Andrea, Christofer Laurell, and Christian Sandström (2018a), “Digital Disruption beyond Uber and Airbnb—Tracking the Long Tail of the Sharing Economy,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, http://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.06.012. Geissinger, Andrea, Christofer Laurell, Christian Sandström, et al. (2018b), “Digital Entrepreneurship and Field Conditions for Institutional Change: Investigating the Enabling Role of Cities,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.06.019. Goodrick, Elizabeth and Trish Reay (2011), “Constellations of Institutional Logics: Changes in the Professional Work of Pharmacists,” Work and Occupations, 38 (3), 372‒416. Greenwood, Royston, Amalia M. Díaz, Stan Xiao Li, and José C. Lorente (2010), “The Multiplicity of Institutional Logics and the Heterogeneity of Organizational Responses,” Organization Science, 21 (2), 521‒39. Grinevich, Vadim, Franz Huber, Mine Kataras-Özkan, and Cagla Yavuz (2017), “Green Entrepreneurship in the Sharing Economy: Utilising Multiplicity of Institutional Logics,” Small Business Economics, 52 (4), 859‒76. Hamari, Juho, Mimmi Sjöklint, and Antti Ukkonen (2016), “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (9), 2047–59. Hartl, Barbara, Eva Hofmann, and Erich Kirchler (2016), “Do We Need Rules for ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’? Governance in Collaborative Consumption Communities,” Journal of Business Research, 69 (8), 2756–63. Hellwig, Katharina, Felicitas Morhart, Florent Girardin, and Miriam Hauser (2015), “Exploring Different Types of Sharing: A Proposed Segmentation of the Market for ‘Sharing’ Businesses,” Psychology and Marketing, 32 (9), 891–906. Hwang, Jiyoung and Merlyn A. Griffiths (2017), “Share More, Drive Less: Millennials Value Perception and Behavioral Intent in Using Collaborative Consumption Services,” Journal of Consumer Marketing, 34 (2), 132–46. Kenney, Martin and John Zysman (2016), “The Rise of the Platform Economy,” Issues in Science and Technology, 32 (3), 61–9. Lamberton, Cait and Randall Rose (2012), “When is Ours Better than Mine? A Framework for Understanding and Altering Participation in Commercial Sharing Systems,” Journal of Marketing, 76, 109–25. Laurell, Christofer and Christian Sandström (2017), “The Sharing Economy in Social Media: Analyzing Tensions Between Market and Non-Market Logics,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 58‒65. Mair, Johanna and Georg Reischauer (2017), “Capturing the Dynamics of the Sharing Economy: Institutional Research on the Plural Forms and Practices of Sharing Economy Organizations,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 11‒20. Milanova, Veselina and Peter Maas (2017), “Sharing Intangibles: Uncovering Individual Motives for Engagement in a Sharing Service Setting,” Journal of Business Research, 75, 159–71. Möhlmann, Mareike (2015), “Collaborative Consumption: Determinants of Satisfaction and the Likelihood of Using a Sharing Economy Option Again,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14 (3), 193–207. Murillo, David, Heloise Buckland, and Esther Val (2017), “When the Sharing Economy Becomes Neoliberalism on Steroids: Unravelling the Controversies,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 66‒76. Nigam, Amit and William Ocasio (2010), “Event Attention, Environmental Sensemaking, and Change in Institutional Logics: An Inductive Analysis of the Effects of Public Attention to Clinton’s Health Care Reform Initiative,” Organization Science, 21 (4), 823‒41. Pache, Anne-Clair and Filipe Santos (2013), “Inside the Hybrid Organization: Selective Coupling as a Response to Competing Institutional Logics,” Academy of Management Journal, 56 (4), 972‒1001. Parguel, Béatrice, Renaud Lunardo, and Florence Benoit-Moreau (2017), “Sustainability of the Sharing Economy in Question: When Second-Hand Peer-to-Peer Platforms Stimulate Indulgent Consumption,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 48‒57. Pattinson, Hugh M. (2016), “A Neo-Schumpeterian Perspective of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Marketing in the Age of Digitisation,” International Journal of Business Environment, 8 (2), 87‒104. Pisano, Paola, Marco Pironti, and Alison Rieple (2015), “Identify Innovative Business Models: Can Innovative Business Models Enable Players to React to Ongoing or Unpredictable Trends?” Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 5 (3), 181–99. Price, Linda and Russell Belk (2016), “Consumer Ownership and Sharing: Introduction to the Issue,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 193–7.

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Prothero, Andrea, Susan Dobscha, Jim Freund, et al. (2011), “Sustainable Consumption: Opportunities for Consumer Research and Public Policy,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 30 (1), 31–8. Reay, Trish and C.R. (Bob) Hinings (2009), “Managing the Rivalry of Competing Institutional Logics,” Organization Studies, 30 (6), 629‒52. Scaraboto, Diane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything in Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (1), 152–76. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” http://www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-theshar​ing-economy. Silverman, David (2006), Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction, London: SAGE. Slee, Tom (2016), What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, New York: OR Books. Stieglitz, Stefan, Linh Dang-Xuan, Axel Bruns, and Christoph Neuberger (2014), “Social Media Analytics,” Business and Information Systems Engineering, 6 (2), 89–96. Stieglitz, Stefan, Milad Mirbabaie, Björn Ross, and Christoph Neuberger (2018), “Social Media Analytics: Challenges in Topic Discovery, Data Collection, and Data Preparation,” International Journal of Information Management, 39, 156‒68. Sundararajan, Arun (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thornton, Patricia H. and William Ocasio (1999), “Institutional Logics and the Historical Contingency of Power in Organizations: Executive Succession in the Higher Education Publishing Industry, 1958–1990,” American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3), 801–43. Thornton, Patricia H. and William Ocasio (2008), “Institutional Logics,” in The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, ed. Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin and Roy Suddaby, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 99‒128. Thornton, Patricia H., William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury (2012), The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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15.  Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality* 3

Georg von Richthofen and Eileen Fischer

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INTRODUCTION Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with the idea for Airbnb, a platform matching providers and consumers of accommodation, when they were sharing an apartment in San Francisco and struggling to make rent. When most hotels were booked and hotel prices skyrocketed because of a conference in town, they decided to make some extra money by renting out air mattresses in their living room. That experience, according to the founders, led to the idea for their start-up. Although Airbnb’s founders were commercially motivated—their goal was to make the money they needed to pay their rent—they nevertheless put emphasis on being good hosts, for example by showing their guests around San Francisco (e.g., Gallagher 2017). When the entrepreneurs eventually founded Airbnb, they positioned the platform in the grey area between non-commercial forms of hospitality (for example, Couchsurfing) and more conventional, commercial forms of hospitality (for example, hotels) (Botsman and Rogers 2011). Theoretically speaking, Airbnb’s founders have forged their business opportunity by drawing on two contrasting “logics”: the logic of commerce and the logic of hospitality. Prior research has shown that conflicting logics can be highly destabilizing to organizations (e.g., Toubiana and Zietsma 2017), but in 2017, for example, Airbnb reported almost $100 million in profit on $2.6 billion in revenue (Bort 2018). This raises a question relevant to Airbnb and other platforms with persistently plural logics: how are tensions between logics navigated in ways that allow the platform to be sustained and successful? We begin by reviewing relevant theory. We then proceed to an empirical analysis that addresses this question.

INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS Institutional logics are “socially constructed, historical patterns of cultural symbols and material practices, including assumptions, values, and beliefs, by which individuals and organizations provide meaning to their daily activity, organize time and space, and reproduce their lives and experiences” (Thornton and Ocasio 1999, 804). Logics direct actors by providing organizing principles, norms and identities (Friedland and Alford 1991). They shape what social actors see as appropriate versus inappropriate behavior. Actions *  Data collection information: the first author collected the data for this study between July 2014 and May 2018. A part of the blog posts was collected by a student assistant at the Chair of Technology Marketing at ETH Zürich under the first author’s supervision. The first and the second authors jointly analyzed and discussed the data on multiple occasions.

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194  Handbook of the sharing economy that seem perfectly appropriate or rational in the context of the family, for example, may be considered inappropriate and irrational in a business context. Individuals are familiar with and have been socialized into a range of different logics and readily navigate different logics within different social domains (Thornton et al. 2012). Thornton et al. (2012) distinguish between societal logics, which correspond to ideal types of social institutions that prevail in large parts of societies (for example, family, community, religion or market), and more localized logics such as those at field or organizational levels. Field and organization level logics are usually historically specific instantiations of societal logics that are more bounded in scope and must be determined empirically. The field of fashion, for example, is based on both the field-level logic of art and a historically specific form of the societal logic of commerce (e.g., Scaraboto and Fischer 2013). Organizations frequently exhibit a logic of commerce in combination with another logic (e.g., Jay 2013). As these examples suggest, at field- and organization-specific levels, multiple logics often coexist. While plural logics need not be in conflict, there are often latent tensions between them which can occasionally become acute (e.g., Ertimur and Coskuner-Balli 2015; Friedland and Alford 1991; Jay 2013; Toubiana and Zietsma 2017). We next describe the two logics that Airbnb has tacitly but effectively drawn on to forge its business opportunity, mining anthropological literature to articulate these logics.

PLURAL LOGICS IN THE AIRBNB PLATFORM

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The Logic of Hospitality Hospitality is the act of transforming outsiders into (temporary) insiders. This act usually implies that one insider (the host) takes responsibility for the outsider (the guest) and attends to them, for example, by offering food and drink (Pitt-Rivers 2012; Selwyn 2000). In this process, hospitality creates a reciprocal bond between the host and guest, and its norms are violated if such a bond is not (re)produced. Several relatively universal norms exist that guide the behavior of both hosts and guests. For example: “It is always the host who ordains, the guest who complies” (Pitt-Rivers 2012, 513). Further, being a good host implies an “appropriate motive,” namely “a genuine desire to please guests and make them happy” (Lashley 2000, 11). The host must “attend to his guests, to grant them the precedence which is their due, to show concern for their needs and wishes or in general to earn the gratitude which guests should show” (Pitt-Rivers 2012, 516). This may involve sharing a meal, offering food and drink, as well as making sure the guest is safe. The guest, in turn, is supposed to treat the host and his home with respect, which implies that the guest does not complain if the host actually does not meet the guest’s expectations or standards (Darke and Gurney 2000). Within this logic, there are variations, for example, between “putting somebody up” and inviting somebody to one’s place (Darke and Gurney 2000). In the former case, the host has fewer obligations to the guest. However, in both it is assumed that hosts and guests behave in a warm and friendly manner to one another that places priority on sustaining warm social bonds. Evidence that the founders of Airbnb have drawn on the logic of hospitality is apparent in the platform’s nomenclature: they use the terms “hosts” and “guests” to refer to the

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  195 service providers and clients who they connect via their platform. It is also apparent in the rhetoric that Airbnb directs toward platform participants, as in the following speech by one of the co-founders: What Airbnb is about, it’s not just about a house, it’s about a home. And there is a difference between a house and a home. You see a house is a space but a home is a place where you accept people as if they are family. Being a host is about caring for somebody else. Being a host means that you make someone else feel like they belong. (Airbnb YouTube Channel, “Hosts are Heroes,” November 13, 2015)

This quotation reinforces that hosts are meant to treat guests “as if they are family” and to make them “feel like they belong.” Such rhetoric clearly aligns with a logic of hospitality. It stands in contrast, however, to the logic of commerce, which we describe next.

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The Logic of Commerce In its ideal type, the logic of commerce prescribes that enterprises should seek to maximize profits, while individuals should seek to maximize their self-interest. In contrast to the logic of hospitality, it implies no reciprocal obligation or bond between sellers and buyers after a transaction (Thornton et al. 2012). The logic of commerce has long dominated markets in which hotels, motels, and the like compete. In such markets, “the commercial provision of hospitality activities is chiefly driven by the need to extract surplus value from the exchange” (Lashley 2000, 13). The norms for both hosts and guests are very different in hospitality contexts where the logic of commerce prevails over the logic of hospitality. Hosts are not expected to deliver more than they contractually promised. Guests pay, in part, for being able to ignore the norms and role expectations associated with being a guest, for having privacy, and for being relieved of reciprocal obligations of hospitality (Selwyn 2000). Evidence that the entrepreneurs who run Airbnb also draw on the logic of commerce is also abundant. For example, the Airbnb website’s “About us” statement reads in part as follows: “Airbnb uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs” (Airbnb Press Room, “About Us,” May 13, 2018). The same individuals who are referred to elsewhere as “hosts” are here dubbed “hospitality entrepreneurs,” and the incentives highlighted here appear largely monetary. Beyond rhetoric, the very basis of Airbnb’s business model is inherently commercial: the platform transfers money from guests to hosts, and encourages guests to evaluate their hosts and their experience thoroughly with ratings and reviews after their stay. The fact that money is exchanged suggests that the logic of commerce applies. Tensions Between the Logics of Commerce and Hospitality The logic of commerce and the logic of hospitality evidently prescribe contrasting goals, roles and norms. As mentioned above, the presence of plural logics in organizations or markets can, but need not always, lead to tensions. In hotels, for instance, where the logic of commerce dominates, role expectations and norms are relatively clear and tensions rarely occur. In cases like bed and breakfasts, however, where both logics are pervasive,

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196  Handbook of the sharing economy tensions do occur: research has shown that both bed and breakfasts hosts (e.g., Stringer 1981) and guests (e.g., Lynch 2005) occasionally experience tensions due to the hybrid nature of the exchange and conflicting role expectations. Similarly, the coexistence of these sharply contrasting logics on the Airbnb platform, not surprisingly, results in tensions between the two logics as well. Forum posts by hosts who complain of guest behavior that violates the norms of hospitality clearly illustrate how tensions between the logics can, at times, become acute. Consider the following forum post:

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Miss late pants spent all day in our dining room, where she plugged in her computer, and spoke loudly (yelling at times) into her phone. She decided she was doing business from there, even though she had a perfectly good desk in her room. Left her boyfriend to act as lunch gatherer, and “the ignored one”. When I tried to clean the breakfast things from around her cables and wires and papers, she didn’t so much as glance up to say a word to me—nothing. I was the maid I guess. (GoodbyeSandy, reply to “Late arrivals for guests in home,” Airhostsforum, October 17, 2015)

The post reflects that GoodbyeSandy is frustrated that a guest is acting in accordance with a commercial logic (treating her as a “maid”). In accordance with the logic of hospitality, GoodbyeSandy feels the guest should acknowledge her as a person and should not conduct business in the dining room. Treating the host like a servant is considered taboo for guests (Darke and Gurney 2000). As these and many similar posts to forums frequented by Airbnb hosts reveal, then, tensions between the commercial and the hospitality logic are routine. What is striking, however, is that despite these tensions the platform prospers. Therefore, Airbnb is an interesting context to explore our research question: how are tensions between logics navigated in ways that allow the platform to be sustained and successful? In order to address this question, we examine actions of both the platform owners and users. Considering the role of providers (hosts) is important, because platforms such as Airbnb rely on the services provided by its users, who ultimately control most of the consumer experience and shape the logics of the market by enacting roles, practices and norms. But it is also important to consider the role of the platform leader, because platforms exercise the mechanism of governance that shapes user behaviors (Parker et al. 2016).

DATA AND METHOD We draw on archival data, netnographic data and our own experience of using the Airbnb platform. Our archival data include: all Airbnb blog posts between 2008 and 2017 (totaling 799 pages of single-spaced text); the text on the Airbnb website; and tutorials created by Airbnb for the users of the platform. The netnographic data were collected from May 2015 to May 2018 on an online forum explicitly targeted towards Airbnb hosts, called Airhostsforum (http://airhostsforum.com), and encompass several thousand single-spaced pages of text. Finally, we also draw on our own experience of staying in 13 different Airbnb listings between 2014 and 2017 for 64 days in total. Our data analysis was driven by our research

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  197 question as well as our enabling lens, following established guidelines (Belk et al. 2013). Hence, in our analysis we deliberately focused on how the platform and its users successfully navigate the tensions between logics.

HYBRIDIZED PERFORMANCES: ENACTING A SEMBLANCE OF HOSPITALITY WITHIN COMMERCIAL PARAMETERS Not unlike Airbnb’s founders, Airbnb’s users tend to sustain the semblance of hospitality while acting within commercial parameters, and thereby hybridize the logic of commerce and the logic of hospitality. Sustaining a semblance of hospitality is an important part of navigating the tensions between logics, because hosts, especially those who accommodate consumers in their own domestic spaces, experience tensions when guests violate the norms of hospitality. But guests may experience tensions too, when hosts violate the norms of hospitality and they do not feel welcome in the private space of the host. Before we proceed to the findings, we want to acknowledge that Airbnb’s platform is increasingly also used by agencies, bed and breakfasts, boutique hotels and property managers. Nevertheless, the logic of hospitality remains at the heart of Airbnb’s strategy (Airbnb YouTube Channel, “Host Q&A,” March 5, 2018). In order to sustain this logic, Airbnb will (have to) continue to navigate the tensions between the logic of commerce and the logic of hospitality. In the following, we first show how Airbnb’s users sustain the semblance of hospitality by performing the role of the host and the guest and enacting associated practices and norms. Next, we elaborate on how Airbnb has contributed to these hybridized performances.

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How Airbnb’s Users Enact a Semblance of Hospitality within Commercial Parameters Our research suggests that Airbnb’s users, both hosts and guests, performatively enact a range of hospitality practices and norms while interacting, and transacting, with one another. This is evident through their entire role performances, from the first booking request through to the review of the stay. While not all Airbnb users always behave in the ways we describe, those that do effectively perform hybridity. The host–guest interaction typically begins with an unusually friendly (from a commercial viewpoint) conversation between the host and the guest through Airbnb’s messaging system. In their booking inquiries, guests tend to introduce themselves, praise the listing of the hosts and inform them about the purpose of their trip as well as other travelers accompanying them, as the following inquiry illustrates: Hi . . . I am a PhD student from . . . and currently . . . in Toronto. My best friend . . . is visiting me from Germany and we wanted to relax a bit . . . and explore St. Edward County for 2 days. Your place looks lovely—I hope it works out. (Booking inquiry, Stay 10, May 2016)

The host typically responds in an equally warm and friendly manner. The initial interaction is facilitated by the fact that many users have elaborate profiles in which they describe their hobbies, family status, interests, political convictions, and more (Roelofsen and Minca 2018, 175).

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198  Handbook of the sharing economy Prior to the stay, host and guest tend to connect again to coordinate arrivals times, and hosts often send their guests further information about their neighborhood and instructions that help guests to get to the accommodation. Some hosts even arrange a driver or pick their guests up from the airport or train station themselves. Although the use of keycodes that enable guests to access the accommodation of hosts in their absence is pervasive, many hosts still intentionally welcome and greet their guests in person. The welcoming ritual of Airbnb hosts typically involves socializing with the guest, and many hosts also offer their guest a cup of coffee, tea or simply a glass of water. Even hosts who do not meet guests in person often find ways to make them feel welcome through handwritten welcome cards or small gifts (for example, a bottle of wine). Some guests return the favor by bringing their hosts small gifts or souvenirs. The initial greeting ritual, when conducted in person, also involves hosts showing their guests around, giving them personal suggestions on what to do during their stay, and recommending local restaurants. The following forum post nicely illustrates how Airbnb hosts sustain the semblance of hospitality within commercial parameters:

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I have . . . hosted about 120 nights to date, and find that my super host status is maintained through great communication, setting clear expectations, and the philosophy that I am in the customer service business and guests have a right to have fun, relax and not worry about too many restrictions . . .   My wife or I send out a detailed welcome message the moment guests make a reservation with tips about San Francisco, and our home including door key codes. We resend this message within a week of the guest’s arrival, since some of them tend to have forgotten/lost it.   If we are home, we make it a point to welcome the guest personally, and show them the breakfast items and snacks sitting in the kitchen, and walk them through the apartment. We also try to say goodbye in person if we are around.   We are also social, and will spend 5 to 15 minutes chatting with them at least once during their stay, sometimes bringing out a bottle of wine to share with them if we have the time. (pankaja, reply to “What are your top tips for making your guests happy?” Airhostsforum, September 17, 2016)

Hosts like pankaja are pretty clear and unapologetic about the fact that hosting for them is a business. In pankaja’s view, this attitude actually helps him to make his guests happy and get good reviews, which are needed to maintain his “Superhost” status, because his guests do not have to conform to the more rigid norms of hospitality (“guests have a right to have fun, relax and not worry about too many restrictions”). However, pankaja also adheres to the logic of hospitality. Together with his wife, he attends to his guests and enacts a range of practices which are associated more with the logic of hospitality. This involves routines such as welcoming guests and seeing guests off in person, engaging in small-talk, and in some cases, sharing a bottle of wine with guests. Guests, too, tend to embody their roles and conform to the norms of hospitality. They greet their hosts warmly, by name, and compliment their hosts on their neighborhoods, homes, and guest rooms. Guests also normally actively listen to the host’s explanations when making the tour. This initial interaction, including the small-talk, has become so taken for granted that hosts experience tensions when guests do not play along, as the following forum post illustrates: Is this something worth mentioning in the review? It seems like international male travelers are more likely to do this. Is that a sexist behavior? I tried to show interest in him as a person, do the general chit chat, and he was not having it. At one point I was mid sentence and he cut me off to

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  199 ask about the bus lines. I could tell he was waiting for me to “shut up” and that I was “wasting his time”. It felt like how I feel when a salesperson at a store wants to go into their spiel and I’m not interested. (searchtobelost, “Guests who act disinterested in the tour, rush you, and cut you off,” Airhostsforum, September 11, 2016)

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The post shows that searchtobelost experiences tensions because she tries to adhere to the logic of hospitality, by “show[ing] interest” in her guest “as a person” and by doing “the general chit chat,” whereas the guest behaves like a busy customer in a more conventional commercial situation. The fact that posts like this are relatively rare, however, indicates that most guests actually conform to the norms of hospitality upon arrival. Note that the post also indicates that hosts and guests tend to discipline each other to conform to the norms of hospitality by, for example, mentioning impoliteness in a review. The interaction throughout the stay depends a lot on the physical closeness of the host and the guest. There is a big difference between whether the guest stays in a private room within the host’s home or rents an entire apartment. In the former case, the host and the guest typically interact more with each other. But, in either case, it is in general not unusual for hosts to socialize and spend time with their guests during the stay (Hellwig et al. 2015; Ikkala and Lampinen 2015), despite the commercial nature of the transaction. This may involve having a drink together (like pankaja does with his guests), sharing a meal or even spending time together outside the home. The following forum post indicates that some hosts intentionally spend some time with their guests to improve the guest experience and get good reviews: I do think that the personal contact between host and guest can add to the holiday experience, and this is borne out by our reviews which focus on, ahem, what lovely people we are! . . . I therefore make sure that if possible I’m around to welcome guests and after they’ve settled in (or next morning if they’re arriving late). I spend some time finding out what their plans are, going over directions for the beach, town centre etc and getting to know them a little. After that initial meeting, one of us usually makes contact about once a day—their terrace gives onto our garden and pool so it’s easy to do without being too intrusive—in a how was your day? anything we can help with? 10-minute chat.   In the second half of their stay (most guests are here about a week) we invite them to have a glass of wine and tapas with us. If we get on well with them it can extend to several bottles and an inpromptu supper, and if we don’t click, they still seem to appreciate it and we feel we’ve fulfilled our hosting duty! (Malagachica, reply to “Can someone who is not very outgoing be a successful host?” Airhostsforum, July 6, 2016)

The post shows that Malagachica enacts a range of practices associated with being a host: she welcomes her guests in person, engages in small-talk, and invites her guests for a drink and tapas in the second half of their stay. Doing so, she fulfills her “hosting duty” and satisfies the logic of hospitality. But the post also nicely illustrates that Malagachica adheres to a commercial logic at the same time, because she has learned that these practices translate into positive reviews (which in turn can potentially help her to get more bookings). Regardless of a host’s motivation for adhering to a hospitality logic, such actions contribute to sustaining the semblance of hospitality. In general, we find that guests, too, tend to pay attention to the norms of hospitality throughout their stay, especially when staying with the host. This means, for example, that guests avoid disturbing the host (or neighbors) throughout the stay and pay attention to issues such as noise as well as the routines of the host. Guests also tend to avoid making

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200  Handbook of the sharing economy a mess and often clean up after themselves. Hosts report that they often find the rental space in an “immaculate state” (jamfactoryken, reply to “Diary of a Happy Host?” Airhostsforum, November 4, 2015), and others that the guestroom sometimes “looks just as neat as when they checked in!” (dcmooney, reply to “Why guests make the beds?” Airhostsforum, June 30, 2016). Some hosts are genuinely surprised about the fact that guests leave the space in such good condition and even make their beds or strip the linens. Consider the following forum conversation: I don’t get the guests who strip the bed, why would they do this? Would you ever do that in a hotel? (azreala, reply to “Why guests make the beds?” Airhostsforum, June 30, 2016) This is a conundrum. Most of our guests remake the bed, accent pillows and all. When we visit friends or another Airbnb I strip the bed and put all the linens in one pillow case for cleaning. I don’t remember when I started this, only that I read somewhere years ago this was a “good thing” (thank you Martha) to do to be a gracious guest. (MizMavis, reply to “Why guests make the beds?” Airhostsforum, June 30, 2016)

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The comment of MizMavis, who also uses Airbnb as a guest, indicates that there are subtle, Airbnb-specific norms, which hybridize the logic of commerce and the logic of hospitality, and that guests strive to be “gracious” in the same way that hosts strive to. In stark contrast to the hotel industry, many Airbnb hosts allow guests to check out extremely late, without charging them extra for this service. Such favors help to sustain the semblance of hospitality and set the experience apart from the stay in a hotel or other more conventional, commercial forms of accommodation. The following forum quote illustrates that some hosts actually consciously decide against charging guests for such services, because they consider doing so too commercial: Though my check out also supposedly at 12, I keep it flexible. For me extra 20$ for a couple hours stay is too hotel like. We keep reminding our guests that it’s not a hotel they are renting so they can’t expect everything to be run like In a hotel (everyday cleaning, superclean, fresh towels everyday, breakfast, etc) but at the same time we have hotel rules with checking in and checking out. With hotels it’s understandable: they are running a non stop business with cleaning staff that is on a schedule. But . . . thats the beauty of Airbnb, that we can have a personal touch. I put check out time at 12 with explanation that if there are no other guests arriving its flexible. (Yana, reply to “Do you charge for late check outs, and how do you do it?” Airhostsforum, July 25, 2015)

Guests also perform a hybrid of commerce and hospitality by leaving their hosts small thank-you cards and gifts when they leave. Forum posts indicate that hosts appreciate the gesture: I mean I also like to vent sometimes, but its not all about the terrible guests . . . Other simple things, like guests leaving the sweetest notes and reviews, as well as gifts is lovely. Again its usually unexpected. Through it all, the gracious guests always outweigh the bad. (sunshine1, reply to “Diary of a Happy Host?” Airhostsforum, November 4, 2015)

This quote indicates that guests reciprocate the friendliness and generosity of the host not only through notes and gifts (hospitality practices), but also by writing good reviews (commercial practices).

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  201 In sum, we find that Airbnb’s users embody the role of the host and the guest. They adhere to the logic of hospitality and try to be “good hosts” and “good guests” by enacting hybridized practices. Note that this not only concerns what users do, but also how they do it; for example, through using the appropriate body language and facial expressions (such as smiling). Through these performances, Airbnb’s users help to prevent triggering tensions between the logics of commerce and hospitality. Next, we consider how the Airbnb platform has contributed to the institutionalization of these performances, and how the tools that the platform provides facilitate hybrid practices. The Role of the Platform

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Shaping host and guest performances Airbnb’s leadership helps to foster hybridity through storytelling and through educating its users. The following Airbnb blog post nicely illustrates, for example, storytelling that educates users about the host role: Three weeks into our trip, we were in Wisconsin and riding high. That’s when disaster struck. I (Anna) sustained an injury that prevented me from cycling for several weeks. We decided that Boris should continue, while I would recuperate and meet him in Denver.   Logistically, this would be tough. I would have to transfer the bike and trailer with all of my possessions to Denver and then store it there for almost 15 days while I flew back home to recover. Fortunately, we already had accommodations booked in Denver with a couple of Airbnb hosts, LJ and Kelly.   I contacted LJ the night before I was to depart on my 20-hour-long bus ride to Denver with what seemed like an endless list of last-minute requests. I was sure he would deny them all, from asking for accommodations several weeks before our actual reservation—complete with storage space for my bike and trailers—as well as requesting him to let me mail some personal items to his house.   Astoundingly, LJ said yes to everything. In addition, he made time to pick me up at the bus station the following morning and offered me breakfast.   Later that evening, LJ sensed how upset and frustrated I was at having to take a break from my trip. To cheer me up, he offered to take me to a tea house in Boulder—about 40 miles away . . .   Staying with LJ and Kelly quickly became like visiting old friends—the kind who are always there for you when you find yourself in a bind . . . We’ve talked with several hosts who have also reflected on the strong friendships they’ve formed with some of their guests. For them, us, and so many others in the Airbnb community, this is an opportunity to make memories—and friendships—that will last a lifetime. (Airbnb Blog, “Across America on an Electric Bike, Part 5: How to Make True Friends,” June 4, 2012)

In addition to circulating inspiring (and instructive) stories from Airbnb users like Anna, Airbnb also offers more blatantly pointed tips about how transacting users can treat each other like hosts and guests, as the following excerpts illustrate: Our community continues to amaze us. Every day, Airbnb hosts provide the best customer service imaginable, welcoming guests into their spaces and treating them hospitably and generously. Our guests return the favor, giving kudos to our hosts and even go so far as to purchase them gifts from their travels. (Airbnb Blog, “Why We Will Always Love You,” February 14, 2012) We’re proud of the personal connections we help create every day. And we’re inspired by the fact that Airbnb hosts are going the extra mile to surprise their guests—by picking them up from the

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202  Handbook of the sharing economy airport, by cooking them meals, by showing them their cities—all the time. (Airbnb Blog, “How to Create Love at First Sight: Airbnb’s SXSW Welcome,” March 22, 2012)

Note that such posts equip users with concrete ideas how to enact hybridity. The first post suggests that guests can reciprocate the generosity of their host, by bringing them “gifts from their travels.” The second suggests that hosts should go “the extra mile,” pick their guests up from the airport, cook them meals and show them around. It is notable that Airbnb’s blog posts collectively imply that the vast majority of users behave this way. The company never publicizes cases where hosts and guests treat each other in a more purely commercial manner. Instead, the site offers such educational tips as the following excerpt from Airbnb’s Help Center: How can I be a considerate guest? . . . To help you prepare, here are a few tips to help enhance your experience with your listing and your host. Before you book ●  Share your story in the bio section of your profile, and get a Verified ID. Hosts prefer to know who’s asking to stay with them, and as a result you may have a better chance of your requests being accepted . . .

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Before your trip ●  Communicate clearly with your host about any expectations or special needs you may have. ●  Always let your host know if you’re likely to arrive late for check-in. On your trip ●  Honor your commitments (including arrival time) and any house rules. ●  Enjoy your host’s home as if you were staying with friends. Be respectful of your neighbors . . . ●  Get your host’s permission before having guests over. ●  When in doubt, reach out to your host with any questions or problems that arise. (Airbnb Help Center, “How Can I be a Considerate Guest?,” accessed May 17, 2018)

Airbnb’s recommendations help to prevent tensions between logics by educating guests on how to integrate the two. Specifically, Airbnb teaches guests to “Enjoy your host’s home as if you were staying with friends,” by honoring “commitments (including arrival time) and any house rules,” and by asking hosts for permission before bring extra guests to the accommodation. By doing so, Airbnb helps to reduce the probability that hosts experience tensions when guests break domestic taboos and treat hosts or their homes like mere commodities. At the same time, it also helps to increase the satisfaction of both host and guest with a stay. Airbnb likewise educates hosts through blog posts and through official tutorials such as the following: Showing that you pay attention makes guests feel special. Travelers love a personalized welcome. Imagine all that can go wrong during a long day of travel—delayed flights, taxi lines, airport food, and lost luggage. Something as small as greeting your guest by name can transform a day of anonymous transactions into a moment of recognition and belonging. Even hosts who can’t greet their guests in person can put details like these in their messages. A handwritten welcome

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  203 note can have a big impact . . . Learning about your guests before they arrive can help turn strangers into new friends. Your goal is to make your guests feel safe, in control, and connected. (Airbnb Toolkits, “Showing That You Pay Attention Makes Guests Feel Special,” January 31, 2018)

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Again, the tactics Airbnb suggests encourage hosts to seamlessly couple practices from the two competing logics. Providing tools for performing hybridity The Airbnb platform also provides various tools that help its users perform hybridity. First, Airbnb enables and encourages users to create elaborate profiles, which facilitates hosts and guests getting to know each other prior to a stay and helps to create a feeling of familiarity while also providing factual information relevant to the efficient provision of service. In addition, Airbnb enables hosts to describe their house rules in their listing. Thus, guests already know the specific norms of a particular place, which helps to sustain the semblance of hospitality, because hosts do not have to formally elaborate these norms. Second, Airbnb enables hosts and guests to communicate with each other before the booking and stay. The platform digitally nudges users to adopt the tools to communicate with each other. When a user sends a host a booking request, for example, the platform prompts them to tell the host a little about the purpose of their trip and about their co-travelers. Third, Airbnb handles the payment between hosts and guests so that money does not literally change hands. Prior research found that hospitality providers and consumers find it easier to treat each other like hosts and guests when no money changes hands (Pearce 1990). Last but not least, Airbnb’s hosts can choose to accept or decline booking requests without being penalized for doing so. This constitutes a key difference between Airbnb and other accommodation platforms, such as Booking.com. Collectively, these tools facilitate what we refer to as “matchmaking.” Hosts can use the tools provided by the platform to signal to guests the extent to which they may expect an experience that is more or less closely aligned with the logic of commerce or the logic of hospitality, and guests can choose hosts whose style they prefer. Whereas other accommodation platforms tend to have relatively standardized listings where providers fill in their information, Airbnb hosts can describe in detail what they are offering. The platform also provides hosts with additional “rubrics” in the description of their listing, where hosts can elaborate their house rules and explain how they will interact with their guests. Airbnb also educates hosts to describe their offering in an accurate and clear manner: As you write your description, honesty and accuracy is key. This is an opportunity to highlight what’s unique about your space, as well as anything guests might find surprising. You can also include details on how you want to interact with your guests and any rules you want to be sure guests are aware of before they book. (Airbnb Toolkits, “Your Listing Summary,” accessed January 25, 2018)

Our netnographic data suggest that hosts who use the platform regularly put considerable effort into crafting their listing, as the following excerpt from a forum post nicely illustrates: “I’ve obsessed over our listing! It’s like a garden—I weed, trim, water, fertilize . . . I hope some day I can just let it rest” (dcmooney, reply to “New to the forum”,

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204  Handbook of the sharing economy Airhostsforum, October 30, 2015). In their listings, hosts often describe specific ways in which they will interact with guests. Some of the types of interactions that hosts suggest include the following: ●● ●● ●● ●●

Having breakfast or dinner with the guest Sharing a glass of wine at the end of the day with the guest Helping the guest navigate the local transit system Showing the guest around the town they are visiting.

In making these suggestions in their listings, hosts typically stress that they won’t be intrusive, and that they understand guests may prefer to simply be on their own. They convey that while the hosts are open to socializing and spending time with their guests, they do not expect it. In some cases, hosts go so far as to suggest that guests will be treated like friends and become a part of the life of their hosts. For example, some listings suggest hosts will: ●●

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●●

Invite guests to join them for an evening outing with the hosts’ friends Invite guests to attend events in which the hosts are participating, such as live musical performances.

Guests who have a full schedule during their stay or who simply prefer their privacy might be put off by listings that suggest such close connections with hosts. However, for Airbnb users seeking to connect with their hosts on a deeper level, such offers might hold considerable appeal. To be clear, it is not the case that all listings describe the way that hosts will interact with their guests in detail. But it is common for hosts to use their listing to give guests a sense of what to expect in terms of the interactions they are likely to have with hosts. This allows guests to select those hosts whose style of interaction suits them well. The Airbnb platform also allows hosts to deny booking requests and to screen out guests who seem like a bad match for their listing. Our netnographic data indicate that hosts draw on their experience with prior guests and the content of the booking request, the way the guest communicates, as well as previous reviews written by the guest, to decide whether a guest is a good fit for them. One clue is when a guest makes a lot of demands upfront. Another clue that hosts use to screen out guests is when a guest tries to negotiate the price of the rental. We find that most Airbnb hosts are irritated by guests who try to bargain and that many use this as an indicator that the guest is a bad match for them. The following forum comment nicely captures this sentiment: “Just say no to bargain hunters. They are not the kind of guests you want and no matter how much you take off their booking it won’t be enough. Guests who don’t respect your price won’t respect your place” (konacoconutz, reply to “Denying bargain hunters,” Airhostsforum, November 6, 2016). It is worth noting that bargaining is, according to Max Weber, the “market’s most distinctive feature” (Swedberg 2003, 120). Thus, the practice seems to have the capacity to give the exchange a more completely commercial character and to destabilize the delicate balance between the logic of commerce and the logic of hospitality. In sum, our findings indicate that Airbnb has contributed in various ways to practicing hybridity on its platform. The firm has shaped the role of the host and the guest, notably

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  205 through storytelling, and teaches users a range of practices and norms that help users to enact these roles. In addition, the firm provides users also with the tools that help to sustain the semblance of hospitality while conforming to commercial parameters.

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DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS Our findings resonate with prior literature, which has argued that platforms shape the behavior of users through governance mechanisms (e.g., Parker et al. 2016). It is evident in our data that Airbnb has contributed considerably to the hybridization of the two logics by shaping the role performances of hosts and guests and by equipping users with ideas and tips about role performances that are nicely hybridized. Our findings also resonate with prior consumer research. Scaraboto (2015) has shown that sustaining an economy in which market and non-market logics coexist requires the contributions of all involved stakeholders, including those of the users. Relatedly, we find that providers and consumers on Airbnb prevent the triggering of tensions between logics by sustaining the semblance of hospitality within commercial parameters. Future research could explore in more detail why Airbnb’s users so frequently, and often with such zeal, engage in effortful work that sustains dual logics, allowing the platform to thrive and grow. In this chapter, we focused primarily on cases where hosts accommodate guests in their own homes. Evidently, the platform’s popularity also attracts professional users, namely agencies, which manage listings for home owners, as well as bed and breakfasts and hotels. At the same time, the platform also increasingly attracts consumers who have no or little prior knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the “Airbnb experience.” We find emerging evidence that some fractions of hosts and guests, notably those committed to the “original” Airbnb model of home sharing, experience tensions because of these two interrelated developments, and it is conceivable that these developments, combined with the increasing commercial success of the platform, will make navigating the tensions between the two logics even more challenging. Thus, we suggest two avenues for future research. First, future research could examine circumstances that trigger performative lapses or breakdowns, which threaten the enactment of specific guest‒host interactions and may have more far-reaching implications for the platform. Second, future research could assess how Airbnb navigates the tensions between commercializing its platform and alienating users who cherish the platform’s original mission. Finally, our chapter has also implications for other sharing economy businesses which draw on plural logics. Consider Getaround, a platform which connects car owners and people in need of a car. Getaround encourages car owners to list their cars, by arguing that this allows them to earn extra income, contributes to preserving the environment and helps people in need of a car (Getaround 2018). Getaround, too, has to ensure that its users navigate the tensions between these different logics. When car owners feel that they or their cars are treated in a mere transactional fashion and that their contributions are not appreciated and reciprocated, they might experience tensions and consider taking their cars off the platform. Arguably, navigating the tensions between logics matters especially in cases where the financial incentives for providers are relatively low, such as on platforms where users rent each other objects.

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REFERENCES Belk, Russell, Eileen Fischer, and Robert Kozinets (2013), Qualitative Consumer and Marketing Research, London: SAGE. Bort, Julie (2018), “Airbnb Made $93 Million in Profit on $2.6 Billion in Revenue, but an Internal Clash Sent the CFO out the Door,” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.de/airbnb-profit-revenue-2018-2?r=US&IR=T. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2011), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, London: HarperCollins. Darke, Jane and Craig Gurney (2000), “Putting Up? Gender, Hospitality and Performance,” in In Search of Hospitality: Theoretical Perspectives and Debates, ed. Conrad Lashley and Alison Morrison, Oxford: Reed Educational and Professional Publishing, 77‒99. Ertimur, Burçak and Gokcen Coskuner-Balli (2015), “Navigating the Institutional Logics of Markets: Implications for Strategic Brand Management,” Journal of Marketing, 79 (2), 40‒61. Friedland, Roger and Robert R. Alford (1991), “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions,” in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 232‒63. Gallagher, Leigh (2017), The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Getaround (2018), “Benefits of Sharing Your Car,” August 22, https://www.getaround.com/tour/benefits. Hellwig, Katharina, Russell Belk, and Felicitas Morhart (2015), “Shared Moments of Sociality: Embedded Sharing within Peer-to-Peer Hospitality Platforms,” in NA—Advances in Consumer Research Volume 43, ed. Kristin Diehl and Carolyn Yoon, Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, 186‒90. Ikkala, Tapio and Airi Lampinen (2015), “Monetizing Network Hospitality: Hospitality and Sociability in the Context of Airbnb,” in Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 38; Social Computing, Vancouver, BC: ACM, 1033‒44. Jay, Jason (2013), “Navigating Paradox as a Mechanism of Change and Innovation in Hybrid Organizations,” Academy of Management Journal, 56 (1), 137‒59. Lashley, Conrad (2000), “Towards a Theoretical Understanding,” in In Search of Hospitality: Theoretical Perspectives and Debates, ed. Conrad Lashley and Alison Morrison, Oxford: Reed Educational and Professional Publishing, 77‒99. Lynch, Paul A. (2005), “Sociological Impressionism in a Hospitality Context,” Annals of Tourism Research, 32 (3), 527‒48. Parker, Geoffrey G., Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary (2016), Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy—and How to Make Them Work for You, New York: Norton. Pearce, Philip L. (1990), “Farm Tourism in New Zealand: A Social Situation Analysis,” Annals of Tourism Research, 17 (3), 337‒52. Pitt-Rivers, Julian (2012), “The Law of Hospitality,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2 (1), 501‒17. Roelofsen, Maartje and Claudio Minca (2018), “The Superhost. Biopolitics, Home and Community in the Airbnb Dream-World of Global Hospitality,” Geoforum, 91, 170‒81. Scaraboto, Daiane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything in Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (1), 152‒76. Scaraboto, Daiane and Eileen Fischer (2013), “Frustrated Fatshionistas: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Consumer Quests for Greater Choice in Mainstream Markets,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (6), 1234‒57. Selwyn, Tom (2000), “An Anthropology of Hospitality,” in In Search of Hospitality: Theoretical Perspectives and Debates, ed. Conrad Lashley and Alison Morrison, Oxford: Reed Educational and Professional Publishing, 18‒37. Stringer, Peter F. (1981), “Hosts and Guests the Bed-and-Breakfast Phenomenon,” Annals of Tourism Research, 8 (3), 357‒76. Swedberg, Richard (2003), Principles of Economic Sociology, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thornton, Patricia H. and William Ocasio (1999), “Institutional Logics and the Historical Contingency of Power in Organizations: Executive Succession in the Higher Education Publishing Industry, 1958‒1990,” American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3), 801‒43. Thornton, Patricia H., William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury (2012), The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toubiana, Madeline and Charlene Zietsma (2017), “The Message Is on the Wall? Emotions, Social Media and the Dynamics of Institutional Complexity,” Academy of Management Journal, 60 (3), 922‒53.

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Airbnb and hybridized logics of commerce and hospitality  207

DATA SOURCES

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Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com Airbnb Blog: https://blog.atairbnb.com Airbnb Help Center: https://www.airbnb.com/help Airbnb Press Room: https://press.airbnb.com Airbnb Toolkits: https://www.airbnb-toolkits.com Airbnb YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Airbnb Airhostsforum: https://airhostsforum.com

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16.  The hybrid nature of online facilitated offline sharing Konstanty Strzyczkowski

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INTRODUCTION Many flagship examples of sharing economies (Airbnb, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Getaround, Eatwith) have nothing to do with sharing. The business models developed within them constitute a form of accumulation mediated through online platforms and digital applications based on slightly modernized practices of borrowing, renting or barter. Nevertheless, their appearance does deserve our attention. There are at least two reasons for this. First of all, it should be recognized that the sharing economy really creates an alternative to a system based on ownership, providing often cheaper, simpler and better tuned to needs access to selected goods and services on an unprecedented scale. Second, the current use of digital technologies characterized by the increasingly widespread use of various platforms have undoubtedly contributed to a radical change in personal and professional life (Srnicek 2017; Kalleberg and Dunn 2016), consumption and production practices, private relations, and those that connect employees and citizens (Bauwens and Kostakis 2014; Schor 2016). The sharing economy based on digital platforms therefore fits into broader transformations covering economic, political and social activities. As such, it is often associated with the change of the existing paradigm of thinking, becoming in the eyes of apologists (Gansky 2010; Botsman and Rogers 2011; Rifkin 2016) the implementation of a post-materialist orientation promoting the idea of ​​access and sharing in place of ownership and individual property. On the other hand, according to sceptics such as Russell Belk (2010, 2014) and Thomas Widlok (2016), sharing is something radically different from commodity exchange, as well as what in classical economic anthropology is defined as gift (Mauss 1973; Malinowski 2001). They stand out against identifying peer-to-peer barter exchanges with the gift economy, just as Lessing (2003), Barbrook (2005), Giesler (2006), Benkler (2008) and Hyde (2010) do when they describe the nature of platforms that make the exchange of digital resources possible. Similarly, they oppose equating the sharing economy and sharing, as in the case of papers by Gorenflo (2012), Arsel and Dobsha (2011), Ozanne and Ballantine (2010) and Willer et al. (2012).

WHAT IS SHARING? In a study dedicated to the theoretical definition of the prototype of sharing possessions, Belk (2010) points to the existence of significant differences between what constitutes the essence of the gift economy, commodity exchange, and what is sharing in a strict sense, in his opinion. Therefore, he makes an effort to show that sharing does not have 208

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The hybrid nature of online facilitated offline sharing  209 to be p ­ ermanently linked to the norm of reciprocity, as it is often assumed in economic anthropology (see Sahlins 1992). Similarly, sharing cannot be explained only in terms of the value determined by comparing objects to be exchanged, as is the case with exchange of goods. As such, it is an autonomous pattern of transactions. In an ideal version, the sharing of possessed, valuable resources takes the form of a unilateral, asymmetrical and unrequited transfer. In addition, it has a fundamentally social character related to the creation and maintenance of existing ties. Unlike the gift, it means the extension, mutualization, but not the transfer of the right to use the shared property. It has a noncommercial character, not based on calculation, and it is personal, depending on context, time and place, related to emotionally anchored motifs, that is, care and love. This means that most of the sharing economy platforms, although potentially expanding the range of possibilities relating to, for example, self-employment, use of excess resources or more direct personal exchanges, remain quite remote from such a narrowly defined sharing model, based on practices of socially integrating, non-returnable transfer of goods, their unilateral lending or group co-ownership. However, with great ease, we can simultaneously find the solutions in the area of ​​sharing economy: that is, Really Really Free Market, Foodsharing, Fon and Couchsurfing, whose non-commercial and socially motivated character puts them close to what Belk (2010) understands by sharing in a pure version. In addition, what we can read and distinguish at the analytical level often turns out to be difficult to grasp at the level of the observation of everyday praxis. Even the prototype models of sharing, donating gifts and exchanging goods presented in Belk’s analysis, along with the differences, show some similarities. The Facebook group Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! (The Garbage Truck is Here!) is a good example of such a hybrid, complex, and at the same time dynamic and spontaneously growing network of peer-to-peer exchange supported by information and communication technologies. However, the critical view of the sharing economy is not limited to pointing out its taking advantage of the positive category of “sharing” that is not reflected in reality. Many researchers (Morozov 2013; Bauwens and Kostakis 2014; Slee 2015; Hill 2017) present the so-called commercial branch of the economy of sharing (Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit) as a radical realization of the idea of a​​ flexible labor market based on self-employment wrapped with innovation and accessibility. Consequently, the success of the sharing economy can mean the risk of deepening the processes associated with precarization and job insecurity. While the commercial variation of the sharing economy seems to have a significant similarity to crowdsourcing solutions (of engaging users to perform the tasks that have been supplemented with a model making it possible to perform them not only for the benefit of, but on behalf of, the company intermediating in exchanges, as in the case of Uber, TaskRabbit and Airbnb), the example of the studied group, Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie!, turns out to escape these kinds of associations. Due to the voluntary involvement, the minimized role of the intermediary institution (application), the significant role of peer-to-peer communication, unpaid nature of exchanges, interchangeability of roles (donor/recipient, informer/informed), emphasis on cooperation to redistribute surpluses, universal access and selfless help, this group is closer to the model of networkwide cooperation in the type of “Wikinomics” (Tapscott and Williams 2008), platform cooperativism (Bauwens and Kostakis 2014), or collaborative systems allowing utility to be found for untapped objects (Dalli and Corciolani 2008; Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012).

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EXCHANGE IN A COLLABORATIVE NETWORK With more than 40 000 members (in Warsaw alone), the group Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! takes actions motivated by the desire to optimize the use of unwanted resources as well as to prevent their wastage.1 Its main purpose is to help in sharing information on items thrown in the trash and to make the transfer of own items to other interested group members possible. In this sense, the group seems to realize the idea particularly exposed in the narrative surrounding the sharing economy, calling for the activation of the surplus of unused resources. The group information tab reads as follows: “Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! is a page dedicated to junk finds. For some it is a source of the People’s Poland design gems, for others it is a good place to quickly get rid of unnecessary and still valuable things.” Due to the growing popularity, the original page, Uwaga! śmieciarka jedzie, has been divided into subpages (for example, “Recovered gems—vintage PRL design,” approx. 70 000 members) and more than a dozen local groups. As a result, an unusually efficient channel was created to collect and share information and redistribute unwanted or abandoned goods, that is, used furniture, books, tools, toys, dishes, clothes, household appliances and building components. On the group’s page, users post both photos informing about items found in municipal, local rubbish dumps (the photos are usually accompanied by a detailed description of the place, condition, access to the waste bin), and advertisements concerning the willingness to hand over unnecessary items. In the case of posts of the first type, the item is usually taken by the person who first reaches the indicated place. In the case of advertisements concerning things to be handed over, the advertiser can make selections or pass them to the first applicant. Importantly, administrators do not impose here any selection criteria regarding interested users. Instead, they give advice: “if it matters to you whether your thing will reach a trader or a person in need, post a photo without an address and with a note ‘priv’, and wait for responses. Choose yourself who you will give the address to.” The group has its own internal regulations that organize the activities of exchange participants. Among other things, it prohibits publication of sales offers and proposals for barter exchanges. Initially prohibited and finally allowed (within the group “Uwaga śmieciarka jedzie—exchange, sale, looking for”) are the advertisements of people looking for specific articles (for example, “who has?”, “where can I find?”). Discussions that do not directly concern the main theme of the group are monitored and subject to control by administrators. For this purpose, a separate page was created for talks on related topics, such as design, renovation, furniture adaptation, and so on. According to the information section of the page “the talks are great and we are all for them, which is why ‘Recovered Gems’ were created. We praise and discuss there.” Although this is not expressed in the form of formal regulation, participants are urged to follow the unwritten rule of informing the other members of the group about the fact of taking the item out of the place indicated in the advertisement. However, it is allowed to sell items obtained thanks to the information posted on the group’s profile or received from its members. It is also in line with its main 1   The results of the research on the practices of participation in the group Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! presented here are based on several months of netnographic observation carried out between 1 October 2016 and 30 June 2017, as well as free-form interviews (n = 10) carried out on an unrepresentative sample of persons belonging to the surveyed group in May and June 2017.

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The hybrid nature of online facilitated offline sharing  211 goal, which is “rescuing” material substance in the form of “treasures,” “gems” or “spoils,” and the satisfaction of the needs of specific people is of secondary importance. According to the description on the group’s profile, “the winner takes it all, just don’t let the garbage truck be first:).” The question arises of how to define the case described above from the perspective of the exchanges. Free transfer of own resources to others, as part of “I give away” advertsiements, may suggest similarity to the sharing model (Belk 2010) or gift economy (Mauss 1973). Even a cursory observation confirms that despite the presence of donations, the group does not constitute a system of exchanging gifts, but rather allows one-way transfers within the framework of usually one-time pairing of strangers. Giving and receiving therefore take place among strangers and are not subject to the rule of reciprocity. The transfers thus remain unbalanced and non-symmetrical. There is no immediate reciprocation, compensation or gratification in the form of a good of similar exchange or use value. It does not resemble the model described in “The Gift” by Marcel Mauss (1973), in which a gift is considered a kind of investment in social capital, a specific “counter-service” aimed at maintaining alliances, paying for services and things, and so on, where the specific purpose of the gift is to create a social debt situation. As we can conclude, the real sense of exchanges described by Mauss is establishing mutual relationship, direct and personal relations, and thus, while maintaining the appearance of selflessness, creating and reproducing social relations. On the other hand, a lack of direct reciprocity does not exclude the presence of social motives behind unilateral transfers. This is the case with the so-called “generalized reciprocity” revealing itself in circumstances where the parties are willing to provide mutual assistance without expecting immediate compensation in return. The same is true for the concept of the “pure gift” proposed by Malinowski (2001), describing transactions in which the expectation of reciprocation is suspended in favor of social aspects (which is connected with the belief that the transfer will eventually balance anyway). In this type of exchange, donors make asymmetrical, unilateral transfers while expecting their reciprocation from someone other than the recipient; someone belonging to the same larger community or organization (see Levi-Strauss 1992; Sahlins 1992). To give someone “other” a gift of similar value in return within a closed, limited group leads to a situation in which each of its participants ultimately enters the role of both giver and receiver. This can obviously be justified from the point of view of functions related to the self-identification, integration and reproduction of the community. A modern version of such a generalized exchange can be observed on the example of blood donation (Healy 2004), sharing breast milk (Gribble 2013), technical advice forums (Bravo 2010), platforms for sharing music files (Giesler 2006) or couchsurfing (Germann-Molz 2012).

TWO TYPES OF ENGAGEMENT In the case of the group we are interested in, Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie!, the generalized reciprocity model can be applied only partially. Here, we can outline the occurrence of two main types of participation in the discussed group. In the first case, we deal with a faction that can be conventionally called “cleaners”; in the second, with a faction of “guides-gatherers.” The cleaners group gathers people whose

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212  Handbook of the sharing economy involvement in the group’s activity is primarily about the desire to disburden and get rid of unwanted goods. As a rule, its representatives are not interested in the exchange of donor/recipient roles or, other than incidentally, participation in the group. It is not social aspects that primarily determine their readiness to transfer various items to potential interested parties for free, but rather simple utilitarianism. Their actions are motivated by three factors. First of all, the cleaners want to remove things from their surroundings that are not of value to them any more (although, as one of the respondents states, “I do not like to throw away things that I don’t need any more if they are still in good condition”). Second, they want to get rid of those things in the most convenient way possible. When giving, they at the same time determine the preferred conditions of receipt of the offered items, saving their own time, energy or costs associated with the removal (which can be significant, for example in the case of bulky furniture). What is more, unlike the procedures followed by charitable institutions, or conventions to which the exchange of gifts within the family and circle of friends is subordinated, the items offered within the group may be heavily used, partially destroyed or simply not functioning; which, judging from the number of interested members, is not a significant problem to many of them. In this way, the donors try to balance the transfer to zero, which on the surface may seem unilateral and unbalanced. As described by one of the respondents, “Everyone gains something here. I empty the apartment, and someone gets things for free.” Third, they also receive the possibility of emotional gratification. Free transfer of things that others apparently need (and try to get by engaging in the discussion and forming a virtual queue) is explicit and direct. Unlike the case of donations through charity institutions, the donor has the opportunity to meet the recipient face to face. In this sense, for the donor, the reward can be the mere possibility of personal experience of the recipient’s gratitude. Consequently, even in the case of a one-off interaction between the donor and the recipient, giving may involve the compensatory pleasure of confirming one’s own image as a generous (even to strangers), responsible (for example, towards the environment, items as elements of material culture) and economical person (for example, helping others save money). Paradoxically, cleaners, by getting rid of things for purely utilitarian reasons, are given the opportunity to define the occurring exchange in moral, altruistic categories (see Türe 2014, 61). Not only do they help other people, but they also prolong the biography of objects being passed on. Meanwhile, it should be recognized that we are dealing here with a goods-for-service barter, where one of the parties receives a free item and the other gets rid of the problem of its removal. This is not the case for the “guides-gatherer” faction. It is made up of the most engaged members of the group who, using the published posts, provide information to others about their findings (and thus maintain the group’s functioning thanks to the free work they do), while remaining in the circle of potential receivers of findings/offers of others. Therefore, they seem to be the best in putting the group’s motto into practice: “the group exists thanks to people’s goodwill. It is based on the principle of reciprocity. If you use the group, try to be for the benefit of other members too. Receive and transmit information, finds and good energy.” The aforementioned quotation is a model example of thinking ​​ in the name of mutual benefits as well as the norm referring to the idea of cooperation of generalized reciprocity. This is confirmed by the statement of one of the participants in a discussion within the group:

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I have been in the group for quite a long time, I have posted dozens of photos of garbage, many people have raked in nice finds thanks to me, and I’ve grabbed something too. Sometimes, I helped others, for example, the last action with glass cylinders, which thanks to me, were taken care of by #Pokazybezskazy. I myself managed to grab something from the garbage, thanks to group posts (from my local garbage) or from specific people (repeatedly) I do not look at who, how much and how . . . this group is a bit like a lottery, like hitting the jackpot:) let’s have fun, let’s enjoy, evaluate and do not envy . . . and one more thing . . . to take something out, you have to put something in first;) whatever it means:)

As one can see, the gift in this system is the information itself, a favor taking the form of notifying others about the free resources to be acquired. At the same time, according to the norm of reciprocity, it is made available for balancing the transfer, reciprocal gift, in a similar form. While in the case of cleaners the motivations seem to be purely utilitarian, the guides-gatherers seem to represent a higher degree of identification with the group’s ideology. Here, we can ask what its essence is. First of all, we find in it an emphasis on “saving” or protection of things that are still valuable because of their use or symbolic value.2 As already mentioned, the examples of cooperation within the group—that is, information transfer; help in the form of “holding” the find by the finder; help in the form of securing the item until the interested person appears; giving the interested person access to the property; providing advice on, for example, transport, disinfection, renovation, charity donation points—do not have to be guided by the idea of ​​helping others per se. This help turns out to be a by-product of the basic idea that guides the group. Therefore, it is not about cooperation aimed at satisfying mutual needs, but the priority of the goal which is the desire to prevent wastage. Therefore, it seems probable that the demand for specific items is activated somewhat secondarily, only with their appearance, among the participants. In fact, these needs do not have to be particularly strong, or stronger than the needs of other participants. From the group’s point of view, it is enough that they are strong enough to guarantee the return of the item to the circulation of things in use. What is characteristic within the group is that the attempt to validate one’s own needs by referring to “specific” conditions or life situation is not visible. There is no noticeable hierarchizing, based on inequality and power connected with it, or division into “donors” and “recipients” characteristic of many solutions with a charitable profile. Thanks to redefining the goals related to giving and cooperating, and focusing them around the fight against waste of resources, the group ensures its members a sense of equal participation in a common—though based on competition—project. Consequently, the desire to “rescue” items considered valuable (for example, antiques) may sometimes exceed individual egoism. In such cases, mutual incentives to take action to save them from destruction are formulated; for example, “Please go there, or else it will go to waste.” This kind of affirmative attitude towards materiality also appears in posts and comments as figurative expressions, that is, “gems,” “treasures,” “spoils” and “pawns.” Users discussing their finds can use emotionally marked diminutives or tender 2   This applies in particular to design objects from the times of the Polish People’s Republic, and especially to the unique gems such as a club chair “300-190” designed by Henryk Lis, armchair “366” designed by Józef Chierowski, chair “Skoczek” designed by Juliusz Kędziorek, chair “200190” designed by Rajmund Hałas, glass products designed by Jan and Eryka Drost, and so on.

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214  Handbook of the sharing economy expressions, for example, when describing a chair thrown into the rain, such as “poor thing” or “poor guy.” While in the case of cleaners we deal with a predominance of utilitarian motivations, among the guides-gatherers one can also notice those with a social trait (illustrated, for example, by occasional proposals to organize an offline meeting). Active members of the group contact each other on the group’s profile as well as through private messages. In addition to “cognitive,” practical and utilitarian communication, where messages are oriented to the exchange of information between partners and gaining knowledge (what, where, in what way?), we also find quite numerous examples of communication aimed at establishing a community. The messages appearing within its framework play a phatic, connotative and expressive role; for example, in the form of vivid comments on the published photos, “liking” them, or congratulations on the fact that the item has been successfully “taken.” The obvious function of this type of communication is to generate the feeling of “being together,” the similarity of experiences and the community of fate, related to the need to face the lack of acceptance or negative comments of internet users, such as:

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and to me, this whole hunting of yours—especially driving God knows how far to get the junk—it’s a bit pathetic. I understand when someone grabs something because the neighbour got rid of it . . . but sending your husband/boyfriend to get the chair at the other end of the city? It stinks of greed and desperation. And these posts—to let someone know that it has been already taken . . . this is garbage people, and someone has to let you know that he is taking something from the garbage bin? Chill out . . .”.

What is more, it is the example of guides-gatherers that most often shows manifestations of group solidarity. In addition to activities arising from internal obligation to provide assistance to other members of the community, in the form of information, advice, guidance on substantive issues, we find here examples of activities that give the impression of selflessness, as in the case of existing storage practices (“reservation,” “holding”) concerning the items found in garbage cans for interested persons (for example, in an apartment, on a staircase or balcony). This kind of service seems to be the closest to the idea of the “pure gift” (Malinowski 2001) because, in theory (in accordance with the regulations), it does not require the obligation of one of the parties to reciprocate it. If one assumes that the community gathered around the Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! profile creates a kind of territorially embedded, local quasi-community, in accordance with the suggestion formulated by Belk (2010) the described activity would not be a proof of generalized reciprocity, but sharing. In this approach, the free transfer of goods as well as assistance in obtaining them should be interpreted as an exchange taking place within the neighborhood community, which retains, as a whole, the ownership of what is being exchanged.

VALUE CO-CREATION: BETWEEN COOPERATION AND RIVALRY The next problem, which should be looked at more closely, is the issue of practices responsible for co-creating and providing value. This is particularly interesting in the context of the question about the factors determining the success of various models emerging

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The hybrid nature of online facilitated offline sharing  215 within the framework of the sharing economy. According to Bernardo Figueiredo and Daiane Scaraboto (2016) the research on creating value ​​in consumer communities has a tendency to adopt a community perspective, which limits the understanding of how value is created in loosely organized, dynamic and heterogeneous networks of cooperation and exchange in the digital environment. The first wave of research was focused on the effects that appear as part of the process of individual consumer interaction with the subject of consumption (e.g., Holbrook 1999). The next focused on the value creation process beyond direct interaction with suppliers of goods and services within more or less institutionalized consumer communities (e.g., Shau et al. 2009). In both cases, however, it was omitted how the value can be produced in less integrated, dynamic and internally differentiated groups (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016, 14). Hence it is worth looking at how the transfer of goods and services within the network of cooperation and exchange of the group Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! makes possible a more or less systematic creation of value, connecting participants, their activities, objects and generated benefits. In other words, the question is about what determines the attractiveness of the group, promoting the involvement. It seems that the answer may be an indication of a rather unique combination of practices based, on the one hand, on collective cooperation (networking), and on the other hand, on individual competition (gamification). As mentioned above, the group’s operation is based on voluntary communication activities in the form of systematically published and shared notifications (with appropriate settings regarding content published within its framework, the group provides prompt information about new, interesting “offers” on an ongoing basis). This work requires volunteers to inform about the finds, as well as their location, the time at which they were noticed, their quality, origin and technical condition. This entails the need to make “proper,” neat photos and make them available in real time online. These activities are often complemented by answering additional, more detailed questions from interested parties (regarding cleanliness, availability and “booking” options). Finders are frequently asked to help secure the found item and keep it until the interested person arrives. Often these requests are accepted by the informers. In the case of donors (cleaners) the group offers the opportunity to get rid of things on their own terms while saving time, energy and travel costs, and with no fees. Usually, the interested party comes and picks up an item in a place indicated by the donor, which for obvious reasons facilitates the transfer of things. In addition, the group is also an effective communication channel enabling the users to share the knowledge. Its scope includes diverse information on the history of design (in particular native), materials science, furniture renovation, topography of the city, sanitary and epidemiological threats, and so on. On the other hand, the group’s description compares its participants to “treasure hunters,” and items exchanged within the group, for utilitarian or symbolic, personal or altruistic reasons, are described by the terms “gem,” “treasure,” “prey” or “pawn” (see Brosius et al. 2013). Perhaps, in addition to material benefits, the attractiveness of the group is determined by placing it in the interpretive framework of the urban location-based game. As one of the respondents states: in the post we get tips, we estimate the usefulness, the value of the item, the distance, the time needed to reach the place, possible competition and if we decide to take it, it’s a ready, steady,

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go! Later, we can pride ourselves on what we were able to take on the forum, say what we intend to do with it and write that the item is gone, ha-ha!

Undoubtedly, the generally accepted principle of “the winner takes all,” which also applies in the case of “I give away . . .” advertisements, is favorable here. In this approach, the benefit of participating in the group would also be based on the exciting experience of competition and the emotions associated with it. We can see that the language used by the group brings to mind that used during the communist period when shopping. In this period, the word “buy” was often replaced with the words “get,” “catch,” “hunt” or “hit.” In use, therefore, were terms typical of gambling (as in the earlier quotation where there is a comparison to a “lottery”), sports, hunting and fishing. For a player, hunter or mushroom picker, emotions associated with anticipation and competition are the source of experiences that determine their involvement in the chosen activity. Perhaps the same applies to the members of the analyzed group, for which the competition in the acquisition of goods itself constitutes a sufficient reason to get involved in it, and rewards obtained this way gain special value (as a side note it is worth pointing out that items appearing in advertisements are sometimes picked up at once). Interestingly, the winner can often count on additional gratification from the group, with people cheering and congratulating them on the success in “saving” the find. Thanks to this type of affective work, the group is able to offer its members not only an atmosphere based on engaging competition and struggle, but also a sense of support and acceptance. As one of the respondents admits, “I cannot deny that everyone is very nice, kind and understanding.” Finally, another miscellaneous observation referring to the issue of object valuation within the discussed model is worth sharing. It is obvious that the members of the group, while assessing the value of offered objects, are guided by their sometimes extremely subjective criteria. To some extent, this seems to justify puzzling cases of faulty, worn or readily available things (that is, empty beer bottles, broken mirrors, half-wilted plants) that find new owners. On the other hand, it is hard to resist the impression that the attractiveness of the items and interest in them are sometimes determined by a number of comments, “likes,” shares and, finally, people queuing up (just in case those ahead of them pull out) in relation to a particular advertisement. The number, variety and affective intensity of other interested parties can be criteria of the social demand for a given item for many participants, and thus measures of their value. The justification for the desire to obtain them is therefore not so much an individual need, but the belief that they constitute a socially recognized, valuable resource that can, for example, be exchanged for something else.

REFERENCES Arsel, Zeynep and Susan Dobsha (2011), “Hybrid Pro-Social Exchange Systems: The Case of Freecycle,” Advances in Consumer Research, 39, 66–7. Barbrook, Richard (2005), “The High Tech Gift Economy,” First Monday, 3 (12), http:// www.firstmonday.org/ issues/issue3_12/ barbrook/index.html. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881–98. Bauwens, Michel and Vasilis Kostakis (2014), Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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The hybrid nature of online facilitated offline sharing  217 Belk, Russell W. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36, 715–34. Belk, Russell W. (2014), “Sharing versus Pseudo-Sharing in Web 2.0,” Anthropologist, 18, 7–23. Benkler, Yochai (2008), Bogactwo sieci. Jak produkcja społeczna zmienia rynki i wolnośc, Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2011), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, London: Harper Collins Publishers. Bravo, Giangiacomo (2010), “Voluntary Contribution to Public Goods in Mutual-Help Forums: Reciprocity or Group Attachment?” Socio-Economic Review, 8, 709–33. Brosius, Nina, Karen V. Fernandez, and Hélène Cherrier (2013), “Re-acquiring Consumer Waste: Treasure in our Trash?” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 32 (2), 1–53. Dalli, Daniele and Matteo Corciolani (2008), “Collective Forms of Resistance: The Transformative Power of Moderate Communities. Evidence from the BookCrossing Case,” International Journal of Market Research, 50 (6), 757–75. Figueiredo, Bernardo A. and Daiane Scaraboto (2016), “The Systematic Creation of Value Through Circulation in Collaborative Consumer Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 43 (4), 509–33. Gansky, Lisa (2010), The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, New York: Portfolio Penguin. Germann-Molz, Jennie (2012), “CouchSurfing and Network Hospitality: ‘It’s Not Just About the Furniture’,” Hospitality and Society, 1 (3), 215–25. Giesler, Markus (2006), “Consumer Gift Systems,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32, 283–90. Gorenflo, Neal (2012), “Researchers Flub Conclusions about Sharers due to Limited Zipcar Survey,” Sharable: Work and Enterprise, https://www.shareable.net/blog/researchers-flub conclusions-about-sharers-due-to-limited​ -zipcar-survey. Gribble, Karleen D. (2013), “Peer-to-Peer Milk Donors’ and Recipients’ Experiences and Perceptions of Donor Milk Banks,” Journal of Obstetric Gynecologic Neonatal Nursing, 42 (4), 451–61. Healy, Kieran (2004), “Altruism as an Organizational Problem: The Case of Organ Procurement,” American Sociological Review, 69, 387–404. Hill, Steven (2017), Raw Deal: How the Uber Economy and Runaway Capitalism are Screwing American Workers, New York: St Martin’s Press. Holbrook, Morris B. (1999), Consumer Value: A Framework for Analysis and Research, London: Routledge. Hyde, Lewis (2010), Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Kalleberg, Arne L. and Michael Dunn (2016), “Good Jobs, Bad Jobs in the Gig Economy,” Perspective on Work, 20 (2), 10‒14. Lessig, Lawrence (2003), Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, New York: Penguin Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1992), “Zasada wzajemności,” in Współczesne teorie wymiany społecznej, Zbiór tekstów, ed. Marian Kempny and Jacek Szmatka, Warszawa: PWN, 110‒19. Malinowski, Bronisław (2001), Prawo, zwyczaj, zbrodnia w społeczności dzikich, Warszawa: Da Agostini. Mauss, Marcel (1973), “Szkic o darze. Forma i podstawa wymiany w społeczeństwach archaicznych,” in Marcel Mauss, Socjologia i antropologia, Warszawa: PWN, 107‒68. Morozov, Evgeny (2013), “The ‘Sharing Economy’ Undermines Workers’ Rights,” Financial Times, https://www. ft.com/content/92c3021c-34c2-11e3-8148-00144feab7de. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Paul W. Ballantine (2010), “Sharing as a Form of Anti-Consumption? An examination of Toy Library Users,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 9, 485–98. Rifkin, Jeremy (2016), Społeczeństwo zerowych kosztów krańcowych, Warszawa: Studio Emka. Sahlins, Marshal (1992), “Socjologia wymiany w społeczeństwach pierwotnych,” in Współczesne teorie wymiany społecznej, Zbiór tekstów, ed. Marian Kempny and Jacek Szmatka, Warszawa: PWN, 137‒42. Schau, Hope J., Albert Muñiz, and Eric J. Arnould (2009), “How Brand Community Practices Create Value,” Journal of Marketing, 73 (5), 30–51. Schor, Juliet (2016), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4 (3), 7–22. Slee, Tom (2015), What’s Yours is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, New York: OR Books. Srnicek, Nick (2017), Platform Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Tapscott, Dan and Anthony D. Williams (2008), Wikinomia. O globalnej współpracy, która zmienia wszystko, Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne. Türe, Meltem (2014), “Value-in-Disposition: Exploring how Consumers Derive Value From disposition of Possessions,” Marketing Theory, 14 (1), 53–72. Widlok, Thomas (2016), Anthropology and Economy of Sharing, London: Routledge. Willer, Robb, Francis J. Flynn, and Sonya Zak (2012), “Structure, Identity, and Solidarity: A Comparative Field Study of Generalized and Direct Exchange,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 57, 119–35.

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17.  Decentralization as a new framework for the sharing economy Marc Rocas-Royo

INTRODUCTION This chapter describes the opportunity that blockchain technology confers to the sharing economy through the development of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as an alternative to centralized platforms. It first introduces the concepts of blockchain, smart contracts, and DAOs, then explains the implications that the development of a DAO have for the sharing economy. It introduces decentralized organizations from the point of view of governance and suggests potential lessons from their best practices, then illustrates different ways to approach DAOs through the description of some projects at an early stage of development.

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THE CONCEPTS OF BLOCKCHAIN, SMART CONTRACT, AND DAO The blockchain is a decentralized, open-source technology that allows trusted and immutable transactions between peers (Antonopoulos 2014; Mougayar 2016; Swan 2015; Tapscott and Tapscott 2016) without the need for a third-party intermediary such as a bank (Swan 2015). The blockchain is, at the same time, a cryptocurrency, computing infrastructure, transaction platform, decentralized database, distributed accounting ledger, development platform, open source software, financial services marketplace, peerto-peer network, and trust services layer (Mouyagar 2016). Five basic principles define this technology: every party has access to the entire ledger, communication occurs without central nodes, data are transparent with pseudo-anonymity, records are permanent and cannot be altered, and users can program algorithms for the automatic writing of records (De Filippi 2017). In 1994, the computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer Nick Szabo coined and defined the term “smart contract” as “a computerized transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract” (Szabo 1994). Szabo argued that the digital revolution was making it possible to embed contractual clauses in the software and hardware that we deal with every day. Smart contracts can deal with all type of valuable properties controlled by digital means. In 2013, Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer, released a white paper in which he described a new open source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform called Ethereum (Buterin 2013; Ethereum White Paper 2018). Ethereum was designed to satisfy three primary goals. The first was about being able to transfer any asset on the blockchain. The second consisted of being able to track the supply chain of 218

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Decentralization as a new framework for the sharing economy  219 products. The third provided Szabo’s idea of smart contracts as preprogrammed pieces of code able to autonomously execute a set of instructions, depending on some external inputs, as a series of “if-then” clauses (Botsman 2017, 225–6). Note that saying that the contracts would be mediated by the blockchain is similar to affirming that those involved parts do not require trust in each other (Beck et al. 2016; Davidson et al. 2016; Shermin 2017). When applied to digital assets, these goals imply the materialization of those digital assets. In other words, the blockchain allows distinguishing between different units of the same digital asset and, consequently, transferring or sharing them as we do with physical resources (Swan and De Filippi 2017).

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DAOS AND THE SHARING ECONOMY A contract is an agreement between two or more parties to do something in exchange for something else. What smart contracts add to the traditional definition of contracts are autonomy, self-sufficiency, and decentralization (Swan 2015). They are autonomous because, once launched, the contracts and their initiating agents do not need to be in contact. They are self-sufficient because of their ability to assemble resources when needed. They are decentralized because there is no single point of execution, as all the nodes can self-execute smart contracts. Despite these features, and because of the interaction between two or more parties, smart contracts need to rely on some degree of external information, or so-called “oracles” (De Filippi and Hassan 2016; Wright and De Filippi 2015). Oracles feed the “if-then” conditions defined by the involved parties. Oracles, therefore, are the triggers for the execution of smart contracts. The ability to run smart contracts confers to blockchain technology the capability to run autonomous systems, from a simple transaction, or a simple “if-then” condition, to an entire decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). A DAO is a set of agents performing “preapproved tasks based on events and changing conditions” (Swan 2015, 24), “a cryptographically enabled nexus of contracts that codifies an entity that is autonomous, in the sense of the legal framework is cryptographically codified” (Elliott et al. 2016, 19), and an “open, self-organized network coordinated by crypto-economic incentives and self-executing code, cooperating around shared goals” (Field 2018, 3). Vitalik Buterin coined the term in 2013 as an evolution from the term “decentralized autonomous corporations” (DAC), previously coined by Daniel Larimer (Buterin 2014, 2016). Smart contracts and DAOs can grow and define the governance for the machine-to-machine and machine-to-human interaction of smart devices and sensors (De Filippi and Hassan 2016). The Internet of Things and the sharing economy also can benefit from DAOs (Belk 2017a; Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016). Buterin (2014) classifies DAOs as organizations with automation at the center and humans at the edges. As machines can share some resources with less reluctance than humans, the evolution of artificial intelligence and the potential of DACs and DAOs should lead us to analyze the impact of automation on the market economy and capitalism (Morris 2015). The term “decentralized autonomous organization” is used in different ways depending on the degree of human intervention. On one hand, a DAO is as a network of devices (agents) that interact with each other and exchange information and value through the

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220  Handbook of the sharing economy execution of previously defined smart contracts. On the other hand, a DAO is a humandistributed organization that replaces some of the typical processes of governance for centralized organizations by the summation of a set of smart contracts and a procedure for human participation. When applied to the sharing economy, the boundaries between these two types of DAOs are unclear. Consider, for example, the case of Bird, a dockless electric scooter company founded in 2017. Anyone can find and unlock a Bird with the company’s app and take a ride. Once the trip finishes, the rider locks the scooter and leaves it in a public space, so Birds are dropped off anywhere. During the night, the company’s contract workers, called Bird hunters, are rewarded for charging and leaving the scooters in high-demand zones, ready for the next day (Lorenz 2018). This case includes some elements common with other sharing economy platforms, such as an environmentally friendly discourse, the promotion of the gig economy, and the free use of the public space. A DAO that satisfies all involved stakeholders could implement the same service. An open community of riders/platform owners could replace the role of the company. They would take care of the maintenance of the network. A set of smart contracts would define the platform’s governance, and the distribution of token shares would give the holders the property of tokenized scooters and a set of complementary defined rights and revenues distribution, in a type of decentralized co-operative (Atzori and Ulieru 2017). The system itself could manage the availability and density of the fleet of scooters autonomously through a system of incentives for the user. This example shows that blockchain systems can decentralize and evolve the current sharing economy platforms. Platforms are only a specific case of the potential power of transformation that blockchain shows. This is the main reason why this chapter takes a broad vision of sharing economy activities to include as many blockchain-based implementations as possible. Consequently, in a similar way to the case of Bird, a DAO system could be developed for implementing any sharing economy activity that falls into the four broad categories that Schor (2016) describes: recirculation of goods, increased utilization of durable assets, exchange of services, and sharing of productive assets. The blockchain enables the creation of trust-free systems without intermediaries to transfer value according to terms defined on smart contracts. The management of trust is a critical aspect of sharing economy activities. Hawlitschek et al. (2018) identify three types of trust related to sharing economy platforms: trust in peers, trust in the platform, and trust in other targets. Trust in peers refers to trust between providers and ­consumers, hosts and guests, drivers and riders. Trust in the platform refers to the belief that the centralized organization that manages the platform is going to fulfill its function. Trust in other targets involves any other belief or behavior that interacts with the trust. Blockchain-based systems embed technological trust into the system. Regarding trust between the users of the decentralized sharing platform, current blockchain-based platforms exploit the feature of the immutability of data for building a system of reputation. Concerning reputation, it is possible to use as many multi-signatures as needed to verify behaviors that affect one’s reputation. It is reasonable to think, therefore, of a global system of user reputation that platforms can look up and update. So, in the same way that we have one identity, it makes sense to maintain a unique reputation. It also makes sense to use our identity as a specific claim of our reputation, without the need to reveal other unnecessary data. The same indelibility of data, however, makes the use of smart contracts in a blockchain-based platform highly sensitive to programming

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Decentralization as a new framework for the sharing economy  221 errors or malicious code. This was learned in 2016 when a bug in the code allowed a hacker to extract US$50 million of a smart contract from The DAO, a decentralized and autonomous mechanism for crowdfunding Ethereum projects (DuPont 2018; Shermin 2017). Trusting in the code requires trust both in the ability of the programmer to not write bugs, and in the content of the coded version of an agreement. As Lessig (2006) points out, cyberspace requires choices. It is about building an environment for the protection of our fundamental values or allowing them to disappear. In blockchain technology, the code, mainly through the programming of smart contracts, turns into law. “Code is law” (Lessig 2006), often misunderstood as “the tyranny of the code,” means that the code reflects the law. In a future world based on digital transactions, however, it is reasonable to think that the law is going to be natively defined as code or, in other words, that “law is code” (De Filippi and Hassan 2016). This “law” also has to do with the governance of those newly created DAOs. The community involved in the decentralized organization needs a system to make decisions, and blockchain allows the implementation of powerful, online, commons-based systems of governance. As Bollier (2014) writes: “A commons arises whenever a given community decides it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use, and sustainability.” Ostrom (1990) found empirical data from hundreds of case studies in which people tend to cooperate to actively maintain common resources over the course of generations (Pitt and Diaconescu 2014). This cooperation for the development of DAO-based sharing communities happens at local, urban, and global levels. At a local level, a blockchain can manage the transactions of a small community of neighbors with solar panels who buy and sell energy as needed among them (Christidis and Devetsikiotis 2016). At an urban level, the role of cities is significant as peer-to-peer markets are exceptionally robust, efficient, and advantageous in densely populated urban areas (Sundararajan 2016). Cohen and Muñoz (2016) classify sharing economy activities from the view of sustainability and the role of cities in five categories (that is, energy, food, goods, mobility and transport, space sharing) and 18 subcategories (that is, energy co-ops, group purchasing, community gardens, edible communities, shared foods, shared food prep, 3D-printed goods and facilities, loaner products, pre-owned goods, freecycling, libraries, repair cafés, car-sharing, bike-sharing, ride-sharing, crowd-shipping, workspace, places to stay). Each of these categories and subcategories could be developed into DAO-based sharing communities. At a global level, some decentralized solutions aim to create a market for a user’s idle resources, such as Golem for CPU or hard SIA and Storj for disk space.

THE PRECEDENCE OF EXISTING DECENTRALIZED ORGANIZATIONS Once interactions and organizations can be predefined by smart contracts, and people or machines can interact without having to trust the other party (Wright and De Filippi 2015), it seems necessary to explore the kind of rules to be defined. The governance of decentralized organizations consists of three levels or layers. At the lower position, we have governance of the technological platform. This layer is responsible for the decisions related to the use of technology to implement the communication, production, and

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222  Handbook of the sharing economy decision processes involved in the organization’s activity. The second layer defines the governance of the community, understood as those people (or machines) working for the organization. At the upper position, we find the governance of the delivered service, that is, the making of decisions that involve the relationship between producers and ­consumers, and the friction of the organization with the markets in which it operates. In the case of centralized sharing economy platforms, such as Airbnb or Uber, the company has a monopoly on those three types of governance. The process toward distributed systems involves fragmentation of the governance of platforms. DAOs can naturally replace the technological and community layers, but the service layer involves humans making high-level decisions, such as deciding a strategy, allocating resources, or thinking of a marketing campaign. Other decentralized organizations have faced the challenges of such fragmentation. Some precedents are the commons-based peer production (CBPP) model of socioeconomic production (Benkler 2004, 2006), the governance of co-operatives and open value networks (Bollier and Conaty 2014; Pazaitis 2017; Pazaitis et al. 2017a; Pazaitis et al. 2017b; Troncoso and Utretel 2017), the “Platform Cooperativism” concept (Scholz 2016), and the commons-based system of governance (Algan et al. 2013; Bollier 2014; Hess and Ostrom 2007; Ostrom 1990). There is an intersection space between CBPP, peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing economy practices, and a type of governance inherited from co-operativism. Conaty and Bollier (2014) see and defend P2P production on open platforms as a way of replacing the dynamics of capitalism with a commons-based model of governance (Ostrom 1990). Open value networks and platform co-operativism are two examples of this intersection. An open value network (OVN) is a network of open enterprises that can perform all the functions of a traditional business with the same flexibility of open source systems (Siddiqui and Brastaviceanu 2013). An OVN is based on three fundamental principles: open membership (anyone can join and leave at any time), transparency (access to information, knowledge, and processes), and open access to participation (to create an equal opportunity for value creation) and contribution (any effort from a member that is part of a use value). Two examples of OVN are Enspiral, “a network of professionals and companies aiming to empower and support social entrepreneurship” (Kostakis et al. 2016, 6), and Sensorica, dedicated to the design and deployment of sensor systems (D’Amours 2015; Pazaitis 2017). The main principles of platform co-operativism are: “cloning the technological heart of Uber, Task Rabbit, Airbnb, or UpWork”; promoting solidarity and a change in ownership for platforms; focusing on benefiting all, instead of only a few; looking for a balance between technology and cooperativeness; and shaping the social organization of emerging technologies (Scholz 2016). Some examples of platform cooperativism are Fairmondo, Loconomics, and Stocksy. Blockchain technology shares most of these principles. Some of them are rooted in the origins of the technology, such as transparency and open access. It then seems logical to think that blockchain is a promising candidate for becoming the core technology of decentralized sharing economy organizations (Clippinger and Bollier 2014; Cohen 2017; Davidson et al. 2016; De Filippi 2017; Muñoz and Cohen 2017; Swan 2017).

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EXAMPLES OF BLOCKCHAIN-BASED ORGANIZATIONS This section introduces the operation and principles of governance for some organizations belonging to three types of blockchain-based organizations. First are those providing global sharing-economy services, such as Golem and Storj; and second, there are sharing economy-related organizations that define themselves as DAOs, such as Swarm City. Third, there are organizations that enable the setting up of open platforms, DAOs, or even decentralized borderless voluntary nations (DBVN) to their users, such as Aragon, Colony, DAOStack, and BitNation. Golem defines itself as the Airbnb for computers. Users can rent unused CPU/GPU cycles from their computers and get paid in cryptocurrency. Alternatively, other users can benefit from high computing power for rendering, machine learning, or scientific computing applications. Similarly, Storj offers users to pay and get paid for renting free disk space. Storj is a decentralized cloud storage platform that enacts smart contracts to automate how users rent out unused hard disk space and how other users make use of it (Swan 2015). Users get a decentralized alternative to a service similar to Dropbox. Both Golem and Storj are private companies that have full control over the three layers of governance. Swarm City is a blockchain-based decentralized commerce platform that allows P2P transactions. The organization’s aim is to provide anyone with the necessary tools to develop commercial transactions. For this purpose, Swarm City identifies three functional tools: a tool to transact (a wallet), a tool to communicate, and a tool to create attractive graphic user interfaces (storefronts). Aragon is an organization that aims to create two primary structures. The first is the Aragon Core, an ecosystem that enables anyone to create and manage a decentralized organization and cover the following needs: identity, ownership, voting, capital, people, outreach, payments, accounting, and insurance. The second is the Aragon Network, a global digital jurisdiction that provides arbitration for any given dispute between two parties. Colony defines itself as the future of firms, and a platform for open and online organizations. Once a new organization (a “colony”) is born, Colony’s software helps to determine what tasks have to be done, assigns them, keeps track of each member’s contribution to the organization, and rewards people for completing them, depending on the member’s reputation. It also helps to resolve disputes and to make crucial collective decisions. DAOStack defines itself as the “Wordpress for DAOs.” DAOStack provides the foundational tools for the creation, operation, and governance of DAOs. The three central concepts behind the DAOStack project and its vision about the future of work are self-organization, shared goals, and cooperation (Field 2018). Bitnation defines itself as the world’s first DBVN (Tempelhof et al. 2017). The organization, created in 2014, is responsible for the first blockchain marriage, birth certificate, refugee emergency identification, world citizenship, and DBVN constitution. The Pangea software is a tool for creating “nations” and conducting P2P arbitrations. All of these organizations and projects have some things in common. They establish a nested structure that supports the creation of new communities and takes care of the development of the system. All of them have a legal form, such as a limited company or a foundation. Some state that this is only a temporary stage until they can become DAOs

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224  Handbook of the sharing economy (for example, Aragon, DAOStack, Swarm City). They all are based on the Ethereum blockchain, which provides two tools elemental to decentralized organizations: a tokenbased system and a structure of smart contracts. They use tokens as transmission of value and a system of incentives and rewards. The smart contracts implement the functioning logic of the organization. Moreover, they all implement systems of reputation that allow development of governance systems based on meritocracy. The general adoption of meritocracy for developing reputation systems deserves a few extra words. Meritocracy refers to a social system in which individuals earn rewards in direct proportion to their efforts and abilities (McNamee 2018, 2). In co-operative organizations, under conditions such as when voting takes public decisions and each member freely decides the degree of participation, three factors limit meritocracy (Beviá and Corchón 2018). These are efficiency (too much meritocracy encourages too much work), incentives (meritocracy encourages sabotage), and voting (inefficient rewards are preferred as long as they are profitable). McNamee (2018) refers to the inequality as a source of non-merit factors that distort the efficiency of meritocracy. Some of these factors are social capital (who you know), cultural capital (what you need to know to fit into the group), and discrimination. Discrimination refers, for example, to the technological gap that limits the access to the technology, to the gender bias that affects especially women in technological fields, or to the income bias that affects the available time for participating in such systems. One possible solution to discrimination is affirmative action, a set of practices to assure the equality of opportunities, but none of the described systems considers this option.

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CONCLUSIONS The sharing economy can follow four possible paths in the near future (Codagnone et al. 2016). The first is “the great transformation,” and it consists of developing a green, fair, and socially oriented prosperity. The second is “growth-oriented globalization,” which describes a neoliberal environment driven by the markets. The third is a pessimistic view called “barbarization.” Finally, the fourth is called “regulated sustainability,” suggesting that regulation is needed to develop the sharing economy properly in the coming years. Blockchain technology, like other technologies, is not neutral, but a technical artifact with a specific architecture (De Filippi and Hassan 2016). The way blockchain networks and incentive mechanisms develop may lead to an evolution of platform capitalism (Parker et al. 2016; Srnicek 2017) instead of the desired implementation of sharing decentralized platforms (Atzori and Ulieru 2017). As DuPont (2018) argues, the task of defining algorithmic systems of governance for decentralized systems is a challenging one, and it requires different forms of experimentation. It is necessary, however, to implement systems of governance based on the experience of governance rules that have proved to be successful in satisfying the utopian view of a decentralized, commons-based sharing economy. These design principles include the findings on governance of the commons (Algan et al. 2013; Bollier 2014; Hess and Ostrom 2007; Ostrom 1990), the evolution of CBPP (Benkler 2004, 2006), the principles of platform co-operativism (Scholz 2016), and the successful experiences of OVN (Bollier and Conaty 2014; Pazaitis 2017; Pazaitis et al.

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Decentralization as a new framework for the sharing economy  225 2017a; Pazaitis et al. 2017b; Troncoso and Utretel 2017). These blockchain-based sharing platforms, once created, must coexist with incumbents from the centralized platform capitalism. This coexistence implies two significant developments. The first is the development of a regulation that protects any developed alternatives. This regulation must look for the solution of unresolved issues that the sharing economy ecosystem has: taxation, negative externalities, information asymmetries, licensing and certification schemes, data and privacy, and competition law potential implications (Codagnone et al. 2016). Regarding the second, blockchain-based, sharing economy platforms must develop a strategy of competition through differentiation in a race to provide more value than the incumbents, usually with fewer resources. It also makes essential the existence of active governance systems for the community to make those strategic decisions necessary to compete. It is not a competition for profits; it is a competition for designing a tempting value proposition. The provided value becomes the driver towards “the great transformation.” In the meanwhile, the tokenization of the economy creates some frictions with the existing systems, and the role of the regulator is here critical for allowing the “great transformation” that a part of the society demands. The rise of alternative systems of governance for most DAOs reflects the emergence of an unsatisfied generation of centennials. This generation sees decentralized systems of sharing among peers as an opportunity to replace the current sources of power. However, as Rushkoff (2016, 150) states, “decentralized technologies do not guarantee equitable distribution; they merely allow for value to be exchanged and verified in ways that our current extractive, centralized systems do not.” The analysis of the cases exposed in this chapter indicates that the creation of decentralized platforms for the sharing economy is technologically feasible. There is, in fact, healthy competition among different organizations at a similar degree of development for the establishment of a standard platform that allows the development of sharing communities. This is a typical feature of the emerging stage of industries. Nevertheless, there are some dark clouds in the sky. First, there is a lack of full transparency about those newly created nest platforms that provide the infrastructure for the establishment of sharing decentralized communities. Second, the governance is centralized. The “team” decides in most of the cases how to develop the platform. Third, they all adopt a legal form, most of them as a foundation or a limited company. Some promise that they will evolve into a DAO when possible, but they do not provide more information about how this is going to happen. Fourth, all of the presented cases choose Ethereum. This preference could lead to a high probability of remaining captive to this technology, or at least of incurring substitution costs. Fifth, most of them adopt meritocracy and reputation systems like those for making decisions. There are no mentioned policies for promoting equality and avoiding the creation of an elite controlling the governance of those communities. As it seems natural to integrate the reputation of a user in several different sharing communities, there exists the possibility of extending those reputation systems to other aspects of life and creating a social credit system. Sixth, there is no mention, in any of the provided examples, of the role of machines and artificial intelligence in the governance of the created DAOs. Seventh, there is a lack of interaction with existing political and economic institutions (the case of Bitnation is an exception). Eighth, there is a lack of development of common

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226  Handbook of the sharing economy initiatives with city councils. Ninth, motivations and incentives for participating in this new sharing economy could lead to a “neoliberalism on steroids” (Morozov 2013, quoted in Murillo et al. 2017), especially if the platform’s property, governance, and wealth are not properly distributed. Tenth, those presented solutions avoid the classic discourse of the sharing economy but, instead, there appears to be a new discourse about the benefits of decentralization. Future studies should consider the impacts that the incentive and reputation systems of these platforms have on the motivation of their participants for being part of them, either as users or as active collaborators. It also would be necessary to study the social capital created on those sharing communities, as well as the impact of the materiality of digital assets on them. Finally, the existence of DAOs does not involve the existence of a decentralized autonomous society (DAS). As long as the number of implemented DAOs rises, providing a different value, each one of us will freely decide if we want to join them or not; similarly, an employee chooses to be part (or not) of a circle in a holacracy (Robertson 2015). Some of these DAOs can be seen, then, as virtual gated communities, in which the “gate” is a permeable membrane defined by the nature of their activity. It depends on the governance of these newly created gated communities to promote “sharing in” practices in preference to the “sharing out” ones that we find today in the so-called sharing economy (Belk 2017b).

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REFERENCES Algan, Yann, Yochai Benkler, Mayo Fuster Morell, and Jérôme Hergueux (2013), “Cooperation in a Peer Production Economy Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia,” SSRN Electronic Journal, http://dx.doi. org/10.2139/ssrn.2843518. Antonopoulos, Andreas M. (2014), Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Atzori, Marcella and Mihaela Ulieru (2017). “Architecting the eSociety on Blockchain: A Provocation to Human Nature,” SSRN Electronic Journal, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2999715. Beck, Roman, Jacob Stenum Czepluch, Nikolaj Lollike, and Simon Malone (2016), “Blockchain—the Gateway to Trust-Free Cryptographic Transactions,” ECIS, Research Paper 153. Belk, Russell W. (2017a), “Consumers in an Age of Autonomous and Semi-Autonomous Machines,” in Contemporary Consumer Culture Theory, ed. John Sherry Jr and Eileen Fischer, London: Routledge, 5–32. Belk, Russell W. (2017b), “Sharing without Caring,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society, 10 (2), 249–261, doi:10.1093/cjres/rsw045. Benkler, Yochai (2004), “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production,” Yale Law Journal, 114, 273–358. Benkler, Yochai (2006), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Beviá, Carmen and Luis C. Corchón (2018), “Meritocracy, Efficiency, Incentives, and Voting in Cooperative Production: A Survey,” Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 89 (1), 87–107. Bollier, David (2014), Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Bollier, David and Pat Conaty (2014), “A New Alignment of Movements?”, a report on a Commons Strategies Group Workshop, Meissen, Germany, http://geo.coop/sites/default/files/report_a_new_alignment_of_move​ ments_february_2015_0.pdf. Botsman, Rachel (2017), Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together—and Why It Could Drive Us Apart, New York: PublicAffairs. Buterin, Vitalik (2013), “Ethereum: The Ultimate Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform,” http://web.archive.org/web/20131228111141; http://vbuterin.com/ethereum.html.

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Decentralization as a new framework for the sharing economy  227 Buterin, Vitalik (2014), “DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide,” https://blog. ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-an-incomplete-terminology-guide/. Buterin, Vitalik (2016), “I Invented the Term in 2013, and Daniel Larimer Came Up with DACs,” https://medium. com/@VitalikButerin/i-invented-the-term-in-2013-and-daniel-larimer-came-up-with-dacs-s-organization-corp​ oration-a-ef86db1524d5. Christidis, Konstantinos and Michael Devetsikiotis (2016), “Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things,” IEEE Access, 4, 2292–2303, doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2566339. Clippinger, John H. and David Bollier (2014), From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Autonomy and Identity in a Digital Society, Amherst, MA: ID3 and Off the Common Books. 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228  Handbook of the sharing economy Pazaitis, Alex, Primavera De Filippi, and Vasilis Kostakis (2017a), “Blockchain and Value Systems in the Sharing Economy: The Illustrative Case of Backfeed,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 105–15. Pazaitis, Alex, Vasilis Kostakis, and Michel Bauwens (2017b), “Digital Economy and the Rise of Open Cooperativism: The Case of the Enspiral Network,” Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 23 (2), 177–92. Pitt, Jeremy and Ada Diaconescu (2014), “The Algorithmic Governance of Common-Pool Resources,” in From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Identity and Autonomy in a Digital Society, ed. John H. Clippinger and David Bollier, Amherst, MA: Off the Common Books, pp. 130–42. Robertson, Brian J. (2015), Holacracy: The New Management System for A Rapidly Changing World, London: Macmillan. Rushkoff, Douglas (2016), Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, London: Penguin. Scholz, Trebor (2016), Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy, New York: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Schor, Juliet (2016), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4 (3), 7–22. Shermin, Voshmgir (2017), “Disrupting Governance with Blockchains and Smart Contracts,” Strategic Change, 26 (5), 499–509. Siddiqui, Yasir and Tiberius Brastaviceanu (2013), “Open Value Network: A Framework for Many-to-Many Innovation,” https://ja.cat/TjWpZ. Srnicek, Nick (2017), Platform Capitalism, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Sundararajan, Arun (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Swan, Melanie (2015), Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Swan, Melanie (2017), “Anticipating the Economic Benefits of Blockchain,” Technology Innovation Management Review, 7 (10), 6–14. Swan, Melanie and Primavera De Filippi (2017), “Toward a Philosophy of Blockchain: A Symposium: Introduction,” Metaphilosophy, 48 (5), 603–19. Szabo, Nick (1994), “Smart Contracts,” https://bit.ly/2rLG2Nr. Tapscott, Don and Alex Tapscott (2016), Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, London: Penguin. Tempelhof, Susanne. T., Eliott Teissonniere, James Fennell, and Dana Edwards (2017), “Pangea Jurisdiction and Pangea Arbitration Token. The Internet of Sovereignty,” April, 1–42, https://bit.ly/2IWrRwi. Troncoso, Stacco and Ann Marie Utratel (2017), “From Platform to Open Cooperativism,” Commons Transition, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/from-platform-to-open-cooperativism/2017/04/26x. Wright, Aaron and Primavera De Filippi (2015), “Decentralized Blockchain Technology and the Rise of Lex Cryptographia,” SSRN Electronic Journal, http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2580664.

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PART V

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LEGAL, REGULATORY AND PUBLIC POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

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18.  Urban mobilities and local regulation: transportation challenges and promise of the sharing economy Hugh Bartling

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INTRODUCTION One of the most disruptive aspects of the new sharing economy has been its effect on urban mobility. Transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft have revolutionized how people move around in cities. New technologies facilitating low carbon mobility sharing such as bike share or scooter share are similarly opening up new options for urban mobility. Navigating the incorporation of the sharing economy into the urban mobility infrastructure is an urgent task for local authorities across the world. Companies have often been antagonistic to the regulatory authority of local governments. Municipal authorities, however, have a broader view of their public obligations. They also operate within a larger context of addressing competing political interests whereby organized political actors can often have disproportionate influence on local policy. In confronting the sharing economy, local authorities face contradictory impulses. On the one hand, cities have an interest in encouraging citizens to embrace low-carbon and low-impact modes of transport, and many of the sharing economy advancements can contribute to this goal. The more people who walk, cycle, use public transit, or ride share, the less public expenditures are needed to support mobility and address the environmental externalities associated with automobile exhaust (Brey et al. 2017; Gössling and Choi 2015; Rabl and De Nazelle 2012). From a city government’s perspective, it could be advantageous to have private companies bring shared mobility schemes to a city since public investment would be theoretically non-existent or minimal. City governments, however, rarely take a laissez-faire position on corporate action. For public health and safety reasons, municipalities often have strong regulatory regimes impacting urban mobility. In the new sharing economy, however, innovation has been driven by market actors. In the case of some transportation-related companies such as Uber or Lyft their original presence was not preceded by negotiation with local authorities. Rather, they expanded as any other business might, with capital investment deployed to fill a market need. Because of the unique and unprecedented nature or their business model, municipal authorities often feel compelled to assert regulatory authority, which can create conflict between local governments and sharing economy companies and their customers. In other cases, cities may have established their own sharing systems using public funds. When competitor, private sector systems arrive in a municipality there may be backlash from local authorities. This has been especially prominent in cases of dockless bike share companies where cities are saturated with bikes from a company establishing operations. On the one hand, the dockless model may improve on the traditional bike 230

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Urban mobilities and local regulation  231 share ­technology that restricts bike return to fixed docks. On the other hand, many cities may fear competition with municipally owned systems and be concerned about safety and public space issues as they relate to unregulated dockless bikes. Urban mobility requires both infrastructure and a set of social practices that enable and inform the ways in which people move around a city. The infrastructure of mobility refers to modifications of urban space. Streets, sidewalks, rights-of-way and other elements of the urban morphology are required for movement to happen. The social practices of mobility refer to the ways in which a variety of social interactions, policy decisions, and usage of mobility technologies contribute to patterns of mobility. In terms of public policy, the decisions made by local authorities both impact and are impacted by the interrelations of social practices and spatial conditions. Recognizing this dynamic is essential in understanding how the sharing economy operates within the context of larger practices and structures of urban mobility. This chapter explores these tensions between local authorities and the market-driven sharing economy. Using an exploratory approach and looking at case studies in select North American cities, this chapter develops a typology to help understand municipal responses to this emergent phenomenon. Looking at such factors as the regulatory enthusiasm of local authorities, the extent of interest group political mobilization, and citizen opinion on the regulation of the sharing economy, these typologies will allow researchers and policy makers to better understand the political and policy implications of sharing economy expansion in urban settings.

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT: CITY REGULATION AND MOBILITY Shared urban mobility has a long history in metropolitan environments. As European and North American cities grew during the industrial revolution and its aftermath, urban mobility technologies were essential for both supporting and promoting metropolitan expansion. In the nineteenth century the use of steam engines and railways for transporting goods enhanced connections between cities and proximate non-urban spaces. Whereas the pre-industrial city may have been dominated by animal and humanpowered mobility, the emergent industrial city evolved around more complex technologies of mobility. These new technologies required new assemblages of governance to accommodate their operation in urban environments. Streetcars, for instance, needed right-ofway protections, financing mechanisms, particular routes, and sources of energy to ensure their viability (Warner 1962). The provision of these requirements was taken up by local authorities in the 19th century and set the stage for the institutionalization of mobility regulation. Given the historical pattern of local government’s involvement in facilitating urban mobility and the extensive authority that municipalities have to regulate private providers, it should not be surprising that the incursion of new transport possibilities built around contemporary conceptions of the sharing economy have caused local governments to react. These reactions, however, are varied and occur within particular political, economic, and urban morphological contexts. Although it is important to acknowledge the inherent variability in local approaches to addressing issues related to the sharing economy, this does not necessarily preclude efforts to observe patterns of similarity. The following

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232  Handbook of the sharing economy s­ ections outline various typologies that can serve as analytical devices for understanding how sharing economy mobility intersects with urban regulatory environments.

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THE SHARING ECONOMY AND NEW MOBILITIES If an expansive definition of “sharing” is used, one could consider a variety of mobility technologies as indicative of a long history of shared mobility. The omnibuses, horsecars, streetcars, and trains that were important and prominent technologies in the nascent industrial city were largely constructed, owned, and operated by private firms (Leidenberger 2006). They were “shared” to the extent that other commodities are shared in a market-based economy: access to rides was given in exchange for money. When the market shifted from private collective mobility to private personal mobility (in the form of the automobile), many of the collective transportation modes that were not shuttered were operated by public authorities—often with subsidies—as public transportation. This “sharing” arrangement can be thought of a provision of mobility as a public good that serves the collective interest. The contemporary, information technology-driven “sharing economy” expands the accessibility of mobility technologies available for urban dwellers and complicates both understandings of “sharing” and the role of governments in regulating mobilities in this emerging context. From the standpoint of technological change, the new sharing economy has two general strands. Firstly, it has sought to make the use of existing mobility technologies more efficient. Companies such as Uber, Lyft, Turo, and Getaround depend for their business model on encouraging car owners to maximize the efficient use of their vehicles. Economist Donald Shoup (2017) reports that the average car is parked for 95 percent of its life, highlighting the availability of surplus capacity that peer-to-peer companies could exploit. Using internet-based applications, the peer-to-peer companies connect drivers or car owners with people needing rides or the temporary use of a car. Cars or drivers who in the past may sit idle can now easily connect with users and riders through the application. Secondly, the new sharing economy has been able to leverage new and novel models of mobility explicitly based on sharing. These models may use an existing mobility technology in a different way, such as bicycle share systems. Or they may introduce technologies that are new or underutilized, such as electric scooters. On the surface, the new sharing economy offers promise for mobility. Scholars of urban planning have discussed the spatial challenges inherent in managing urban transport (Kay 1997; Newman et al. 1995). Cars take up a significant amount of street space per passenger mile traveled (Farmer 1964), they require non-trivial amounts of space for storage, and have significant environmental impacts (Inci 2015). These inefficiencies—and the costs involved in maintaining the automobile-centric infrastructure—have prompted many cities to encourage modality shifts. In much of North America car ownership is a necessity given the paucity of other modalities and sprawling land use patterns. To the extent that the sharing economy can serve to limit private car ownership it could contribute to the social benefits of reducing the public costs needed to support the auto-oriented infrastructure as well as to allow individuals to avoid the private costs of car ownership and operation.

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Urban mobilities and local regulation  233 The appeal of sharing mobility technologies is also reflective in the many North American cities investing in shared mobility beyond traditional public transit. The proliferation of municipally owned bike share systems in cities such as Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Montreal, and Denver suggests that cities view these systems as enhancing accessibility and mobility for residents. In many of these cities, there has also been an increase in investment in the underlying infrastructure to make these new technologies viable. Safe bike infrastructure has been installed to benefit not only users of bike share, but also riders using their own bicycles (Sadik-Khan 2017). In this sense, the sharing mobility investment in a low-impact mode such as cycling is part of a larger effort to spur mode change. Sharing mobility technologies, however, has had unanticipated consequences. One issue has been the revelation that existing regulatory regimes are inadequate for accommodating the new business models animating the sharing economy. For transportation network companies, direct competition with private taxis has resulted in highly contested politics in many North American cities. Taxis are highly regulated, with local governments historically taking strong action in the market to limit the supply of medallions and licenses and to demand standards for driver and vehicle safety. When transportation network companies entered urban markets by connecting independent drivers with riders through smartphone applications, these companies argued that they were not providing chauffeurs, but rather simply serving as a medium to link private individuals (O’Connor 2015). A second source of contention lies in protecting and controlling access to public space. “Public space” in this context refers to the built environment and infrastructure belonging to public authorities that urban dwellers use, pass through, and experience (Carmona et al. 2008). Streets, sidewalks, and other public elements of transportation infrastructure are part of public space and subject to the need for public authorities to negotiate competing claims for its usage. As it relates to the sharing economy, new mobility technologies have changed patterns of public space utilization, creating a variety of challenges for local authorities. Dockless bike share and electric scooter share are among the most disruptive. These systems work by incorporating the Global Positioning System (GPS), which keeps track of a device’s location. Instead of requiring a kiosk where devices can be obtained and returned securely, dockless devices rely on self-locking mechanisms and GPS to track locations. Customers use a smartphone application to find, reserve, and unlock a device. This system is more flexible than kiosk-based systems since devices can be left virtually anywhere. This flexibility can also create problems, as the devices can obstruct the public right-of-way. While the issues related to accommodating bike and electric scooter share relate primarily to the need to negotiate competing demands on the limited space of urban streets and sidewalks, there are also examples of less contentious issues related to the ways in which local authorities plan and regulate public space with regard to transportation and the sharing economy. Dowling and Kent (2015), for instance, discuss how local authorities in Sydney give prioritization to certain car share companies for access to street parking as a way to encourage residents to utilize these sharing services.

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234  Handbook of the sharing economy

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A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR THE SHARING ECONOMY AND URBAN MOBILITIES With all of the various technologies, actors, and models that encompass the sharing economy and its intersections with urban mobilities, it is challenging to develop a comprehensive theory explaining how particular sharing economy modalities function in specific urban environments. Nevertheless, this section attempts to develop a general model for categorizing sharing economy‒local authority interactions. The model can be useful both for private sector developers of new sharing technologies that will impact urban transport, and municipal policy makers who will have to react to developments in this sector. At its core, public policy is focused on addressing areas of public concern where market-based interactions create externalities or where they are insufficient in resolving competing private interests. With the exception of public transportation systems the contemporary sharing economy is a market-driven phenomenon. Part of the appeal of sharing mobility technologies for local authorities is their potential to contribute to the minimization of transport problems such as congestion and accessibility without requiring significant public investment. Challenges ensue when the operations of these technologies have unintended consequences that create new public problems. In this sense, local authorities are consistently faced with operating on a spectrum of conflict and cooperation with regard to their interactions with sharing economy companies. How this relationship plays out in specific instances depends on the actions of both local authorities and the sharing economy firms. While firms may not be enthusiastic about operating under certain regulatory regimes, the approaches taken to complying with (or defying) regulatory requirements differ across cities and firms. At the same time, cities themselves often take differing stances with regard to accommodating sharing economy mobility providers. Some cities may be more confrontational or skeptical of the new shared mobility due to political factors, a concern for safety or preservation of public space, or the novelty of the new transport modalities. On the other hand, local authorities may welcome the new sharing mobility firms into their city due to the promise of helping to address mobility issues that pose public problems without requiring significant public investment. City leaders may think of themselves as innovative and seek to embrace the latest products from the sharing economy (Collier et al. 2018). Some sharing economy modalities are marked by partnerships between local authorities and companies. These arrangements include situations where a private company operates a shared mobility system on behalf of a municipality. This is the case in many municipally owned bike share systems such as Divvy in Chicago, and Ford GoBike in San Francisco. The degree of conflict and cooperation is also influenced by the extent to which a sharing economy mobility scheme relies on public accommodation, as opposed to being a market transaction whose public impacts are minimal. If the public space requirements for the new modalities are modest and they do not visibly disrupt pre-existing patterns of regulation, they will incur a different level of engagement from local authorities than those modalities that may be more publicly obtrusive. Figure 18.1 depicts an attempt at mapping these interactions using two axes relating to degrees of cooperation/conflict on the one hand and private/public accommodation on

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Urban mobilities and local regulation  235 Private Space

San Clemente, Lyft bus replacement

Collaboration

Conflict

Chicago, dockless bike share Scooter share, Santa Monica, CA

Chicago, Divvy bike share

Public Space

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Figure 18.1  Mobility share typology the other. Specific examples are situated based on an interpretative analysis of primary and secondary literature discussing the presence of sharing economy mobility companies and modalities in select cities. This model is designed to serve as a heuristic device to understand the sharing economy dynamic in particular instances. The disposition and actions of the various public and private actors in particular settings, coupled with the extent to which private market interactions related to the transportation modality at issue necessitate public intervention, determine how an instance of sharing economy mobility is mapped. In the following section I briefly discuss some of the cases portrayed on the chart and explore how their position might impact their efficacy as modalities in enhancing urban mobility.

SANTA MONICA AND ELECTRIC SCOOTER SHARE In September 2017, a new local company called Bird Rides, Inc. began placing electric scooters on the sidewalks and streets of Santa Monica. Founded by an ex-Uber and Lyft executive, Travis VanderZanden, Bird Rides is explicitly concerned with solving the problem of short-range mobility and argues that electric scooters—with a maximum speed of 24 kilometers per hour and a 24 kilometer range per charge—can serve as a low-impact technology to reduce traffic congestion and parking demand (Hall 2017). The introduction of the scooters by Bird Rides into Santa Monica, however, was done without prior coordination or consultation with the local municipality. Only after the scooters were deposited around the city was the mayor contacted by VanderZanden

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236  Handbook of the sharing economy through the social media site LinkedIn wherein he offered to explain the company’s goals to improve mobility in the city (Smith 2018). The City of Santa Monica’s response was to file a criminal complaint against Bird Rides, alleging that the company was operating without a proper business license and that their scooters were obstructing the public right-of-way (City of Santa Monica 2017). Bird Rides and the city settled before the case went to trial, and in exchange for a plea of no contest the company agreed to pay fines exceeding $300 000, obtain a vendor’s license, and sponsor a public safety campaign targeting riders (Etehad 2018). In the immediate aftermath of the February 2018 settlement, the city passed an emergency ordinance regulating the shared mobility industry. Although the ordinance that passed is applicable to all shared mobility companies using dockless technology, the city’s contested experience with Bird animated the development of the ordinance and the council’s deliberations. During the city council meeting on March 6, 2018, the elected representatives were presented with two possible regulatory alternatives. Both possibilities would have prohibited dockless mobility operators from using the public right-of-way for parking, storage, or advertising the rental of mobility devices. One possibility would have allowed the city to charge an impound fee of $60 and courts to impose up to $5000 in civil penalties. Unclaimed devices would have been subject to forfeiture (Martin 2018a). Under the second alternative there would be no civil penalties or forfeiture of devices. Only a $60 impound fee would be levied (Martin 2018b). The public comments to the council debating the decision to regulate shared mobility is illustrative of the complex terrain cities face as they formulate responses to these emergent technologies. Two Santa Monica residents who expressed a hope that the city would be lenient were users of Bird scooters, and also identified themselves as “chargers.” “Chargers” are independent contractors of Bird Rides who gather scooters, take them home, charge their batteries, and redeploy them around the city once charged. They are paid proportionately to the number of scooters they charge. Both residents who spoke of their experience noted how the company offers them an important opportunity to supplement their income in a city where the costs of living are high. They argue that Bird Rides not only provides sustainable mobility opportunities, but also contributes to job creation. Another pro-Bird Rides speaker identified himself as a business owner who noticed that many of his employees were using Bird scooters to commute to work. Before Bird, employees often had to move their cars every two hours to be in compliance with local parking restrictions. The use of Bird scooters instead of cars improved his company’s productivity. The public comment session also included critics of Bird Rides who were critical of scooter users’ alleged reckless operation of the devices and improper parking on the public right-of-way.1 In the end, Santa Monica passed the more lenient ordinance. Although an excessively punitive option was dismissed, the experience shows the challenges facing municipalities as they react to changes in the sharing mobility marketplace. Notable in the memo from city staff to the city council about the issue is that it cites the city’s interest in encouraging a mode shift away from the automobile (Martin 2018a). Due to this, there is an interest in accommodating what could be a sustainable mode of transport. The criminal complaint 1   A record of the city council meeting is available here: http://santamonica.granicus.com/ MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=4091&meta_id=87466.

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Urban mobilities and local regulation  237 and regulatory effort that ensued shows that the process of bringing new privately run mobility technologies into the city is not without conflict.

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SAN CLEMENTE: RIDE SHARE AS PUBLIC TRANSIT San Clemente, California is situated in suburban Orange County about 80 kilometers south of Los Angeles. It is a low-density, residential community where automobile use is dominant and public transport is limited to bus service provided by a regional public entity, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). In 2016 the OCTA proposed terminating two of the four bus routes servicing the city, due to low ridership levels and a larger effort to redeploy resources more efficiently to serve the region. For San Clemente, this meant a potentially severe disruption for a significant proportion of its transit-dependent population. At the time of the proposed service cuts the OCTA was also offering competitive grants to municipalities located within its region to partially fund mobility projects. San Clemente proposed funding for a Ridership Beta Test Rider which would engage a private service provider to fill the mobility gaps resulting from bus route termination. While it is not unusual for municipalities to privatize taxi or shuttle service for people in particular categories that may have impaired mobility (for example, elderly or disabled), this proposal was unique in that the city was explicitly soliciting ride share companies to service the area where bus service was being eliminated.2 In September 2016, the city received four proposals: one from a local taxi service and three from multinational transportation network providers (Uber, Lyft and Via). Uber and Lyft proposed the lowest average cost per ride estimates, and Lyft met the city’s data reporting requirements and was thus awarded the contract. The way the program functions is unique. Riders must request service through Lyft’s smartphone app, and city subsidies for rides are only available for pick-ups that occur within 75 meters of bus stops from the eliminated routes. Drop-offs can occur anywhere within a 150-meter buffer of the eliminated routes. Lyft uses geofencing technology to ensure that rides and ride requests operate within the mandated spatial constraints. The pricing structure being used is complex when compared to traditional public transit pricing, which usually requires a single cost for access to the system, or pricing based on distances or zones. The transportation network rideshare model has fare minimums and charges based on distance, but pricing can be variable based on ride demand at the time a user requests a ride. To minimize public costs, the city requires riders to pay $2 per ride and the city will pay up to $9 per ride as a subsidy. If a ride exceeds $11, the rider has to pay the excess in addition to the $2 base. The other provision is that rides must begin and end in San Clemente, and can only be subsidized if they are hailed during the times that the terminated bus routes would have been in operation (Frank 2016). The original grant was limited to two years, but its initial success prompted the city in March 2018 to authorize an application for funding an additional three years of the service (Bonigut 2018). 2   This background is gleaned from testimony at the San Clemente City Council Meeting, October 4, 2016, available at https://youtu.be/hdAM2xVe6IU?t=5085.

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238  Handbook of the sharing economy While the Santa Monica experience with shared mobility providers such as Bird Rides has been fundamentally confrontational on the part of both the shared mobility company and the city, the San Clemente experience with Lyft has been cooperative. From the city’s perspective, replacing the regionally funded bus lines that served the community with a city-run substitute was unfeasible on budgetary grounds. The ride share alternative has some potential challenges as a substitute for bus service: the uncertain fare structure and pick-up/drop-off system could be confusing to users; additionally, use of the service requires a smartphone with the Lyft app, which could exclude some potential users. Nevertheless, the arrangement could also offer more flexibility given the substitution of a buffer zone of service for fixed stops. San Clemente’s comfort with policy experimentation suggests that the city may be willing to modify the arrangement with Lyft in order to make the system more functional for its users.

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DOCKLESS BIKE SHARE IN CHICAGO As discussed above with regard to Santa Monica, the emergence of dockless shared mobility technologies has contributed to disruption of urban spaces. Fueled by deep-pocketed start-ups, dockless mobility providers are able to assert their presence in urban areas quickly and at large scales. The dockless bike sector is one that has numerous actors all searching for early dominance. This results in intense competition and aggressive roll-out strategies. The levers of municipal government, however, operate slowly and deliberately due to their public nature. While some cities have taken aggressive action against dockless bike share in the same manner as Santa Monica addressed the Bird scooter issue, others have been more cautious. Chicago is a useful example of a city getting into the forefront of dockless mobility before any providers offered service in the city. Chicago established a municipally owned but privately operated conventional bike share scheme in 2013 called Divvy. It was rolled out in stages over a three-year period, first situating kiosks in the central downtown business district and emanating into residential neighborhoods. As of 2019, not all neighborhoods are covered. The initial capital cost for Divvy was largely funded with federal grant money, and the costs of expanding kiosks and purchasing bikes were prohibitive. To address equity concerns and to carefully understand the ways in which private, dockless bike share could be incorporated smoothly into the city’s transportation landscape, the city invited dockless providers to participate in a pilot project. The pilot would be geographically constrained to a service area on the city’s southwest side and would last from May 1, 2018 to November 1, 2018. This is an area outside of the existing service area for the city’s Divvy system, and an area where public transit is lacking when compared to other neighborhoods in Chicago. In April 2018 the city published a series of requirements for dockless bike share vendors to meet in order to be issued a business permit. Among the provisions bike share companies would have to adhere to were a demonstration of experience operating dockless bike share in a city of 500 000 people or more without having had their permit revoked, a deployment limit of 250 bikes, after a 60-day initial phase bikes would have to be equipped with “lock-to technology,” and payment of a $250 application fee plus a $50 per bike administrative fee.

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Urban mobilities and local regulation  239 In addition to the operational requirements that would make the services run effectively for users, the city also demanded data reporting from companies participating in the pilot. Data that the city is requiring include: rider demographics, anonymized trip data showing each trip’s bike pick-up and drop-off location, time of day and duration of each trip, and GPS data of the route taken for each ride (City of Chicago 2018). At the beginning of the pilot’s operation on 1 May 2018, three dockless bike share companies were operating in Chicago. Because of the nascent nature of the system in the city there is not enough data to assess its efficacy and the degree of conflict with traditional bike share operators. The only public concerns that have been expressed by operators have been related to the locking mechanism requirements. The “lock-to technology” requires that the bike can be locked to a permanent fixture such as a bike rack, rather than using a wheel lock. The latter is more susceptible to vandals moving bikes or users parking bikes in poor locations, causing public right-of-way obstruction. It is unclear if the lock-to requirement has caused some operators to decline to enter the market. But a May report in the Chicago Tribune indicated that some companies that are participating in the pilot during the grace period where lock-to technology is not mandatory are seeking to have the regulation changed (Wisniewski 2018). From the city’s standpoint, the regulations provide a logical, safe, and predictable rollout in neighborhoods that are currently underserved by other shared mobility and public transport options. Also potentially valuable for the city are the data that each provider is required to submit to the city. This rich trip data looking at time of trips, duration, locations of beginnings and endings, and routes taken could be a valuable source of information for making decisions about transportation planning. Unlike data from buses, trains, or traditional bike share, dockless devices give more detailed door-to-destination information. Chicago’s experience, where the city lays out specific rules before dockless mobility operators deploy, is being duplicated by New York which began its own pilot in the summer of 2018 (Walker 2018). While the strategy of strong regulatory development may enhance predictability for urban planners, it is unclear how operators will ultimately respond. Excessive regulation has the potential to repel companies from locating their shared mobility operations in cities.

CONCLUSIONS Modern shared mobility is a burgeoning and dynamic sector of the larger movement towards a sharing economy. New mobility devices and methods of deployment are continually being developed, making the domain one where urban planners are simultaneously eagerly anticipating the possibilities of new technologies for supporting sustainable travel, while at the same time approaching with trepidation the management of their impacts on urban form and mobility. As we can see from the case studies, there are a multiplicity of ways that local authorities have reacted to the presence of new sharing transportation companies. From Santa Monica’s rather conflictual approach towards dealing with an aggressive start-up, to the more measured and deliberative stance of Chicago and San Clemente’s turn to the sharing economy as a substitute for public transportation, each case responded to ­mobility

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240  Handbook of the sharing economy providers in ways that were reflective of the particularities of local contexts. Santa Monica’s conflictual experience was exacerbated by being the one of the first major North American cities to be faced with addressing the challenges that have come with the novel technology of scooter share. Having seen the experience of dockless mobility technologies being deployed in other locales, a large city—Chicago—has been able to develop a pilot model to help accommodate sharing economy companies in a more cautious manner. From the standpoint of management processes that other cities may want to consider, given the experiences discussed in these cases, a particular area of emphasis could lie in the insistence on data-sharing. As mentioned with the Chicago example, trip data stemming from shared mobility technologies can be quite valuable for urban planners. Knowing the specific routes taken by people using various modes of travel in a city can help local governments to make decisions about the most efficient ways to invest in infrastructure. Ride share and bike share companies can provide data access at a granular level that has been unavailable to planners in the past. For some sharing mobility operations initiated by municipalities, such as Chicago’s Divvy bike share or New York’s CitiBike, trip data are released publicly to the internet. Private mobility operators such as Uber have been criticized for their unwillingness to share granular data with authorities and researchers, asserting that they are proprietary (Marshall 2018). Developing mechanisms for datasharing that can protect ownership but allow public use could be an area for enhanced cooperation between shared mobility operators and local authorities. From the standpoint of local planners, there are undoubtedly proactive measures that can be taken to try and efficiently accommodate shared mobility services. Although it is difficult to anticipate future developments in the shared mobility market, some cities are now beginning to incorporate assumptions about shared mobility into their zoning and infrastructure planning. For instance, Sacramento, California has an Employment Center Zone in its zoning code that explicitly mentions ride share as one of the modes of transport that should be accommodated in land use decisions (Sacramento City Council 2013). Formalizing the incorporation of shared mobility services in land use planning could ensure that space is provided for parking of shared devices and for passenger pick-up and drop-off. Finally, infrastructure planning and financing will continue to be an area of concern as local authorities incorporate shared mobility into cities. Cities are beginning to impose taxes and fees for transportation network companies and in some cases, such as Chicago, the funds raised are designated to finance public transportation (Hu 2018). As different shared devices assert their presence on city streets, developing safe methods of accommodating multiple modalities will be a challenge. The costs for modifying physical space to ensure safety are not inconsequential, and local authorities will likely need to be creative and experimental in conditions of fiscal austerity.

REFERENCES Bonigut, Tom (2018), “Agenda Report: Approval of Orange County Transportation Authority Grant Submittal for San Clemente Trolley and Rideshare Beta Test Rider Programs,” https://san-clemente.org/Home/Show​ Document?id=44336.

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Urban mobilities and local regulation  241 Brey, Raul, José I. Castillo-Manzano, Mercedes Castro-Nuño, et al. (2017), “Is the Widespread Use of Urban Land for Cycling Promotion Policies Cost Effective? A Cost‒Benefit Analysis of the Case of Seville,” Land Use Policy, 63, 130–39. Carmona, Matthew, Claudio De Magalhaes, and Leo Hammond (2008), Public Space: The Management Dimension, London: Routledge. City of Chicago (2018), “City of Chicago Permit Requirements—for Dockless Bikeshare Vendors Only,” https:// www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/dept/cdot/bike/general/Chicago_DoBi_Pilot_Program_04.24.18.pdf. City of Santa Monica, California (2017), “City Attorney Files Criminal Complaint Against Illegal Business Operations by Bird Rides, Inc.,” https://www.santamonica.gov/press/2017/12/07/city-attorney-files-criminalcomplaint-aga​inst-illegal-business-operations-by-bird-rides-inc. Collier, Ruth Berins, V.B. Dubal, and Christopher Carter (2018), “Disrupting Regulation, Regulating Disruption: The Politics of Uber in the United States (March 22, 2018). 47296,” UC Hastings Research Paper No. 280. Dowling, Robyn and Jennifer Kent (2015), “Practice and Public–Private Partnerships in Sustainable Transport Governance: The Case of Car Sharing in Sydney, Australia,” Transport Policy, 40, 58–64. Etehad, Melissa (2018), “Bird Scooter Firm Settles Legal Fight with Santa Monica,” Los Angeles Times, http:// www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bird-scooters-20180215-story.html. Farmer, Richard N. (1964), “The Economics of Congestion,” Transportation Journal, 4 (1), 28–34. Frank, Tom (2016), “Agenda Report: Contract Award to Lyft for the Rideshare Beta Test Rider,” https://sanclemente.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=31168. Gössling, Stefan and Andy S Choi (2015), “Transport Transitions in Copenhagen: Comparing the Cost of Cars and Bicycles,” Ecological Economics, 113, 106–13. Hall, Michael (2017), “Bird Scooters Flying Around Town,” Santa Monica Daily Press, http://smdp.com/ bird-scooters-flying-around-town/162647. Hu, Winnie (2018), “When Calling an Uber Can Pay Off for Cities and States,” New York Times, https://nyti. ms/2ByCULc. Inci, Eren (2015), “A Review of the Economics of Parking,” Economics of Transportation, 4 (1‒2), 50–63. Kay, Jane Holtz (1997), Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took over America and How We Can Take It Back, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Leidenberger, Georg (2006), Chicago’s Progressive Alliance: Labor and the Bid for Public Streetcars, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Marshall, Aarian (2018), “Dying to Know Uber’s Secrets, Data-Hungry Cities Get Creative,” http://www.wired. com/story/uber-lyft-data-research-driver-pay. Martin, David (2018a), “City Council Report,” http://santamonicacityca.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?T ype=30&ID=19085&MeetingID=1136. Martin, David (2018b), “Supplemental City Council Report,” http://santamonicacityca.iqm2.com/Citizens/ FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID=6045&MeetingID=1136. Newman, Peter, Jeffrey Kenworthy, and Peter Vintila (1995), “Can We Overcome Automobile Dependence?: Physical Planning in an Age of Urban Cynicism,” Cities, 12 (1), 53–65. O’Connor, Katherine E. (2015), “Along for the Ride: Regulating Transportation Network Companies,” Tulsa Law Review, 51, 579. Rabl, Ari and Audrey De Nazelle (2012), “Benefits of Shift from Car to Active Transport,” Transport Policy, 19 (1), 121–31. Sacramento City Council (2013), “Ordinance No. 2013-0007.” Sadik-Khan, Janette (2017), Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, New York: Penguin. Shoup, Donald (2017), The High Cost of Free Parking: Updated Edition, New York: Routledge. Smith, Noah (2018), “Sudden Appearance of Electric Scooters Irks Santa Monica Officials,” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/sudden-appearance-of-electric-scooters-irks-santa-monica-offici als/2018/02/10/205f6950-0b4f-11e8-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html. Walker, Ameena (2018), “NYC to Launch Dockless Bike Share Pilot This Summer,” http://ny.curbed.com/ platform/amp/2018/5/24/17389414/nyc-dockless-bike-share-pilot-program-announcement. Warner, Sam Bass (1962), Streetcar Suburbs, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wisniewski, Mary (2018), “Dockless Bike Companies Protest Chicago’s Lock Rule: ‘No Other City Has Required This’,” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-dockless-bike-lock-debate-20180503-story,​ amp.html.

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19.  Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy? Adrian J. Hawley

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INTRODUCTION Based on research between 2015 and 2018, this chapter reveals specific causes of concern in the so-called “sharing economy” and identifies recent developments that might eventually transform “hyper-individualistic anomie” (Wilson 2016) into good-quality work without stifling flexibility and job creation. The sharing economy takes a number of different forms. For example, Constantiou et al. (2017, 232) categorize four different models according to the degree of “rivalry between platform participants” or “control exerted by platform owner.” In all but one of these, however, the maximization of profit is the chief objective. This would more closely align with “self-interested commodity exchange” rather than “sharing” or “gift giving” in Belk’s (2010, 721) characterization of consumption phenomena. In their study of car-sharing, Bardhi and Eckhardt (2012, 888) found that access, in contrast to ownership, did not reveal a type of consumption “motivated by altruistic concerns.” An inaccurate implication of sharing is indiscriminately applying the term “peer-to-peer” to the sharing economy. Two examples are where assets such as vehicles and homes are acquired for the express purpose of offering a commercial service, and where the service is provided by de facto professionals resembling a business to consumer model. Therefore, the term “sharing” itself is misleading and “may be becoming meaningless and divorced from any notions of community and solidarity as platforms focus on selling cheaper versions of existing services, such as short-term rentals, sublets and temporary work provided by people in need of money” (Constantiou et al. 2017, 236). This is especially the case of labor platforms and the supposedly casual, but often more regular, work known as “gigs” performed by their participants and on which some of them rely for a large part of their livelihood. In one version of the for-profit sharing economy, platforms connect individuals with businesses for which they carry out mind tasks, ranging in order of complexity, online (known as crowd work or click work). This chapter, however, is specifically concerned with the provision of tangible services to consumers, intermediated online (by mobile phone and apps), but performed offline, notably driving and delivering, also known as location-based digital labor (Schmidt 2017).

THE EMPLOYMENT ISSUE Survey results are inconsistent about the number of people working in the gig economy in the United Kingdom (UK) and other European Union (EU) countries, and their motives 242

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Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy?  243 for doing so. This is because researchers find it difficult to define gig workers amid the universe of temporary and irregular workers or those engaged on atypical contracts that now abounds. For example, survey results do not agree on the extent to which these workers depend upon gigs for their livelihood, namely as a top-up or as a large part (or even the totality) of their income. Ambivalence is demonstrated in the title of a UK study: “To Gig or Not to Gig? Stories from the Modern Economy” (CIPD 2017). A common finding is that it is not “good work,” which is also reflected in titles of other reports and surveys, such as “Good Work, the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices” (Taylor 2017) and “Good Gigs: A Fairer Future for the UK’s Gig Economy” (Balaram et al. 2017), and in referring to what Gute Arbeit (good work) should look like in Re-imagining Work (German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs 2017, 183). Exploitative and creative aspects of offline gig work are discussed in the following sections. Terms and Conditions Among the terms and conditions of gig workers on labor platforms such as Uber, Deliveroo, City Sprint and Hermes that have been reported are low pay (CIPD 2017; Forde et al. 2017a), precarity through summary deactivation (Calo and Rosenblat 2017), lack of statutory in-work or out-of-work benefits due to their status as self-employed, lack of clarity in contracts (Taylor 2017; EC 2017b, 2017d), emotional labor (Rosenblat and Stark 2015; Ravel and Dourish 2016), physical danger (Miller 2016; Schmidt 2017), and lack of representation through union recognition or collective bargaining rights as these are denied to the self-employed under EU competition law (Forde et al. 2017a).

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Disjunction between Work and Employment Most of the gaps in employment terms described above are the direct result of gig workers being classified in labor law as self-employed, independent contractors. Labor platforms do not have any “employees,” only “customers” or “driver-partners” as Uber prefers to call them. This classification has recently been legally contested with the support of a powerful union (GMB 2016), resulting in a ruling, upheld on appeal (Employment Appeal Tribunal 2017), that Uber drivers are “workers,” not self-employed, which is a category specific to the UK (Employment Rights Act 1996). Under this classification they have the right to minimum statutory entitlements, such as: the National Minimum Wage, protection against unlawful deductions from wages, minimum level of paid holiday, minimum length of rest breaks, the right to not work more than 48 hours on average per week or to opt out of this right if they choose, protection against unlawful discrimination, “whistleblowing”—reporting wrongdoing in the workplace—and not be treated less favourably if they work part-time. (Forde et al. 2017b, 9)

Unlike employees, however, they do not receive statutory redundancy pay, protection against unfair dismissal, the right to request flexible working (De Stefano, 2016, 20), sick leave, parental leave or the right to collective bargaining. Moreover, the Tribunal ruling, which Uber intends to appeal in higher courts (Davies 2017), only applied to the particular plaintiffs. Uber announced it will take its case to the Supreme Court after it failed to overturn a ruling on its drivers workers’ rights at the Court of Appeal (Bernal 2018).

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244  Handbook of the sharing economy The most significant problem for gig workers stems from a disjunction between a definition of “work” and “employment.” As Taylor (2017, 35) puts it, “all employees are workers, but not all workers are employees.” The European Court of Justice (ECJ) defines work as having three essential characteristics, namely, “the existence of a subordination link, the nature of work and the presence of a remuneration” (EP 2016, 3§2; EC 2017a, 9). Since Uber, for example, sets the price of a ride, takes payment, records ratings according to which drivers can be deactivated at any time, and tracks every movement of its drivers when they are online, together with delivering nudges as to customer-facing behavior, there would seem to be little doubt as to their compliance with the Court’s definition. As the European Commission (EC) states, however, “There is no single approach on how to qualify employment status across Member States in the collaborative economy” (EC 2016a, 35), and labor law is, for the most part, a national competence (Codagnone et al. 2016, 11; Forde et al. 2017a, 92).

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Dependent or Not Dependent Deciding on employment status has generally been a binary option between employed or self-employed, with the former entitled to a full range of benefits and the latter not. In the EU, “traditional” taxi drivers are for the most part self-employed or “independent contractors.” The labor platforms of the gig economy, however, have introduced a third consideration, namely that of economic dependence. The French Digital Council, Conseil national du numérique (2016, 80, 113) has proposed the creation of a third category of “non-salaried independent workers,” but who find themselves “in a relationship of economic dependence.” In Spain, such workers have already had basic rights since 1973, while in the German social market model personal dependence is seen as the “essential criterion in determining whether an individual should be classified as an employee under social insurance law . . . It seems that the question of whether this criterion is met has to be examined on a case-by-case basis for platform-based activities and crowdworking” (German Federal Ministry 2017, 171). Hence Germany also identifies “employee-like persons” (arbeitnehmerähnliche Personen) in law. These are persons who are self-employed but who are economically dependent on one client (for at least 50 percent of their income; 30 percent in the media sector). With respect to social security, they are considered to be self-employed. Normally, this would mean exclusion from the state pension scheme and the statutory accident insurance scheme, but an exception is made. Platform workers, however, are considered as neither employees nor employee-like persons, but rather as self-employed persons, and consequently have significantly less social protection. Taylor (2017, 9, 110) believes that the term “worker” should be replaced with “dependent contractor” to make a clear distinction from the genuinely self-employed, and that those to whom it apples should enjoy a basic set of employment rights. De Stefano (2016, 19, 21) is not convinced, however, by the addition of another category, because legal definitions are always “slippery” in practice and can lead to regulatory arbitrage; while Hill (2015, 9,14) argues for shutting down the “independent contractor loophole” in a way that makes it “unnecessary to argue over whether the worker is actually an employee of that company or an independent contractor,” an argument based on the primacy of facts.

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Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy?  245

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Professionals or Non-Professionals EU legislation has difficulty in distinguishing when a “peer” becomes a “professional” in the new “collaborative” economy (EC 2016b, 5). Confusion is also to be observed at the level of the ECJ. In a Preliminary Ruling the Court decided that that Uber is a transportation company and hence a national regulatory competence, not covered by free movement under the Services Directive. In reaching its judgment, “the information before the Court was that Uber relies on non-professional drivers who do not have an urban transport licence and operate its UberPop model” (ECJ 2017a, §66,88). Yet the Opinion of the Advocate General which preceded the ruling was that, “Although there are no rules on working time within the framework of the Uber platform . . . it is apparent that most trips are carried out by drivers for whom Uber is their only or main professional activity” (ECJ 2017b, §47). Member states have treated the distinction between “peers” and professional services providers very differently (EC 2016a, 27). In some member states, for example, the annual amount that can be earnt through peer-to-peer services is capped, beyond which full regulatory compliance—notably authorizations, consumer protection and taxation—applies. In a number of European cities, the number of nights per year in which the letting of short-term accommodation is allowed between “peers” is limited. Whether service providers in the new economy are designated “professionals” or “peers” does not, however, resolve the employment puzzle. This can be explained by the misappropriation of the peer-to-peer concept to the gig economy, as is seen from the way it has rapidly evolved. Uber and Airbnb set out to portray themselves (Slee 2015) as facilitating a casual peer-to-peer activity by the ordinary citizen using their underused car or spare living space to make a little extra cash. Both characterizations have proved to be far from the truth. Surveys (Balaram et al. 2017; CIPD 2017) suggest that 30‒40 percent of Uber drivers in the UK are working long hours and depend upon Uber for the major, if not entire, part of their income. The proportion is 80 percent in France according to the Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP), as reported by Landier et al. (2016). Uber’s business model in Europe has morphed from the earlier concept of peer-to-peer (UberPop), which was widely banned or severely restricted to a professional service (UberX and other transportation models). In this form Uber has recently been readmitted in Spain, and together with the UK and France, these are among the few major EU economies where Uber (in the form of UberX, or the limo service UberBlack) is permitted to operate, subject to some private hire licencing conditions. The peer-to-peer principle is diluted in the case of short-term accommodation with multiple lets owned or managed by commercial enterprises, for example in Paris (Sénat 2015, 19, 26). Therefore what we are seeing with labor platforms in the gig economy may often be a case of bogus self-employment. Fiscal Impact It is not only workers who are disadvantaged from being inappropriately classified by platforms as self-employed, but also society at large. Since they do not have any “employees” (except back-office staff) platforms do not pay the social “wedge,” for example employer’s national insurance contributions (NICs) in the UK at 13.8 percent on top of workers’ pay. Based on a tax lawyer’s estimate, Balaram et al. (2017, 40) estimate that Uber, for example,

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246  Handbook of the sharing economy would accrue costs of around £13 million per month (or roughly £156 million annually) if it had to pay employer NICs in the UK. Deliveroo claims it would add around £1 to the cost of each hour (Pitas and Holden 2017). Moreover, people engaging regularly in gig work may not always see themselves as genuinely self-employed, and consequently may fail to pay their contributions which would enable them to gain access to state benefits. The upper house of the French parliament (Sénat 2015) has referred to the tax losses due to faux particuliers (falsely private people, in fact professionals) earning small sums in the gig economy on a casual basis. A proposal to draw on the “exhaustive and instantaneous knowledge” (Sénat 2015, 32) of platforms in order to transmit the gross and net earnings of their workers to the tax authorities has now become law with effect from 2019. Arrangements have been introduced in Estonia (Mardiste 2016) to facilitate online calculation and payment of taxes due from participants working on ride-hailing platforms. Generally, however, platforms have shared very little data (OECD 2016, 38). Tax authorities have limited oversight of the activities that are performed through them, workers do not declare the earnings themselves, and “only 15% of the participants in a market survey conducted in France reported the income obtained through the collaborative economy” (De Groen and Maselli 2016, 10, 21).

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In-Work Poverty With low rates of pay and precarity, doing a gig (or several gigs) in the gig economy does not necessarily mean escaping from what is termed “poverty in work.” For the EU this means “when individuals work for over half of the year and when their equivalised yearly disposable household income is below 60% of the national household median income level” (Eurofound 2017, 5). “Sweat-shop conditions” are said to prevail in London’s “booming minicab trade” (UPHD 2016) with the presence of 40 000‒50 000 private hire drivers working for Uber having the effect of driving down wages for all of them, both new entrants and existing participants. The United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD) survey found that: “81% say they no longer earn enough to meet basic family needs. 95% have seen their pay decrease in the past 6 months.” London’s 111 000 private hire drivers are described as “the working poor,” the majority of whom are reported as having to work 90 hours a week or more “just to survive.” Flexibility Gig workers like the flexibility that such work brings (Taylor 2017; CIPD 2017; Calo and Rosenblat 2017; Schmidt 2017). It promises independence and freedom which some, should they have the choice, think it worthwhile sacrificing job security and employment benefits for. Such autonomy, “being their own boss,” however, could be illusory, locking them into the disadvantages outlined above and offering few opportunities to acquire new skills and transition to regular work (OECD 2016). Such forms of employment where de facto employers pay only minimum wages and abnegate a wider sense of responsibility for the well-being of their workers seems to regress to the laissez-faire capitalism of the early industrial revolution with regard to workers’ rights and social protection (Schmidt 2017; Fabo et al. 2017), and to be incompatible with the EU’s social market model. They also seem to pay little attention to the humanitarian orientation of the modern human

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Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy?  247 r­ elations school of management which traces its origins to the Hawthorne Studies conducted by Elton Mayo nearly a century ago (Henderson and Mayo 1936/2002). Instead they seem to exemplify the “hyper-individualistic anomie which decades of neo-liberal economics have fostered” (Wilson 2016, 63).

THE SOCIAL MARKET EXPLAINED The social market has been described as a “fundamental social model that ensured people’s rights, inclusion to social protection, a good wage model that shared productivity through collective bargaining and social dialogue” (Burrow 2018) or, more specifically, “the creation of a world of work that is humane, socially balanced and sustainable” (Jürgens et al. 2017, 222). This is reflected in the concept of “good work” referred to earlier by Taylor (2017), who measured it against a number of criteria such as “employment quality, working conditions, consultative participation and collective representation in addition to wages”; and also in “Good Gigs” (Balaram et al. 2017) and Gute Arbeit (German Federal Ministry 2017).

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Why the Gig Economy is an EU Issue The answer is to be found in the acquis communautaire, the body of European Union law and regulations. The social protection of workers is a core commitment derived from the Treaties, which refer to “a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress” (Article 3 TEU, Maastricht, 1992), and “the guarantee of adequate social protection, the fight against social exclusion, and a high level of education, training and protection of human health” (Article 9 TFEU, Lisbon, 2009). The EU therefore has a role in coordinating social protection policy in response to the platform economy (Forde et al. 2017a, 69). Establishing the social market is a cardinal principle of the EU, and convergence towards it is a driving impetus of integration. An EU that neglected the social market would revert to little more than the common market with which it started, or the European Economic Community as it was formally known. This matters, because the social market is a Treaty commitment. How to achieve it, however, remains unresolved. Economic Opportunity versus Social Justice Many in industry believe that labor market flexibility, rather than new regulations, produces more jobs, investment and competitiveness (see, e.g., Niemietz and Zuluaga 2016; European Collaborative Economy Forum 2016). It is hardly a coincidence that the UK is the EU member state characterized by having the least restrictive regulatory regime (Taylor 2017, 14, 17) and where the gig economy has developed the most vigorously (CNMC 2016, 169). It also has lighter social protection of workers than either France or Germany. Therefore it is not only a question of growth and competitiveness, but also of fairness. These, however, are not so easily distinguished. The rise of gig work platforms appears to be the result of a specific, but not unfamiliar, conjunction of circumstances in a free

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248  Handbook of the sharing economy market economy, namely the availability of a new technology, entrepreneurial flair in exploiting it to fill perceiving market gaps, and abundant venture funding. The results are good for consumers and create fill-in jobs for workers already displaced from full-time employment by recession and automation. A study for Uber (2016) claimed, for example, that that the new ride-hailing platforms such as Uber, Chauffeur-Privé and Heetch created one out of four new jobs in Paris in the first quarter of 2016, that up to half of Uber’s drivers had been (previously) jobless, and that 77 percent of drivers were “happy” to be driving. Such work was a route out of the deprived and largely immigrant banlieues (Rose 2017), equivalent to the United States (US) ghettos. The new businesses of this type, however, frequently evade or ignore existing regulations, and the “survival” jobs they create lack benefits typically associated with employment and are not fully categorized by existing labor law. This gives rise to a noticeable ambivalence in the Commission’s policy, clearly expressed in its European agenda for the collaborative economy (EC 2016b), which promotes the economic benefits of innovation and market access on the one hand, while protecting consumers, workers’ rights and the tax base on the other. The agenda presents a non-binding set of guidelines for member states which has been followed recently by another “soft power” initiative, the European Pillar of Social Rights (EC 2017b). This suggests that economic—that is to say, market— considerations may have been given more weight than social ones, and not only since the rise of the platform economy.

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Social Europe: Last Chance or a “Social Triple A”? There is a long history of initiatives to embed “social Europe,” starting with the European Social Charter signed at Turin in October 1961, culminating in the Social Chapter of the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), while the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights became part of the acquis in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (Treaty of Lisbon, 2009). The overall picture, however, is that the social dimension has been neglected compared with other aspects of EU law, combined with what Rasnača (2017, 6) calls “a concerted attack on Social Europe over the last decade or so.” This has been attributed, firstly, to the continuing pressure on welfare systems from deregulatory measures in the Single Market, as referred to by Scharpf (2010), and secondly, and more recently, to austerity measures imposed since the financial crises following the banking collapse of 2008. An analysis of the Commission’s output and announcements over 2015‒17 suggests a greater focus on the economic—that is to say, market—aspects of the gig economy than the social. Most attention is paid to competition, growth and the possibility of generating Europe’s own “unicorn” (that is, digital technology start-up valued at more than $1 billion) to rival those from the US which currently dominate. It is only in the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) that the whole range of social issues associated with new forms of work in the gig economy are given full prominence. Proclaiming the EPSR at the Social Summit for Fair Jobs and Growth in Gothenburg, Commission President Junker (EC 2017c) reviewed the (unfinished) work done to modernize Europe’s social market economy so as to achieve a “social triple A” for Europe. For example, out of the 19 legal proposals put on the table since 2015 to advance social Europe, 12 still needed to be adopted. Some remain sceptical and ask whether “the EPSR is a light at the end of the tunnel, a sign of a paradigm shift and the beginning of a more serious development of the EU social

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Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy?  249 dimension, or is it merely an ineffectual distraction?” (Rasnača 2017, 8). Nevertheless, the EPSR “has been treated as the last hope in re-establishing a belief in a genuinely social Europe” (Rasnača 2017, 37). Social protection for gig workers moves at different speeds throughout the EU, none of which, however, appears to adequately address the needs of this new form of employment activity. In the three largest member states where the platform economy is well established, the status quo is as follows: 1. In the UK, the legal classification of platform workers as self-employed rather than “workers” is being increasingly challenged at tribunals (Uber, Pimlico Plumbers) on a case-by-case basis. As “workers” they have minimum statutory entitlements, as described earlier in this chapter. 2. In France, two laws (Loi Thévenoud 2014 and Loi Grandguillaume 2016) have established new rules for ride-hailing operations and some common rules for both these and traditional taxis. In terms of social protection for all types of gig workers, the category of micro-entrepreneur (revised from that of the existing auto-entrepreneur in 2016) allows for lower-level tax and social security contributions, and to work full- or part-time or to combine jobs for a limited income level. 3. In Germany, under current German rules, platform workers are not considered employees or employee-like persons, but classified as self-employed persons. In this case they have significantly less social protection than employees or employee-like persons (Forde 2017b, 27).

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A Better Deal for Gig Workers? Under the EPSR, all workers should be entitled to minimum conditions of a fair wage, decent work, training and statutory benefits in the same way as any other employee, regardless of their exact employment relationship; while precarious employment, abusive atypical contracts and in-work poverty will be prevented (Chapter II, Principle 5, “Secure and adaptable employment,” Principle 6 “Wages”). All workers will have access to social protection and unemployment benefits (Chapter III, Principles 12 and 13). Collective bargaining is promoted in Chapter II Principle 8 (“Social dialogue and involvement of workers”). It is unclear, however, whether any of these principles will benefit gig workers, because an employment relationship is assumed in every case. This is what is precisely denied by labor platforms. It is hard to see them being applied to gig workers throughout the EU until their status is reclassified under national labor laws. There are hopes, however, for gig workers. Under the EPSR, member states are invited to adapt their social policies in the light of “the emergence of new forms of work.” It aims to make social provision a right rather than a recommendation, and that it should “cover the whole range of non-standard contracts for the provision of work which are increasingly prevalent in today’s labor market” (EC 2017b, 49, 50). Social provision, moreover, “should be extended to the self-employed” and, perhaps of greatest relevance to gig workers, to “people employed as workers and people working as self-employed.” The 20 principles of the EPSR demonstrate the Commission’s use of “soft power” to normatively promote its commitment to the social market model under the Treaty but it has also brought forward one proposal for a revised directive (“hard power”) on “transparent and

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250  Handbook of the sharing economy predictable working conditions in the European Union” (EC 2017d). This would make written contracts applicable to all employees or workers regardless of the employment relationship. It would be particularly beneficial to Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders if it prevented their terms being changed at any time. Examples are Uber’s increase in its commission, or reduction in the price of a ride and consequently of the hourly rate, or the recent change from hourly rate to pay-per-delivery at Deliveroo, where at one stage ­workers’ contracts did not permit legal challenge (Osborne 2016). The use of the Commission’s hard power prerogative in this case to bring forward new legislation for approval by the European Parliament (EP) and the Council, together with the principles of the EPSR, suggests an evolution in attention towards the social impact of all new forms of work, rather than the market aspects that it has maintained were adequately covered by existing regulation (Bieńkowska 2017). There are also signs of change from the platforms. Uber’s White Paper (Uber 2018) acknowledges the need for social policy reform in the EU and supports the principles of the EPSR, while listing the improvements that it has made or is planning in the terms and conditions of its “partners” (that is, drivers, bicycle deliverers). Both Uber and Deliveroo have recently offered their workers throughout Europe subsidized insurance cover in case of loss of work due to accident or illness, including maternity in Uber’s case. The latter has gone further with the provision of access to tax and financial planning advice, representation in the form of roundtables, expo events and podcasts, driver appeals panels, support for skills and English language training, and an achievement summary letter. As an option, Uber will now transmit its partners’ earnings, should they wish, to the tax authorities. This is mandatory for all platforms in France from 2019. Uber’s démarche might be taken at face value, or could be seen as a diversionary tactic to build reputation and avoid more onerous regulatory attention. In either case it is explicit that it does not mean taking on the role and responsibilities imposed by a formal employer relationship, which would undermine the principle of flexibility and non-exclusivity on which its model, it claims, is based.

CONCLUSION This chapter has identified deficits in the on-location labor platform model of the sharing economy in the contribution of platforms to the social values of the EU which have been reconfirmed in the EPSR. The ongoing question for research is whether such activities can or will become more caring, less the “taking economy” (Calo and Rosenblat 2017), than their record so far shows. Despite the term “sharing,” platforms have been shown to be for-profit, not altruistic. Self-regulation would be in their own self-interest, as their very business model is vulnerable should other forms of regulation oblige them to treat their workers as employees, with all the benefits and costs that such classification implies. It has been proposed, for example, that platforms should be required to make social security contributions on behalf of their workers (EP 2018). Austerity cuts to benefits by governments may have contributed to the commercial exploitation of vulnerable groups, but this may now present an opportunity to Uber and others to fill the gap to some extent in return for preserving their business model. They might also be conscious of a dawning sense of responsibility for an emerging “new social

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Should Europe regulate labor platforms in the sharing economy?  251 class, the collaborative class, that needs social and economic safeguards” (CoR 2016, 31), and one that is not simply to be exploited for all it is worth as the embodiment of “flexible capitalism” (Mejia 2015, 291) and “extreme commodification” and “casualization” of labor (De Stefano 2016, 4, 6). It also shows a growing awareness by platforms that work done on them is not merely on a casual basis.

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REFERENCES Balaram, B., J.R. Warden, and F. Wallace-Stephens (2017), “Good Gigs: A Fairer Future for the UK’s Gig Economy,” RSA Action and Research Centre, https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_goodgigs-fairer-gig-economy-report.pdf. Bardhi, F. and G.M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: the Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881‒98. Belk, R. (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (2), 715‒34. Bernal, N. (2018), “Uber Heads for Supreme Court after Losing Appeal on Worker Rights,” Telegraph, December 19, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/12/19/uber-heads-supreme-court-losing-appealworker-rights/. Bieńkowska, E. (2017), “Parliamentary Answer to Question E-007579/2016,” given by the Commissioner for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. Burrow, S. (2018), “WEF Co-Chair: Greed is Still the Economic Engine,” January 22, https://www.euractiv.com/ section/economy-jobs/interview/wef-co-chair-greed-is-still-the-economic-engine-peace-and-democracy-the-col​ lateral-damage/. Calo, R. and A. Rosenblat (2017), “The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, and Power,” Columbia Law Review, 117, 1625‒89. CIPD (2017), “To Gig or Not to Gig? Stories from the Modern Economy,” survey report, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. CNMC (2016), “Study on New Models of Providing Services and the Sharing Economy E/CNMC/004/15,” preliminary report, National Commission on Markets and Competition, Spain. Codagnone, C., F. Biagi, and F. Fabienne Abadie (2016), “The Passions and the Interests: Unpacking the ‘Sharing Economy’,” JRC Science for Policy Report for the EC. Conseil national du numérique (2016), “Travail, emploi, numérique: les nouvelles trajectoires” (Work, Employment, Digital: New Pathways), report by French Digital Council. Constantiou, I., A. Marton, and V.P. Tuunainen (2017), “Four Models of Sharing Economy Platforms,” MIS Quarterly Executive, 16 (4), 231‒51. CoR (2016), “The Local and Regional Dimension of the Sharing Economy,” Committee of the Regions, Brussels. Davies, R. (2017), “Uber Loses Appeal in UK Employment Rights Case,” Guardian, 10 November, https://www. theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/10/uber-loses-appeal-employment-rights-workers. De Groen, W.P. and I. Maselli (2016), “The Impact of the Collaborative Economy on the Labour Market,” report by Centre for European Policy Studies for EC DG-Grow. De Stefano, S. (2016), “The Rise of the Just-in-Time Workforce: On-Demand Work, Crowdwork and Labour Protection in the Gig Economy,” ILO Conditions of Work and Employment series no. 71. EC (2016a), “A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy,” Commission Staff Working Document, Supporting Analysis, SWD 356, Brussels. EC (2016b), “A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy,” Communication EC COM (2016)184, Brussels. EC (2017a), “Notices from European Union Institutions, Bodies, Offices and Agencies, Interpretative Communication on Directive 2003/88/EC Concerning Certain Aspects of the Organisation of Working Time,” C(2017) 165/01, Brussels. EC (2017b), “Establishing a European Pillar of Social Rights,” Staff Working Document 201 Final, Brussels. EC (2017c), “President Juncker at the Social Summit for Fair Jobs and Growth,” https://ec.europa.eu/commission/ news/president-juncker-social-summit-fair-jobs-and-growth-2017-nov-17_en. EC (2017d), “Proposal for a Directive on transparent and predictable working conditions in the European Union,” COM(2017) 797 final, Brussels. ECJ (2017a), “Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber) in Case C‑434/15,” December 20, Luxembourg. ECJ (2017b), “Advocate General’s Opinion in Case C-434/15,” Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi v Uber Systems Spain, SL, May 11, Luxembourg.

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252  Handbook of the sharing economy Employment Appeal Tribunal (2017), “At the Tribunal on 27 & 28 September 2017, Judgment Handed Down on 10 November 2017.” Employment Rights Act (1996), Section 230(3)(b), Legislation.gov.uk. EP (2016), “Draft Opinion on the European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy, 0000/2016(INI),” Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Affairs, December 8, Brussels. EP (2018), “The Impact of New Technologies on the Labour Market and the Social Economy,” Briefing by STOA, Policy Options, Brussels. Eurofound (2017), “In-Work Poverty in the EU,” research report. European Collaborative Economy Forum (2016), “Industry Views Survey 2016.” Fabo, F., J. Karanovic, and K. Dukova (2017), “In Search of an Adequate European Policy Response to the Platform Economy,” ETUI Transfer, 23 (2), 163–75. Forde, C., M. Stuart, S. Joyce, et al. (2017a), “The Social Protection of Workers in the Platform Economy,” study for the European Parliament. Forde, C., M. Stuart, S. Joyce, et al. (2017b), “Annex” to “The Social Protection of Workers in the Platform Economy,” study for the EP. German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (2017), Re-Imagining Work. White Paper Work 4.0 (Arbeiten 4.0), Berlin. GMB (2016), “GMB Wins Monumental Victory in Employment Case against Uber,” http://www.gmb.org.uk/ newsroom/GMB-wins-uber-case. Henderson, L.J. and Elton Mayo (1936/2002), “The Effects of Social Environment”, in Central Currents in Organisation Studies 1: Frameworks and Applications, Vol. 2, ed. S.R. Clegg, London: SAGE, 299‒333; first published in Journal of Hygiene and Technology (1936) 18, 401‒16. Hill, S. (2015), “New Economy, New Social Contract: A Plan for a Safety Net in a Multiemployer World,” New America Foundation. Jürgens, K., R. Hoffmann, and C. Schildmann (2017), “Let’s Transform Work! Recommendations and Proposals from the Commission on the Work of the Future,” trans. from German by A. Wilson, Hans Böckler Stiftung. Landier, A., D. Szomoru, and D. Thesmar (2016), “Working in the On Demand Economy: An Analysis of Uber Driver Partners in France,” MIT Sloan Working Papers. Mardiste, D. (2016), “Embracing Uber, Estonia Shows Tax Needn’t be an Issue,” Reuters Technology News, June 9, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-estonia-uber/embracing-uber-estonia-shows-tax-neednt-be-an-issue-idUSK​ CN0YV1PS. Mejia, R. (2015), “A Pressure Chamber of Innovation: Google Fiber and Flexible Capital,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12 (3), 289‒308. Miller, S.R. (2016), “First Principles for Regulating the Sharing Economy,” Harvard Journal on Legislation, 53, 149‒202. Niemietz, K. and D. Zuluaga (2016), “Hire Authority: Turning Statutory Regulation into Private Regulation for the UK’s Taxi Industry,” IEA Discussion Paper No. 76. OECD (2016), “New Forms of Work in the Digital Economy, Working Party on Measurement and Analysis of the Digital Economy,” DSTI/ICCP/IIS(2015)13/FINAL, http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdispl aydocumentpdf/?cote=DSTI/ICCP/IIS(2015)13/FINAL&docLanguage=En. Osborne, H. (2016), “Deliveroo Workers’ Contracts Ban Access to Employment Tribunals,” Guardian, July 25, https : / / www . theguardian . com / law / 2016 / jul / 25 / deliveroo - workers - contracts - ban - access - to - employment - tri bunals. Pitas, C. and M. Holden (2017), “Uber says UK National Insurance Contributions would Cost Millions,” Independent, October 10, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-drivers-national-insuranceuk-cost-millions-london-ban-minimum-wage-holiday-pay-taxi-app-a7992496.html. Rasnača, Z. (2017), “Bridging the Gaps or Falling Short? The European Pillar of Social Rights and What It Can Bring to EU-Level Policymaking,” Working Paper 2017.05, ETUI, Brussels. Raval, N. and P. Dourish (2016), “Standing Out from the Crowd: Emotional Labor, Body Labor, and Temporal Labor in Ridesharing,” Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, February 27 to March 2, San Francisco, CA. Rose, M. (2017), “France’s Gig Economy Creates Hopes and Tensions as Election Looms,” Reuters, April 11, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-gigeconomy-analysis/frances-gig-economy-creates-hopeand-ten​sion-as-election-looms-idUSKBN17D0IU. Rosenblat, A. and L. Stark (2015), “Uber’s Drivers: Information Asymmetries and Control in Dynamic Work,” Draft Workshop Paper prepared for the Winter School “Labour in the On-Demand Economy,” Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, November 1‒17. Scharpf, F.W. (2010), “The Asymmetry of European Integration, or Why the EU Cannot be a ‘Social Market Economy’,” Socio-Economic Review, 8, 211–50.

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Schmidt, F.A. (2017), “Digital Labour Markets in the Platform Economy,” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, https:// library.fes.de/pdf-files/wiso/13164.pdf. Sénat (2015), “Commission des Finances, L’Economie Collaborative: Propositions pour une Fiscalité Simple, Juste et Efficace” (Finance Commission, The Collaborative Economy: Proposals for a Simple, Just and Effective Tax System), report for French Government. Slee, T. (2015), What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, New York, USA and London, UK: OR Books. Taylor, M. (2017), “Good Work, the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices,” report commissioned by UK Government. Uber (2016), “New Data Reveals Uber’s Economic Impact in France,” https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/ new-data-reveals-ubers-economic-impact-in-france-47debf888ef6. Uber (2018), “White Paper on Work and Social Protection in Europe,” 3-35, https://ubernewsroomapi.10upcdn. com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Uber-White-Paper-on-Work-and-Social-Protections-in-Europe.pdf. UPHD (2016), “Who Breaks a Butterfly upon the Wheel,” Report and survey by Networked Rights and UPHD. Wilson, R. (2016), “Universal Income: A Disarmingly Simple Idea—And Fad,” in Basic Income and the Left, ed. P. Van Parijs, London: Social Europe Edition.

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20.  Creating value to mitigate disaster harm: how the sharing economy can support consumers and policy makers Lucie K. Ozanne

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INTRODUCTION Something happened in the neighborhoods around Houston, Texas during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Neighbors reached out to neighbors to assist each other. That was not unusual. What was unusual was that during the hurricane some residents used the neighborhood sharing platform Nextdoor.com to seek rescue. Prior to the storm, the company integrated several public service agencies into the system, allowing them to post critical information on the site and to create a dialogue between citizens and the emergency service providers during the disaster (CNBC 2017). Some cities are also experimenting with the potential for sharing platforms to help build community resilience (Brown 2014). These initiatives may become increasingly important. As the world heats up, disasters are becoming more common worldwide. For instance, researchers predict an increase in the frequency of very intense hurricanes (for example, Category 4 and 5) (Knutson et al. 2015), like Hurricane Harvey. As well as an increase in the frequency of disasters, their effects are mounting: 65 of the most costly disasters occurred in the 1990s (Eshgihi and Larson 2008). Hurricane Harvey is likely to set new records for economic, material, social, and ecological devastation (EESI 2017). However, at a time when disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity, research examining disaster service provision and delivery is lacking. Along with disasters, we know that sharing or collaborative forms of consumption are on the rise: including toy libraries, tool sharing, peer-to-peer accommodation and transport, crowdfunding, workspace sharing, local exchange trading systems, and social media sharing sites. These peer-to-peer networks allow participants to give and receive goods, services, support, and information. These initiatives use technology and social media to connect the combined efforts of many (Brown 2014). But how can sharing platforms help public policy makers create value for consumers before, during and after a disaster? This chapter will draw from the disaster, the sharing economy and the service value creation literature to outline a range of support that can be enabled by the sharing economy to assist consumers and public policy makers during a disaster cycle. Specifically, this chapter reveals how sharing platforms can be integrated into the four phases of the disaster cycle to enable the creation of value by consumers and by the government agencies and first-response organizations who seek to protect them.

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Creating value to mitigate disaster harm  255

LITERATURE REVIEW

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The Sharing Economy In the past decade there has been tremendous growth in organizations that facilitate different forms of sharing or collaborative consumption, including both commercial and non-commercial organizations. These practices are facilitated both online and offline, among geographically dispersed consumers as well as residents living in close proximity to each other. However, coming up with a precise definition of sharing or collaborative forms of consumption is difficult (Schor 2014). This chapter will adopt the definition of collaborative consumption activities put forward by Hamari et al. (2015). Their definition suggests peer-to-peer-based activity coordinated through community-based online services which can include monetary and non-monetary transactions that provide access or ownership to goods and services. Their definition would include such activities as sharing, swapping, gifting, renting, and monetary exchange. A number of characteristics differentiate the provision of goods and services through sharing platforms that may be advantageous in a disaster context. First, as these platforms facilitate peer-to-peer exchange, they can enable the development of social networks. As Schor and Fitzmaurice (2015) argue, one of the central characteristics of sharing practices are their ability to strengthen social ties. For instance, Freecycle emphasizes the creation of a community where members both give and receive goods, and over time may develop social bonds (Nelson et al. 2007). Social networks have been shown to be critical in disaster response and recovery (Baker 2009; Riad et al. 1999). In addition, many sharing platforms facilitate the exchange of underutilized assets (Oskam and Boswijk 2016) or skills (Ozanne and Ozanne 2016), often in neighborhood settings (for example, Nextdoor, Neighborgoods, toy libraries). Again, this can foster social linkages and help to build social networks. For example, toy libraries are located in local neighborhoods and provide an opportunity for both parents and children to socialize and form informal networks (Ozanne and Ozanne 2011) during a difficult transitional time period (Pettigrew et al. 2014). Sharing platforms also rely heavily on digital technology to facilitate exchange, which may expedite transactions and information sharing (Oskam and Boswijk 2016; Schor and Fitzmaurice 2015). The ability to facilitate social networks, access a diverse range of resources and skills in a local community, and expedite transactions through technology, may be particularly helpful in a disaster situation. Disasters Disasters are a relatively recent focus of marketing scholarship (Baker and Baker 2016; Baker et al. 2007; Guion et al. 2007; Martin et al. 2016; Ozanne and Ozanne 2016). Disasters have become increasingly important to consumer researchers and policy makers because they amplify individual and community vulnerabilities (Baker 2009; Baker and Hill 2013). Disasters are defined as natural or man-made events that negatively affect life, property, livelihood, or business, often resulting in permanent changes to societies and environments (Quarantelli 1998). Baker and Hill (2013) view disasters more broadly as socially constructed experiences that occur at the intersection of natural hazard events and social processes of recovery. Disasters can be sudden, such as the 2018 flash floods

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256  Handbook of the sharing economy in Texas, or they can be gradual, such as global warming and rising sea levels (Sapir and Mission 1992). The focus in this chapter is on sudden-onset disasters, or what Phipps et al. (2016) call high-velocity disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, oil spills, wildfires, and earthquakes. The speed of these events makes managing information and the coordination of aid difficult (Yates and Paquette 2011). These events can quickly overwhelm the coping capacities of households, communities, and governments to meet the many needs that emerge during the crisis. Thus these types of unexpected events call for broad resilience strategies (Allenby and Fink 2005). Within the disaster literature, a great deal of attention is focused on community resiliency: or the ability of a community to bounce back following a disaster (Baker 2009; Longstaff 2005). Norris et al. (2008, 130) define community resilience as “a process linking a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance.” They argue that these adaptive capacities are resources with dynamic attributes which mean that they are available and accessible for buffering or counteracting stress. Borrowing from the material sciences, they stress the adaptive nature of resources that are provided through three characteristics. A robust resource works under a wide range of circumstances or counteracts a wide variety of dangers; it is fragile if it works only under a small number of possible scenarios. Redundancy is the extent to which the resource is substitutable in the event of disruption or degradation. Resource diversity is a condition related to redundancy. Communities that are dependent on a narrow range of resources are less able to cope with change that involves the depletion of those resources. Finally, rapidity reflects how quickly the resource can be accessed and used. Manyena (2006) suggests that human resilience is the processes of enhancing human capacity to recover from a disaster within the shortest possible time with minimal outside assistance. I argue that sharing platforms may help to increase the resilience of communities, as they can enhance capacity and provide access to a diversity of resources that can be accessed more quickly as they are mediated by technology, or link residents to resources that reside in the community. Mileti (1999) provides a four-phase model of emergency management—mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery—that provides an organizing framework for understanding disasters. This framework depicts the various dynamics of disaster events. Guion et al. (2007) lay out the key roles and participants involved in each phase of disaster management. Martin et al. (2016) expand this approach by suggesting a more dynamic framework that provides for continuous feedback loops in the cycle. Some question whether it is the responsibility of individual consumers to prepare for natural disasters (Giesler and Veresiu 2014). Others argue for a collective response, by a diverse range of stakeholders, to diminish the impact of hazardous events on individuals and communities (Martin et al. 2016). In this chapter the four-phase model is utilized to identify the unique consumer needs during each disaster phase, the potential role of sharing platforms, and how value can be created through interactions between consumers, the sharing platform, and public policy agencies as they integrate key disaster resources (Vargo and Lusch 2006). Value Creation The co-creation of value has garnered considerable attention in recent years in service research, but also some confusion (Grönroos and Voima 2013). Grönroos and Voima

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Creating value to mitigate disaster harm  257 (2013) attempt to bring greater clarity to the concept of value creation by defining the roles of the customer and the firm, as well as the scope, locus, and nature of value and value creation. They define value as value-in-use, which is created by the user during usage of resources and processes. They argue that the customer is the key value creator, and the firm provides potential value as a facilitator of value for the customer. Further, they suggest if the firm can engage with its customers’ value-creating processes during interactions, it has the opportunity to co-create value with them. The customer’s value creation process is also influenced by a wider customer network (Voima et al. 2011). “Services are increasingly designed, produced and consumed in networked constellations involving actors other than just buyers and sellers” (Ostrom et al. 2015, 135). There are increasing calls for research to include the network perspective in the study of services (Tax et al. 2013). For instance, there is growing acceptance of the need to move away from a dyadic firm‒customer perspective to a broader view that potentially includes multiple actors (Mars et al. 2012), which may include other firms or customers (Tax et al. 2013). Lusch (2011) argues for the importance of the network concept that he refers to as a service ecosystem. The service ecosystem is comprised of primarily weak ties which enable seemingly unrelated organizational networks to form a larger macrostructure that can be more fluid, agile, and adaptable (Lusch et al. 2010). These characteristics may make service ecosystems or networks more effective in turbulent environments and, potentially, disaster situations. For instance, research finds that networks in which disaster social services agencies have numerous weak links to each other have a stronger basis for network coordination. Coordination and information flows among disaster response organizations are critical for an effective response and timely provision of services, especially to provide service to vulnerable populations (Zakour and Harrell 2008). Thus, sharing platforms that foster networks of consumers, first responders, and others may facilitate value creation in disaster settings. I now turn to examining and providing examples of how sharing platforms can be facilitators of potential value and assist public policy makers during the four phases of a disaster to support consumers.

FACILITATING VALUE FOR CONSUMERS IN DISASTERS Mitigation Phase During the mitigation phase, the primary focus of emergency management is on preventive measures that can minimize harm from future events. This involves investment in infrastructure and other capacity-building activities that can build future resilience. As Guion et al. (2007) explain, these are long-range activities, initiated well in advance of a specific disaster or in response to a known risk. Citizens tend to be passive during the mitigation phase (Martin et al. 2016). Consumers may be unaware of the need to invest time and resources in preparedness and capacity building. I refer to consumer needs during this phase as latent (see Table 20.1). Thus policy makers play a critical role during this phase. Research finds that social networks are critical to building community resilience to unexpected shocks (Dynes 2005; Chamlee-Wright and Storr 2011). Thus, this phase is a key time for policy makers to focus on helping communities build social networks, as resiliency needs to be built before disaster strikes.

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258

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Fostering vertical and  horizontal linkages to government and other organizations

Key challenge

Valueenabling activity

Facilitate links between  community members Develop community  capacities Map community assets and  vulnerabilities Establishes the  infrastructure and enables the network

Latent Consumers unaware of  needs related to disaster preparedness Creating links to neighbors,  social and government organizations

Role of sharing platform

Examples of consumer needs

Type of consumer need

Mitigation

Bridges structural holes to  other organizations to gain access to diverse resources and information Reliance on technology,  which may not reach all geographic areas or consumer groups

Immediate needs for shelter, food  and water, emotional support, evacuation, clean-up and critical repairs, first aid

Family evacuation and  contact plans, preparedness kit including water, first aid and food, home preparations Dissemination of  warnings, information, and preparation instructions

Need for flexible bureaucracy to  enable sharing platforms to innovate Need for sharing platforms to gain  legitimacy and access Coordination of multiple actors Information technology may be  susceptible to failure during a disaster (e.g., loss of electricity)

Activates or enables horizontal  and vertical linkages in the network

Link members to those who can  provide critical resources and aid, incorporate spontaneous volunteers

Emergent Consumers are faced with needs   that emerge from the disaster

Response

Disaster phase Identified Consumers prepare for a  disaster threat

Preparedness

Table 20.1  Disaster phase and role of sharing platforms

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Provides coordination  among outside groups and network members to provide ongoing aid and service Need for sharing platforms to  gain legitimacy and access

Enduring Consumers are faced with  ongoing needs from the disaster Ongoing needs for food  and water, housing, repair of homes, physical and psychological care, replacement of possessions Guide individual and  collective behavior to assist the affected community

Recovery

Creating value to mitigate disaster harm  259 As discussed previously, sharing platforms can be an effective tool to foster social networks and hence enable consumers to access potential value in the network. For instance, Ozanne and Ozanne (2016) show how a timebank created a rich social network composed of diverse ties through which a variety of resources flowed. The timebank linked residents of the community but also, importantly, linked horizontally to various organizations in the community (for example, schools, medical center), and vertically to first-response organizations (that is, police) and the local government. In addition, through regular trading which enabled value creation, the timebank built a variety of capacities that fostered resilience and enabled the community to respond effectively to a series of earthquakes. The authors argue that the capacities built through trading in the timebank (that is, communication, cultural, social, and community competency) were redundant, robust, and could be quickly deployed in the emergency. They also argue that the timebank enabled the community to map potential vulnerabilities, as many of the organizational members supported vulnerable groups and many trades focused on those who needed support (that is, children and the elderly). In addition, as members offered their tradeable skills in the timebank network, community assets were identified. Along with timebanks, other types of sharing platforms may be able to facilitate social networks and foster community capacity building, and should be facilitated by policy makers during the mitigation phase. For instance, Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) that facilitate trading physical products, or community currency systems such as Ithaca Dollars, may assist in the development of community resilience through the building of social networks and help to mitigate harm from future events.

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Preparedness Phase During the preparedness phase, emphasis focuses on reducing the negative consequences of a disaster and communicating the necessary actions citizens should take to get prepared. Policy makers focus on disseminating messages aimed at encouraging people to make choices about protective behaviors (Guion et al. 2007). Citizens may identify the need to prepare an evacuation plan or locate shelter, update emergency supplies, or prepare their home (for example, put up storm shutters). During this stage, information is an important shared asset and people rely on trusted sources (Longstaff 2005). However, given the high-velocity nature of these events it may be difficult for citizens to quickly find all needed information. Sharing platforms can be the link to key information to guide individuals through the preparation process (Martin et al. 2016). The sharing platform may facilitate value creation by bridging structural holes and linking members to institutions with key resources (Burt 2001). For instance, prior to Cyclone Yasi, which occurred in Queensland, Australia in 2011, a Facebook Update page was quickly launched, the Cyclone Yasi Update. The page created an information hub that brought together official information, from many sources, but also enabled two-way communication with people in the affected areas. “In doing so, they were able to provide a single initial trusted point of contact for people who needed to prioritise their activities to protect themselves, rather than spend time searching for information” (Taylor et al. 2012, 22). This communication network is likely a robust resource that could be used in future cyclones or other crisis situations (for example, wildfires). However, because sharing platforms rely heavily on technology, internet or

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260  Handbook of the sharing economy mobile communication, this also creates challenges as some geographic areas or segments of the population may not have adequate access to these communication services (Huang et al. 2010). Policy makers may also choose to work with sharing platforms such as Nextdoor. com or Neighborgoods.com to disseminate emergency preparedness information prior to a disaster. The sites’ messaging and blogging tools make it easy for residents to find a babysitter. But they can also be utilized to facilitate value when emergency planners want to notify residents at short notice of an impending crisis, and communicate how to get prepared. In this phase, sharing platforms provide the rapidity that enables information to be quickly accessed and utilized allowing citizens to get prepared.

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Response Phase During the response phase, emergency management focuses on immediate, local efforts to provide short-term disaster relief, to facilitate the rescue of victims, and to provide shelter (Guion et al. 2007). Citizen needs often include rescue, evacuation, shelter, food, water, emotional support, and immediate clean-up. As an example, in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes of 2011, many homeowners needed their damaged chimneys to be dismantled before an impeding storm. However, new unanticipated needs often emerge that require creativity and innovate solutions. As Kendra and Wachtendorf (2006) explain, improvisation is often necessary because the ambiguous and dynamic conditions of a disaster often mean that not every need has been anticipated or accounted for. Thus, needs during the response phase are referred to as emergent. During the response phase, affected community members are often dependent on the immediate aid of family, friends, neighbors, and local community groups to provide services (Kendra and Wachtendorf 2006; Palen and Liu 2007). Residents often leverage their own social networks to find and provide information and resources outside the official response effort (Mileti et al. 2006). Given their network structure, sharing platforms may be able to quickly innovate to create or mobilize their network to respond to these emergent needs and enable consumers to access value. For example, during Hurricane Sandy in the United States (US), in 2012, Airbnb innovated a new system to mobilize their network of hosts to offer their homes after hosts spontaneously offered accommodation to disaster victims. In the same event, Waze, a crowdsourcing mapping tool, opened up access to the feedback users were providing about which gas stations were open for people looking to refuel (Brown 2014). In another example, Hurricane Harvey victims utilized the Nextdoor.com network to request rescue from their neighbors who were also members of the sharing platform (Homsey and Aldrich 2017). In the 2016 floods in Louisiana, residents who needed rescue contacted a Facebook group, the Cajun Navy: members then used their own private boats, smartphone apps, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) app Glympse and the walkie-talkie app Zello, to coordinate rescue of people, pets, and livestock (Boyd 2016). Veer et al. (2016) report how victims utilized social media and online websites in order to share their immediate experience of a disaster and mobilize emotional support from others in those networks. All of these examples illustrate how these sharing platforms are being utilized in a manner not originally intended, as improvisation occurs to meet emergent needs.

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Creating value to mitigate disaster harm  261 However, research suggests that many emergency managers subscribe to the commandand-control model of disaster management (Drabek and McEntire 2003), and a belief that ad hoc emergent behavior is counterproductive (Neal and Phillips 1995). During New Zealand’s largest maritime disaster, the grounding of the Rena and subsequent oil spill in October 2011, youth utilized Facebook and other social media to link spontaneous volunteers for clean-up efforts outside the official efforts. Social media also facilitated connectivity to local businesses to facilitate a relief program and deliver food to both official and unofficial responders (for example, Rena Kai Run). They organized in this manner because of an inability to meet the structured demands of the official volunteer process, and a perception that official responders were failing to meet community needs (Lockwood 2016). Thus, mechanisms are needed by policy makers to recognize the legitimacy of multiple actors, such as those organized by sharing platforms, and to harness their skills and expertise and value-enabling potential. Coordination of multiple actors is a critical aspect of ensuring that needs are met as quickly and effectively as possible during this phase (Guion et al. 2007). For instance, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has developed a new system that allows disaster victims to secure housing through Aibnb, which was previously not possible (Brown 2014). And FEMA has standardized hashtags (for example, #PowerLineDown) to enable citizens to report important emergency information.

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Recovery Phase During the recovery stage, the focus is now on long-term adaptation to community devastation or change (Baker 2009). Public organizations take on the task of restoring social systems and rebuilding physical environments (Guion et al. 2007). Citizens are faced with ongoing or enduring needs from the disaster situation. These may include long-term housing, health or psychological care, replacement of possessions, and housing repairs, among others. Sharing platforms may enable policy makers to tap volunteers, resources, and information that can create value for residents during the recovery phase. In Christchurch, students utilized Facebook, Twitter, and GoogleMaps to create a network of 24 000 of their classmates and other volunteers, the Student Volunteer Army (SVA), to assist residents after the earthquakes (Hayward 2013). As Johnson (2012) explains, the main advantages of social media were its speed and broad reach. The SVA helped to clear 260 000 tons of silt, deliver 21 000 chemical toilets, and distribute more than 500 000 information leaflets, as well as laying sandbags and engaging in numerous other community projects (Lewis 2016). The SVA sought to fill a gap by helping residents in low-risk areas. But the New Zealand Army sought to bar them for risk concerns, and then bureaucratic procedures of logging in were so cumbersome as to obliterate the time available for volunteering. The SVA had to innovate a swipe card procedure to get around this bureaucracy and participate (Johnson 2012). In another example, the American Red Cross coordinated a network of more than 1700 online volunteers to crowdsource 4.5 million edits, or roughly three to four years of mapping data, to map the damage caused by Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines in 2013 (American Red Cross n.d.). The result was a map of the region and a database of building damage contributed by volunteers eager to provide operationally useful data.

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262  Handbook of the sharing economy SeeClickFix has devised a similar system to help generate actionable data regarding the condition of infrastructure after a disaster (Brown 2014). To help flood victims in South Louisiana, a sharing platform, LAFloodBud.org, was created to connect people who need supplies with those who want to donate them. This was achieved through a series of Facebook groups that specialize in particular supplies, such as school supplies for children, food for pets, and even physical labor for repairs (RStreet 2016). TaskRabbit has announced that it will provide an online portal so that relief organizations can access a network of more than 20 000 vetted workers, and Appallicious has launched a similar portal to provide access to skills and equipment post-disaster (Brown 2014). Ozanne and Ozanne (2016) suggest that, as relief organizations exit the community, a timebank can be a mechanism for residents to continue to access support as they trade with their neighbors. All of these examples illustrate how affected residents are able to access potential value through the skills, labor, or resources from a diversity of network members, meaning that there is redundancy provided by the sharing network, which is important in the recovery phase.

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CONCLUSIONS Disasters are on the rise. Emergency managers and policy makers will increasingly need to support residents to access support and services during the disaster cycle. They will need to help communities to build resilience, prepare for the disaster, survive the event, and rebuild the community. Sharing platforms provide an innovative approach to enable residents to access various types of value and thus should be encouraged by policy makers. As the examples in this chapter illustrate, these platforms can enable residents to connect to food, water, labor and skills, housing, transport, and information. As Martin et al. (2016) argue, these networks have a very important role in strengthening and expanding the resiliency of communities by enhancing the ways in which interactions take place and value is created. However, policy makers need to work with sharing platforms before disaster strikes (Brown 2014), and challenges will need to be overcome. The very nature of sharing platforms—low governance, flexibility, and reliance on technology—which makes them very appealing for peer-to-peer interactions, also presents challenges to policy makers in trying to integrate such platforms into disaster mitigation and response: Sustaining effective collaborative governance in the sharing economy is particularly challenging because the practice of sharing is by nature a distributed and comparatively open system that not only involves numerous stakeholders, especially “the crowd”, but also generates collaborative dynamics that may constantly challenge or reconfigure socio-economic relationships in a society. (Ma et al. 2018, 357)

Governance, in the disaster field, looks at how decision-making unfolds when a multitude of stakeholders or actors is involved, requiring coordination and possibly reconciliation between a profusion of roles, perspectives, goals, and activities (Ammann 2006). Ma et al. (2018) suggest a collaborative governance framework that involves principled engagement, shared motivation, and joint actions in the sharing economy that can be put in place to deal with the sharing economy stressors proactively rather than reactively.

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Creating value to mitigate disaster harm  263 The examples provided in this chapter illustrate the unique characteristics provided by sharing platforms that make them useful in enabling value creation in disaster settings. Because of the use of technology, especially social media, the platforms have the potential to enable a real-time delivery system for emergency alerts, crowdsourced information and crisis maps, and evacuation. In essence, these systems provide speed and rapidity, as stressed by Norris et al. (2008). These systems may also be useful across various types of events, making them robust. Sharing platforms may also link citizens to a diversity of value-creating resources making the systems redundant. In addition, sharing platforms foster social networks which are critical to disaster response and recovery. Citizens have always reached out to their neighbors when faced with crisis. However, when they practice sharing skills and resources prior to an event, they build the social links and the capacities necessary for survival and recovery.

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REFERENCES Allenby, Brad and Fink, Jonathan H. (2005), “Toward Inherently Secure and Resilient Societies,” Science, 309, 1034–6. American Red Cross (n.d.), “OpenStreetMap Damage Assessment Review: Typhoon Haiyan Interim Report,” http://americanredcross.github.io/OSM-Assessment/. Ammann, Walter J. (2006), “Risk Concept, Integral Risk Management and Risk Governance,” in Risk 21: Coping with Risks Due to Natural Hazards in the 21st Century, ed. Walter J. Ammann, Stephanie Dannenmann, and Laurent Vulliet, London: Taylor & Francis, 3‒23. Baker, Stacey Menzel (2009), “Vulnerability and Resilience in Natural Disasters: A Marketing and Public Policy Perspective,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 28 (Spring), 114‒23. Baker, Stacey Menzel and Courtney Baker (2016), “The Bounce in Our Steps from Shared Material Resources in Cultural Trauma,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 314‒35. Baker, Stacey Menzel and Ronald Paul Hill (2013), “A Community Psychology of Object Meaning,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 23 (3), 275‒87. Baker, Stacey, David M. Hunt, and Terri L. Rittenberg (2007), “Consumer Vulnerability as a Shared Experience: Tornado Recovery Process in Wright, Wyoming,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 26 (1), 6‒19. Boyd, Kevin (2016), “In Louisiana, Private Disaster Relief Outperforms the Government,” https://fee.org/ar​ ticles/in-louisiana-private-disaster-relief-outperforms-the-government/. Brown, Justine (2014), “How the Sharing Economy is Strengthening Emergency Response and Recovery,” http:// www.govtech.com/public-safety/How-the-Sharing-Economy-is-Strengthening-Emergency-Response-and-Re​ covery.html# (accessed 23 May). Burt, Ronald S. (2001), “Structural Holes versus Network Closure as Social Capital,” in Social Capital: Theory and Research, ed. Nan Lin, Karen Cook, and Ronald S. Burt, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 31‒56. Chamlee-Wright, Emily and Virgil Storr (2011), “Social Capital as Collective Narratives and Post-Disaster Community Recovery,” Sociological Review, 59 (2), 266–82. CNBC (2017), “Hurricane Harvey Victims Turn to Social Media,” https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/08/29/ hurricane-harvey-victims-turn-to-social-media.html. Drabek, Thomas E. and David A. McEntire (2003), “Emergent Phenomena and the Sociology of Disaster: Lessons, Trends and Opportunities from the Research Literature,” Disaster Prevention and Management, 12 (2), 97‒112. Dynes, R. (2005), “Community Social Capital as the Primary Basis of Resilience,” Preliminary Paper #344, Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Disaster Research Center. Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) (2017), “After the Storm: Texas Begins to Assess Environmental Impacts of Hurricane Harvey,” http://www.eesi.org/articles/view/after-the-storm-houston-begins-to-assess-en​ vironmental-impacts-of-hurricane. Eshgihi, Kourosh and Richard C. Larson (2008), “Disasters: Lessons from the Past 150 Years,” Disaster Prevention and Management, 17 (1), 62‒82. Giesler, Markus and Ela Veresiu (2014), “Creating the Responsible Consumer: Moralistic Governance Regimes and Consumer Subjectivity,” Journal of Consumer Research, 41 (3), 840–57.

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264  Handbook of the sharing economy Grönroos, Christian and Paivi Voima (2013), “Critical Service Logic: Making Sense of Value Creation and Co-Creation,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41 (2), 133–50. Guion, Deirdre T., Debra L. Scammon, and Aberdeen Leila Borders (2007), “Weathering the Storm: A Social Marketing Perspective on Disaster Preparedness and Response with Lessons from Hurricane Katrina,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 26 (1), 20‒32. Hamari, Juho, Mimmi Sjöklint, and Anti Ukkonen (2015), “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (9), 2047‒59. Hayward, Bronwyn. M. (2013), “Rethinking Resilence: Reflections on the Earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, 2010 and 2011,” Ecology and Society, 18 (4), 37. Homsey, Daniel and Daniel Aldrich (2017), “Neighborfest: Building a Stronger, More Connected World from the Block Up,” https://medium.com/nextdooragencyresources/neighborfest-fc6fcd90f6b8. Huang, Cheng-Min, Edward Chang, and Adnan Hyder (2010), “Web 2.0 and Internet Social Networking: A New Tool for Disaster Management?” BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 10 (1), 57. Johnson, Sam (2012), “Students vs. The Machine: Lessons Learned in the Student Community Following the Christchurch Earthquakes,” in Community Resilience: Case Studies from the Canterbury Earthquakes, ed. Vince Cholewa and Ljubica Mamula-Seadon, Wellington: Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, 18‒22. Kendra, James and Tricia Wachtendorf (2006), Improvisation, Creativity and the Art of Emergency Management, Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Disaster Research Center. Knutson, Thomas R., Joseph J. Sirutis, and Ming Zhao (2015), “Global Projections of Intense Tropical Cyclone Activity for the Late Twenty-First Century from Dynamical Downscaling of CMIP5/RCP4.5 Scenarios,” Journal of Climate, 28, 7203–24. Lewis, Kate (2016), “Identity Capital: An Exploration in the Context of Youth Social Entrepreneurship,” Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 28 (3–4), 191‒205. Lockwood, Sarah (2016), “Are Self Organised Youth Volunteers the Key to Effective Crisis Response?” Proceedings of the People in Disasters Conference 2016, February 24‒26, Christchurch, New Zealand, 18. Longstaff, Patricia H. (2005), “Security, Resilience, and Communication in Unpredictable Environments such as Terrorism, Natural Disasters, and Complex Technology,” Program on Information Resources Policy, Cambridge, MA. Lusch, Robert F. (2011), “Reframing Supply Chain Management: A Service-Dominant Logic Perspective,” Journal of Supply Chain Management, 47, (1), 14‒18. Lusch, Robert F., Stephen L. Vargo, and M. Tanniru (2010), “Service, Value Networks and Learning,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 38 (February), 19‒31. Ma, Yuge, Jing Lan, Thomas Thornton, et al. (2018), “Challenges of Collaborative Governance in the Sharing Economy: The Case of Free-Floating Bike Sharing in Shanghai,” Journal of Cleaner Production, 197 (1), 356‒65. Manyena, Siambabala B. (2006), “The Concept of Resilience Revisited,” Disasters, 30 (4), 433−50. Mars, Matthew M., Judith L. Bronstein, and Robert F. Lusch (2012), “The Value of a Metaphor: Organizations and Ecosystems,” Organizational Dynamics, 41 (4), 271‒80. Martin, Ingrid M., Wade E. Martin, Stacey Menzel Baker, et al. (2016), “Disasters and Social Marketing,” Persuasion and Social Marketing, 3, 77‒116. Mileti, Dennis S. (1999), Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States, Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press. Mileti, Dennis, Rachel Bandy, Linda Bourque, et al. (2006), “Annotated Bibliography for Public Risk Communication on Warnings for Public Protective Actions Response and Public Education,” http://www. colorado.edu/hazards/publications/informer/infrmr2/pubhazbibann.pdf. Neal, David and Brenda Phillps (1995), “Effective Emergency Management: Reconsidering the Bureaucratic Approach,” Disasters, 19 (4), 327‒37. Nelson, Michelle R., Mark A. Rademacher, and Hye-Jin Pael (2007), “Downshifting Consumer = Upshifting Citizen? An Examination of a Local Freecycle Community,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611 (May), 141‒56. Norris, F.H., S.P. Stevens, B. Pfefferbaum, et al. (2008), “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness,” American Journal of Community Psychology, 41 (1‒2), 127‒50. Oskam, Jeroen and Albert Boswijk (2016), “Airbnb: The Future of Networked Hospitality Businesses,” Journal of Tourism Futures, 2 (1), 22‒42. Ostrom, Amy, A. Parasuraman, David E. Bowen, et al. (2015), “Service Research Priorities in a Rapidly Changing Context,” Journal of Service Research, 18 (2), 127–59. Ozanne, Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2011), “A Child’s Right to Play: The Social Construction of Civic Virtues in Toy Libraries,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 30 (2), 264‒78.

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Creating value to mitigate disaster harm  265 Ozanne, Lucie K. and Julie L. Ozanne (2016), “How Alternative Consumer Markets can Build Community Resiliency,” European Journal of Marketing, 50 (3‒4), 330‒57. Palen, L. and S.B. Liu (2007), “Citizen Communication in Crisis: Anticipating a Future of ICT-Supported Public Participation,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2008), San Jose, CA, 727–36. Pettigrew, Simone, Laurel Anderson, Wendy Boland, et al. (2014), “The Experience of Risk in Families: Conceptualisations and Implications for Transformative Consumer Research,” Journal of Marketing Management, 30 (17‒18), 1772‒99. Phipps, Marcus, Julie L. Ozanne, Lucie K. Ozanne, and Wasana Jayawickrama (2016), “Dynamic Innovations to Mobilize Social Connectivity during High Velocity Disasters,” Marketing and Public Policy Conference, San Luis Obispo, June 23‒25. Quarantelli, E.L. (1998), Disaster Planning, Emergency Management, and Civil Protection, Newark, DE: University of Delaware Disaster Research Center. Riad, Jasmin K., Fran H. Norris, and R. Barry Ruback (1999), “Predicting Evacuation in Two Major Disasters: Risk Perceptions, Social Influence, and Access to Resources,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29 (5), 918–34. RStreet (2016), “How the Sharing Economy Can Help in Disaster Recovery,” https://www.rstreet.org/2016/09/05/ how-the-sharing-economy-can-help-in-disaster-recovery/. Sapir, Debarati and Claudine Mission (1992), “The Development of a Database on Disasters,” Disasters, 16 (1), 74‒80. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Great Transition Initiative, http://greattransition.org/ publication/debating-the-sharing-economy. Schor, Juliet and Connor Fitzmaurice (2015), “Collaborating and Connecting: The emergence of the sharing economy,” in Handbook on Research on Sustainable Consumption, ed. Lucia Reisch and John Thogersen, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 410‒25. Tax, Stephen S., David McCutcheon, and Ian F. Wilkinson (2013), “The Service Delivery Network (SDN): A Customer-Centric Perspective of the Customer Journey,” Journal of Service Research, 16 (4), 454–70. Taylor, Mel, Garret Wells, Gwyneth Howell, and Beverly Raphael (2012), “The Role of Social Media as Psychological First Aid as a Support to Community Resilience Building,” Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 27 (1), 20–26. Vargo, S.L. and R.F. Lusch (2006), “Service-Dominant Logic: What It Is, What It Is Not, What It Might Be,” in The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate and Directions, ed. R.F. Lusch and S.L. Vargo, Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 43‒56. Veer, Ekant, Lucie K. Ozanne, and C. Michael Hall (2016), “Sharing Cathartic Stories Online: The Internet as a Means of Expression following a Crisis Event,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 15, 314–24. Voima, Pavai, Kristina Heinonen, Tore Strandvik, et al. (2011), “A Customer Ecosystem Perspective on Service,” Proceedings of QUIS 12: Advances in Service Quality, Innovation and Excellence, 1015‒24. Yates, Dave and Scott Paquette (2011), “Emergency Knowledge Management and Social Media Technologies: A Case Study of the 2010 Haitian Earthquake,” Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology, 47 (1), 1‒9. Zakour, Michael J. and Evelyn B. Harrell (2008), “Access to Disaster Services,” Journal of Social Service Research, 30 (2), 27‒54.

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21.  How institutional work by sharing economy organizations and city governments shapes sustainability* 3

Oksana Mont, Yuliya Voytenko Palgan and Lucie Zvolska

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INTRODUCTION The sharing economy as a societal phenomenon is growing dramatically (PWC 2014), but academically, it is still a nascent field of study (Mair and Reischauer 2017). It is conceptualized as both “an umbrella construct and an essentially contested concept” (Acquier et al. 2017), but few authors engage in conceptual work on the sharing economy (Frenken and Schor 2017). Empirically, many studies focus on the vanguards of the sharing economy—Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit (Kuttner 2013; Guttentag 2015; Laurell and Sandström 2016)—and less attention is paid to small and mediumsized organizations, particularly those that are non-profit or community-based (Bradley 2015). The developmental trajectory of the sharing economy is under scrutiny (Ertz and Leblanc-Proulx 2018), but there are gaps in understanding why and how sharing economy organizations (SEOs) emerge, evolve and become institutionalized (Mair and Reischauer 2017), and how they, in turn, create new institutions and disrupt old ones (Zvolska et al. 2019). Studies have explored institutional logics and institutional complexity to increase understanding of the context in which SEOs operate (Grinevich et al. 2017), but there is scant research on SEOs as the agents of change and their institutional work. At the same time, there is growing focus on the agency of city governments influencing the institutional environments in which SEOs emerge and operate (McLaren and Agyeman 2015; Hult and Bradley 2017; Bernardi and Diamantini 2018). Cities face diversity of both positive and adverse impacts from the sharing economy (Bauwens and Kostakis 2014; Voytenko Palgan et al. 2017) and therefore need to strategically engage with it. In recent decades, cities have become the prominent actors that often promote sustainability (Harmaala 2015) and that may help the “sharing movement” achieve its stated goals (Schor 2016). To the best of our knowledge, no study has explored how sharing economy organizations and city governments engage in institutional work and what this means for shaping sustainability. Such a study would help to identify specific mechanisms of institutional work that SEOs and city governments employ, and discuss how city governments through their institutional work can help to leverage the sustainability potential of the sharing economy. *  The authors thank the Swedish Research Council Formas for financial support of two projects, “Urban Reconomy” and “Sharing and the City”; and the European Research Council for funding provided within the framework of the research program “Urban Sharing—Sustainability and Institutionalisation Pathways,” grant agreement No. 771872.

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How institutional work shapes sustainability  267 In this chapter, we explore how the institutionalization of the sharing economy takes place in cities by applying the framework of institutional work to SEOs (Zvolska et al. 2019) and city governments. Both large and small, for-profit and non-profit sharing organizations are included in this study. Our intention is to contribute to research on the sharing economy by retooling conceptualizations of institutional work, and to contribute to the institutional work literature by testing the institutional theory framework against rich empirical data from SEOs, third-party actors and cities. We define “sharing economy” as a consumption‒production mode in a city, in which value is generated through transactions between peer actors (both organizations and individuals) offering temporary access to idling or underutilized rivalry physical assets. SEOs consist of providers who own assets, users who obtain access to these assets, and a platform that offers a marketplace for exchanges between these providers and users (Benoit et al. 2017). Since we are interested in exploring SEOs in the city context, we treat cities as geographical arenas where sharing takes place, and city governments as agents that can purposefully engage with the sharing economy. In the next section, we present methods of data collection and analysis, and introduce a theoretical framework for the institutional work used in this study. We then analyze and exemplify mechanisms of institutional work employed by SEOs, and by city governments. We go on to discuss how the institutional work of SEOs and city governments may help to harness the sustainability potential of the sharing economy and outline future research directions.

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METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS This chapter offers a combination of conceptual insights from the neo-institutional theory, using empirical data from five cities: Berlin, London, Malmö, San Francisco and Seoul. We use empirical examples to demonstrate the nature of specific mechanisms of institutional work. The cities are chosen for their vibrant sharing landscapes with differing prominence of for-profit and non-profit sharing organizations. The city governments exhibit distinct ways of engagement with the sharing economy, from dominance in Seoul (Jung 2018) to marginal engagement in Berlin (Zvolska et al. 2018); from an aggressive approach to regulating some sectors, such as housing, in San Francisco, to a more collaborative approach undertaken by London; and from supporting non-profit sharing in Malmö to giving free rein to for-profit mobility sharing in San Francisco (Mont et al. 2018). The city governments also have different ambitions in terms of capitalizing on and shaping the sharing economy. For example, Malmö is part of a strategic governmentfunded program, Sharing Cities Sweden (Sharing Cities Sweden 2018), with an ambition to become a Sharing City. Seoul funds a Sharing City project, but, contrary to what has been presented in the literature (McLaren and Agyeman 2015), lacks support from SEOs and the public (Jung 2018). The city government of San Francisco has been portrayed as proactive (McLaren and Agyeman 2015), although our data show that it engages with the sharing economy when there are problems, rather than taking a more strategic approach to it. We conducted a literature analysis of institutional work and analyzed empirical data

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268  Handbook of the sharing economy collected in 2017 and 2018 using four mobile research labs1 (Mont et al. 2017), in Berlin, London, Malmö and San Francisco. In Seoul, pilot work was carried out (Jung 2018). The empirical data sources included case studies of SEOs, field observations and 80 in-depth interviews (23 in London, 24 in Berlin, 16 in Malmö and 17 in San Francisco). Interviews were held with representatives of SEOs, city governments, industry associations, experts, users and third-party organizations. Questions addressed urban contexts and design, sustainability aspects and institutionalization pathways of SEOs. Interviews were recorded and systematically analyzed by coding in line with the key categories of a framework for institutional work developed by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006). The framework follows Scott’s (1995) classification of institutions, where organizations engage in institutional creation by employing regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive measures. The framework was then adjusted to better reflect the nature of SEOs and realities of their urban contexts (Zvolska et al. 2019). The adjusted framework is used here as an organizing tool for discussing the institutional work of SEOs, exemplified with new empirical data from San Francisco and Seoul. We further use this framework to explore the agency of city governments and their institutional work through the framework devised by Zvolska et al. (2019). When analyzing our empirical data, we had to adjust the framework to better reflect the mechanisms of institutional work by city governments, which is novel.

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INSTITUTIONAL WORK OF SEOS Organizations, including SEOs, engage in regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive institutional work employing different mechanisms (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) (Figure 21.1). Regulatory work of SEOs includes mechanisms of litigation, lobbying and delimiting organizational fields. Litigation is often used by large, for-profit SEOs to create new ground rules or confront upcoming legislation. While many for-profit organizations have gained acceptance among the public, they struggle to gain recognition from city governments, as evidenced by new local regulations, which some SEOs vehemently oppose through litigation. In San Francisco, in response to restrictive regulations for short-term home rentals, the home sharing organizations Airbnb, VRBO and HomeAway filed a joint lawsuit against the city, which has since been dropped (Benner 2017). At the same time, it seems unlikely that litigation will grant SEOs long-lasting acceptance from city governments, so lobbying might be a more effective strategy. Many SEOs lobby alone (for example, Airbnb in London), but they also join industry associations, such as the Berlin-based association Bundesverband Car Sharing or the Sharing Economy UK (SEUK) in London, which use their collective bargaining power to represent the interests of their members at local and national level, helping SEOs to gain acceptance and support among policy makers and other actors. Delimiting organizational fields is a form of institutionalization, where SEOs set the boundaries and define membership in the organizational field—the sharing economy— 1   A mobile research lab is a method for data collection and analysis comprising a collaborative process of conducting in situ analysis of an urban phenomenon in its context by a research team.

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How institutional work shapes sustainability  269 REGULATORY WORK Litigation Lobbying Delimiting organizational fields

Institutional work by SEOs

NORMATIVE WORK Creating identities and constructing images Altering traditional meanings Challenging prevalent norms Forming normative networks

CULTURAL-COGNITIVE WORK Mimicry Isomorphism Developing new meaning systems Educating

Note:  Mechanisms distinct to the institutional work of SEOs compared to institutional work of cities (Figure 21.2) are shown in italics.

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Figure 21.1  Institutional work by SEOs for political and regulatory purposes. It is not uncontested, as some actors, for example OuiShare network in Berlin, claim that for-profit SEOs undermine the very meaning of sharing by commercializing it. It also helps SEOs to communicate their values and agendas to other actors, distinguish their organizational field from others, and get their own field institutionalized. Normative work of SEOs comprises creating identities and constructing images, altering the traditional meaning of sharing and forming networks. Creating identities and constructing images boosts the appeal of SEOs to various actors, thereby helping them to obtain their approval. Typically, non-profit SEOs highlight their positive social impact on communities (for example, Storemates, a London-based sharing of storage space), while for-profit SEOs focus on their technological advancements, efficiency and positive economic impacts (for example, Drivy, a peer-to-peer car sharing SEO in Berlin). Together, they are constructing the image of a sharing economy as a better alternative to the unsustainable status quo. Another way SEOs create new institutions is by altering the traditional meaning of sharing. While sharing has been understood as a non-pecuniary exchange between family and friends (Belk 2017), information and communication technology (ICT), and reputation systems have allowed people to engage in monetary exchange of resources with strangers. However, many SEOs want to capitalize on and gain legitimacy from the positive connotations associated with the traditional meaning of sharing. SEOs are also challenging the prevalent norms surrounding consumption patterns and practices in two ways. Firstly, they contest the ownership of resources, as they make sharing and renting widely available through access-based consumption (Bardhi and Eckhardt

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270  Handbook of the sharing economy 2012). Organizations such HomeExchange, Love Home Swap and GuestToGuest are making accommodation sharing a norm in many major cities. Secondly, SEOs offer platforms that allow private individuals to capitalize on their assets; a practice and norm that traditionally was a prerogative of businesses. To create a united voice and common identity, SEOs are forming intra- and inter-field networks, such as the United Kingdom-based organizations Bikeplus and Carplus, which together work on changing norms around shared mobility. SEOs may also institutionalize by creating inter-field networks and collaborating with city governments. There are many examples where SEOs align their values and activities with a city’s sustainability or smart city agenda, such as by demonstrating how shared mobility helps to alleviate a city’s air pollution (for example, Zipcar in London), or arguing how the issues of equity and justice are enhanced in the city by providing all citizens with free access to tools (for example, Garaget in Malmö) or leisure equipment (for example, Fritidsbanken in Malmö). Cultural-cognitive work of SEOs includes mechanisms of mimicry, isomorphism, developing new meaning systems and education. Mimicry is used by SEOs to associate new sharing models with existing sets of accepted practices, technologies and rules, to ease adoption, improve acceptance and ensure long-term survival. For example, SEOs adopt practices of traditional organizations, such as lobbying and litigating (see above), or joining industry associations and public interest groups (for example, The People Who Share, UK). Some large SEOs, such as Airbnb, even set up sustainability departments in their organizations (Airbnb 2017). Mimicking the practices normalized in society also makes it easier for SEOs to gain acceptance. Isomorphism refers to the multiplication of successful sharing business models. For example, after the success of Airbnb, other accommodation sharing platforms, such as Wimdu or 9keys, emerged in cities. A business model for car sharing originated in Zurich, Switzerland (Shaheen et al. 1998), but has spread to other major cities around the world. A great variety of business models in food sharing have been replicated in new contexts (Sharecity 2018). Isomorphism helps organizations to create acceptance among public and other actors in the organizational field. SEOs are developing new meaning systems to make sharing business models understandable and acceptable to different actors. For example, names of some sharing companies have already evolved into a verb, such as “to airbnb an apartment” or “to uberize” something. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, “to uberize” means “to change the market for a service by introducing a different way of buying or using it.” The final form of institutional work is educating, which involves education of actors in the organizational field of the sharing economy. For example, some for-profit SEOs in the accommodation sector collaborate with homeowners’ associations and teach their members how to lobby on their behalf, while some non-profit sharing organizations educate their members and the public about various sustainability issues they work to alleviate, such as overconsumption.

INSTITUTIONAL WORK OF CITY GOVERNMENTS Actors such as city governments may engage in the institutional work to shape institutional contexts in favor of or against the sharing economy. We demonstrate this by adapting the

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How institutional work shapes sustainability  271 REGULATORY WORK Litigation Lobbying Defining organizational fields Vesting

Institutional work by city governments

NORMATIVE WORK Creating identities and constructing images Challenging prevalent norms Forming normative networks

CULTURAL-COGNITIVE WORK Creating cognitive associations Imitating and transferring Developing new meaning systems Educating and communicating

Note:  Mechanisms distinct to the institutional work of SEOs compared to institutional work of cities (Figure 21.1) are shown in italics.

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Figure 21.2  Institutional work by city governments mechanisms from the framework by Zvolska et al. (2019) in Figure 21.1 to the realities and practices of city governments in the studied cities. Consequently, the mechanism called “litigation” in Figure 21.1 becomes “regulating” in Figure 21.2, “delimiting organizational field” becomes “defining,” and “vesting” is re-entered in the framework for cities, since it is present in the original framework by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), but is not suitable as a mechanism for SEOs. When analyzing our empirical data we did not find a corresponding mechanism in the framework for cities when SEOs “alter traditional meanings” of sharing by commercializing it. “Mimicry” as a mechanism for SEOs becomes “creating cognitive associations,” “isomorphism” is changed to “imitating and transferring,” and “educating” as a mechanism for SEOs is expanded with “communicating” to better reflect the nature of cities’ work with the sharing economy. Regulatory work of city governments comprises regulating, lobbying, defining organizational fields and vesting. Regulating is perhaps the most prominent way for city governments to engage with the sharing economy. In their role as regulators, city governments employ a range of tools that may both support and hinder the sharing economy, including laws, taxes, bans, licensing and zoning, which regulate the establishment and operation of SEOs. Most often, city governments with legislative power introduce regulations to control the “big and loud.” For example, in many cities, including London and Berlin, Airbnb has been subjected to restrictions on its rentals, including the 90 days a year cap. In addition to the cap, San Francisco requires all short-term Airbnb property providers to be registered with the San Francisco Office of Short-term Rentals or face fines. In contrast, ride sharing is given unregulated space to grow in San Francisco, but is regulated in

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272  Handbook of the sharing economy London and Berlin. Not all cities have legislative power; in Sweden, accommodation and mobility sharing are subject to national legislation, so cities do not regulate local SEOs. Lobbying is a less obvious mechanism, especially for cities that already hold regulatory power. In countries where regulatory power rests at the national level, city governments are more likely to engage in lobbying national policy makers when they need changes in regulatory frameworks that guide the sharing economy. Civil servants in city governments working with the sharing economy can also lobby local politicians or other civil servants. Defining is an important mechanism for cities, enabling them to delineate who is a part of the sharing economy, both for regulatory purposes and for granting support. Cities differ significantly in their boundary-setting work. For example, even in the Sharing Cities Sweden program each city has its own way of defining the sharing economy and the types of SEOs it is supporting. Vesting comprises changing the rules of the market, regulatory bargaining, procurement and negotiation processes, as well as financial and infrastructural support to SEOs or withdrawal of it. For example, Seoul Metropolitan Government has invested €1 million in the sharing program since 2012 (Jung 2018). In 2017, Sweden rolled out a national sharing program, funded 50:50 by the national government (€6 million) and participating cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Umeå (€6 million). These cities justify their engagement with the sharing economy as part of fulfilling strategic goals and/or as a way to address their sustainability challenges. Normative work of cities includes creating their own identities and images, challenging prevalent norms and forming normative networks. Like SEOs, cities engage in creating their own identities and constructing their images. Seoul increases its appeal by creating an image of a city that cares about its citizens and that is committed to solving city challenges through strategic work with the sharing economy. Being part of the Sharing Cities Sweden program, Stockholm is portraying itself as a modern information technology-driven and proactive city; while Gothenburg creates an image of a city advancing sustainable consumption and addressing climate change by supporting community-based sharing initiatives. Engaging with the sharing economy unavoidably leads city governments to challenge prevalent norms of our society. Most often, norms underlying consumption practices and patterns are being challenged; for example, the norm of sharing often replaces the normalized behavior of buying. Providing access to products instead of owning them is another norm that cities help to normalize by supporting activities and organizations that lend, borrow or exchange products. By providing infrastructure or financial support to sharing, for example reuse and sharing stations instead of recycling stations, cities increase their own appeal and confer legitimacy to SEOs. As the sharing economy is gaining momentum in many cities, city governments are forming normative networks to create a united voice and common identity, and to potentially develop collective codes of conduct. Examples are the Sharing Cities Alliance and Sharing Cities Sweden. Cities that have joined these networks have the ambition to become sharing cities that solve urban challenges by sharing resources and skills. At the Sharing Cities Summit in Barcelona in 2018, 30 cities signed the Common Declaration of principles and commitments. City governments engage in cultural-cognitive work to facilitate uptake, ease adoption and improve acceptance of sharing practices by creating cognitive associations, imitating

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How institutional work shapes sustainability  273 and transferring, developing new systems of meaning, and educating and communicating. They create cognitive associations by establishing links to traditions and historical patterns. When Mayor Park proclaimed Seoul as the first Sharing City, he affirmed that sharing can “recover the lost community culture” by “reviving the long-standing traditions of Korea’s sharing culture” (Jung 2018). Many cities create associations between the sharing economy and well-established practices, such as libraries that have been providing access to books for centuries, but nowadays also share tools, children’s toys, films, music and other items. City governments may also imitate sharing business models and adapt them to their own operations. The London Waste and Recycling Board is running a project on sharing of high-value, low-use assets between London boroughs. Other cities develop specifications in their procurement procedures, encouraging the use of sharing services in city operations, such as Croydon and Zipcar that offer car sharing services to municipal employees in London, or bicycle and car pools available to city employees in Malmö. Cities also engage in developing new systems of meaning that facilitate adoption of the sharing economy. The new concept of “sharing cities” has emerged, reflecting the cities’ ambition to enhance their economic resilience and social cohesion that the sharing economy may potentially bring (McLaren and Agyeman 2015). Cities also create their own vocabulary and new infrastructures, where sharing becomes an integral part of people’s daily lives. The sharing economy testbed in Malmö is exploring new ways of constructing housing with smaller individual flats and larger common areas. For people who will be living in these houses, the sharing of spaces, laundry facilities, hobby rooms, and reuse and sharing stations will become an everyday reality filled with new meaning and new vocabulary. Educating and communicating is an important mechanism for cities to shape the institutional context and to create acceptance and support for the sharing economy among different actors. Cities organize competitions, grant awards and offer voluntary certification schemes to recognize the best sharing practices. They also collect and disseminate information about existing SEOs, such as Seoul’s Sharehub and Gothenburg’s Smart Map: depositories of information about sharing activities and SEOs created for citizens.

INSTITUTIONAL WORK AND SUSTAINABILITY In the preceding sections, we demonstrated that city governments can play an active role in shaping the sharing economy through institutional work. Our empirical data indicate that the ways in which city governments engage with the sharing economy often have a direct link to their specific sustainability challenges. Therefore it is important to understand how SEOs and cities through their institutional work can help to harness the sustainability potential of the sharing economy in diverse city contexts. Sustainability is a well-established and recognized normative societal goal in many parts of the world. There is consensus over the broad definition of sustainability as encompassing the three dimensions—economic, environmental and social—but operationalization of sustainability goals is context-dependent, subject to different challenges faced by cities. Some cities have economic priorities, of combating poverty and economic downturn; some struggle with environmental pollution and growing volumes of waste; while others

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274  Handbook of the sharing economy are faced with social problems. Cities set their own priorities and sustainability goals, and may choose to work with SEOs as a means of reducing some of the sustainability challenges or preventing their exacerbation. Local governments set agendas and develop strategies to improve economic prosperity, social well-being and environmental quality in cities, and may see SEOs as actors that can contribute to these agendas. Our research also shows that the strategic goals of cities can also shape the way SEOs frame and construct their identities. In Malmö, non-profit SEOs have a very strong focus on the aspects of social justice and democracy, which is in line with the city’s dominant agenda on social inclusion and integration. In London, the dominant city agenda is framed around combating air pollution and promoting innovation and business development, so SEOs in the mobility sector advocate more environmentally sustainable mobility options, while being cost-efficient alternatives to incumbent organizations. In San Francisco, an important urban challenge is the high cost of living, which is why the creation of extra income streams through the sharing economy and incubation of business ideas is generally welcomed by the city government. Some cities (Seoul, Gothenburg, Malmö) have adopted a more strategic approach and have rolled out city-led programs on the sharing economy with sustainability rhetoric. Although this demonstrates interest, if not commitment, from decision makers at city level, the general public still lacks awareness and knowledge about the sharing economy in, for example, Seoul (KB Financial Group 2017). Indeed, the Seoul city approach to sharing has been very much top-down, resulting in the low level of acceptance of SEOs. In places with low awareness about sustainability challenges at societal and city levels, the sharing economy and SEOs are unlikely to become institutionalized through sustainability work. However, where awareness about sustainability challenges is high at a societal level, SEOs may choose to build their public acceptance through sustainability, even if it is lacking in the city agenda. This is especially true for SEOs with a global presence and sustainability ambitions or rhetoric. In countries with sustainability goals at both societal and city levels, SEOs are likely to engage in sustainability work and frame their messages through their sustainability goals. It is also important to note that, if SEOs are to become institutionalized, they need to gain legitimacy from different actors. Even if SEOs work towards sustainability, while salient stakeholders in their organizational field do not view sustainability as a legitimating factor, SEOs are unlikely to be accepted by these stakeholders. We observed that institutionalization of the sharing economy sectors is linked to the knowledge about and acceptance of specific SEOs, but this needs to be studied in more detail.

CONCLUSIONS This chapter set out to explore the institutionalization of the sharing economy by investigating institutional work conducted by SEOs and city governments. The mechanisms of institutional work were analyzed using an adapted framework by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), developed earlier by Zvolska et al. (2018). We applied the framework to a larger and more diverse empirical set and developed it by testing and adapting it to a new agent: the city. We adjusted the framework to better suit the realities, the institutional mechanisms and the agency of city governments.

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How institutional work shapes sustainability  275

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This chapter responds to the call (Mair and Reischauer 2017) for the need to understand institutionalization mechanisms of the new phenomenon of sharing. We have explored why and how sharing economy organizations and city governments engage in purposeful work to influence and shape institutions in society. This is the first step towards building solid theoretical underpinnings explaining the institutionalization of the sharing economy. Our study draws on a rich set of empirical data far beyond the empirics from the two largest and most-studied organizations, Airbnb and Uber. When analyzing institutional work of SEOs and city governments, we have brought in insights from small, medium-sized and large companies, for- and non-profit organizations, municipalities, sharing industry associations, and public interest groups that belong to the organizational field of the sharing economy, as well as local policy makers and academia. To our knowledge this is one of the first studies that builds on such rich multi-stakeholder, multi-SEO and multi-city empirical evidence. This is significant, since with this rich empirical data we also respond to the call by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) to test their original framework in a new empirical setting and phenomenon. By applying the theoretical lens of institutional work to the new empirical setting of the sharing economy, this chapter contributes to institutional theory. The framework for institutional work advanced in this chapter can be useful in future research for discerning how and why institutional work differs across SEOs and cities. Our empirical data indicate large differences between large and small organizations, for-profit and non-profit ones. More thorough research is needed to unveil specific mechanisms and strategies of institutional work used by different types of organizations within and across different city contexts. Research is also needed on how to harness and operationalize the sustainability potential of the sharing economy in diverse urban contexts, and through institutional work at city and national levels.

REFERENCES Acquier, A., T. Daudigeos, and J. Pinkse (2017), “Promises and Paradoxes of the Sharing Economy: An Organizing Framework,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 1‒10. Airbnb (2017), “Airbnb announces Sustainability Advisory Board,” https://www.airbnbcitizen.com/airbnbannounces-new-sustainability-board/ (accessed October 12, 2018). Bardhi, F. and G.M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881‒98. Bauwens, M. and V. Kostakis (2014), “From the Communism of Capital to Capital for the Commons: Towards an Open Co-operativism,” tripleC: Communication, Capitalism and Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 12 (1), 356‒61. Belk, R. (2017), “Sharing without Caring,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 10 (2), 249‒61. Benner, K. (2017), “Airbnb Settles Lawsuit With Its Hometown, San Francisco,” New York Times, https://www. nytimes.com/2017/05/01/technology/airbnb-san-francisco-settle-registration-lawsuit.html. Benoit, S., T.L. Baker, R.N. Bolton, et al. (2017), “A Triadic Framework for Collaborative Consumption (CC): Motives, Activities and Resources and Capabilities of Actors,” Journal of Business Research, 79, 219‒27. Bernardi, M. and D. Diamantini (2018), “Shaping the Sharing City: An Exploratory Study on Seoul and Milan,” Journal of Cleaner Production, 203, 30‒42, doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.132. Bradley, K. (2015), “Open-Source Urbanism: Creating, Multiplying and Managing Urban Commons,” Footprint, 9 (1), 91‒107. Ertz, M. and S. Leblanc-Proulx (2018), “Sustainability in the Collaborative Economy: A Bibliometric Analysis Reveals Emerging Interest,” Journal of Cleaner Production, 196, 1073‒85. Frenken, K. and J. Schor (2017), “Putting the Sharing Economy into Perspective,” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 23 (June), 3‒10.

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276  Handbook of the sharing economy Grinevich, V., F. Huber, M. Karataş-Özkan, and Ç. Yavuz (2017), “Green Entrepreneurship in the Sharing Economy: Utilising Multiplicity of Institutional Logics,” Small Business Economics, 1‒18, doi: 10.1007/ s11187-017-9935-x. Guttentag, D. (2015), “Airbnb: Disruptive Innovation and the Rise of an Informal Tourism Accommodation Sector,” Current Issues in Tourism, 18 (12), 1192–217. Harmaala, M.M. (2015), “The Sharing City as a Platform for a more Sustainable City Environment?” International Journal of Environment and Health, 7 (4), 309‒28. Hult, A. and K. Bradley (2017), “Planning for Sharing: Providing Infrastructure for Citizens to be Makers and Sharers,” Planning Theory and Practice, 18 (4), 597‒615. Jung, T. (2018), “Sharing City Seoul: Transition to a Citizen-Led Sharing Economy,” ARSCP Course Paper, IIIEE, Lund University. KB Financial Group (2017), “Business Response to the Growth of Sharing Economy and Latest Major Contestations,” KB Financial Group Management Institute. Kuttner, R. (2013), “The Task Rabbit Economy,” American Prospect, September‒October, 46‒55. Laurell, C. and C. Sandström (2016), “Analysing Uber in Social Media—Disruptive Technology or Institutional Disruption?” International Journal of Innovation Management, 20 (5), 1640013. Lawrence, T.B. and R. Suddaby (2006), “Institutions and Institutional Work,” in The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies, ed. S.R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T.B. Lawrence, and W.R. Nord, London: SAGE Publications, 215‒54. Mair, J. and G. Reischauer (2017), “Capturing the Dynamics of the Sharing Economy: Institutional Research on the Plural Forms and Practices of Sharing Economy Organizations,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 11‒20. McLaren, D. and J. Agyeman (2015), Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mont, O., Y. Voytenko Palgan, A. Plepys, et al. (2017), “Mobile Research Lab as a method to study urban sharing,” 4th International Workshop on the Sharing Economy, Lund. Mont, O., Y. Voytenko Palgan, and L. Zvolska (2018), “Towards an Explanatory Framework for Institutionalisation Processes of Urban Sharing Organisations,” SCORAI, Copenhagen. PWC (2014), “The Sharing Economy—Sizing the Revenue Opportunity,” PricewaterhouseCoopers, https:// www.pwc.fr/fr/assets/files/pdf/2015/05/pwc_etude_sharing_economy.pdf. Schor, J.B. (2016), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4 (3), 7‒22. Scott, W.R. (1995), Institutions and Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Shaheen, S., D. Sperlin, and C. Wagner (1998), “Car Sharing in Europe and North America: Past, Present and Future,” Transportation Quarterly, 52, 35‒52. Sharecity (2018), “Sharecity 100 Database,” http://sharecity.ie/research/sharecity100-database/ (accessed October 12, 2018). Sharing Cities Sweden (2018), “Sharing Cities Sweden webpage,” https://www.sharingcities.se/ (accessed October 9, 2018. Voytenko Palgan, Y., O. Mont, and L. Zvolska (2018), “Sharing and the City: Roles, Relations and Governance Mechanisms,” paper presented at the 5th International Workshop on Sharing Economy (5IWSE), Mannheim, June 28‒29. Voytenko Palgan, Y., L. Zvolska, and O. Mont (2017), “Sustainability Framings of Accommodation Sharing,” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 23, 70‒83. Zvolska, L., M. Lehner, Y. Voytenko Palgan, et al. (2018), “Urban Sharing in Smart Cities: The Cases of Berlin and London,” Local Environment, doi: 10.1080/13549839.13542018.11463978. Zvolska, L., Y. Voytenko Palgan, and O. Mont (2019), “How do Sharing Organisations Create and Disrupt Institutions? Towards a Framework for Institutional Work,” Journal of Cleaner Production, 219, 667‒76, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.02.057.

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PART VI

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TRUST, SATISFACTION AND REPUTATION IN THE SHARING ECONOMY

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22.  Social dilemmas in the sharing economy* Rense Corten

2

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INTRODUCTION Trust is often considered crucial in the sharing economy (e.g., Botsman and Rogers 2010; Frenken and Schor 2017; Puschmann and Alt 2016): for “stranger sharing” (Schor 2014), actors need to engage in interactions with partners who might very well take advantage of them (e.g., Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). This ubiquitous emphasis on trust suggests a general acknowledgement of the risk of opportunistic behavior in sharing economy exchanges. In turn, this suggests that sharing economy exchanges, not unlike traditional market exchanges, include aspects of strategic interaction in that participants’ actions are interdependent, and they may take each other’s actions into account when making decisions. I propose that social dilemma research, rooted in game theory and rational choice theory, offers a rich and flexible theoretical framework for addressing such strategic interdependencies. Studying the sharing economy from this perspective allows for the development of theoretical models that indeed include trust as an important feature of many interactions, but also highlights other strategic considerations that look similar to trust problems but may actually be more fruitfully understood through different models. For the sake of consistency of the chapter in terms of applications and examples, I follow the definition of the sharing economy by Frenken et al. (2015) who emphasize the utilization of idle capacity. Importantly, this implies that platforms facilitating services (for example, TaskRabbit or Uber) are excluded for now, even if many of the arguments provided here—with appropriate modifications—could also be applied to such platforms. A social dilemma is, roughly, a situation in which a tension exists between individual rationality on the one hand, and collective rationality on the other (also see Kollock 1998; Rapoport 1974; Raub et al. 2015 for more formal definitions). Social dilemmas are central to the study of cooperation among goal-directed actors across a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, including economics, sociology, and political science. While the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Rapoport and Chammah 1965) is by far the best-known example of a social dilemma, the closely related Trust Game (Camerer and Weigelt 1988; Coleman 1990) appears implicitly or explicitly in many accounts of the sharing economy, underlying the ubiquitous notion that trust is the prevailing logic of the sharing economy. Likewise, common pool problems or public good problems are frequently associated with the sharing economy (Bradley and Pargman 2017). In this chapter, I discuss the applicability of these well-known models to the sharing economy, but also discuss a number of lesser-known approaches from the social dilemmas literature, including the helping game and the theory of social exchange systems (Ekeh 1974). *  I would like to thank Joyce Delnoij and Judith Kas for valuable comments and suggestions, and Marissa Bultman for research support.

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Social dilemmas in the sharing economy  279 The fact that many accounts of social dilemmas, being rooted in game theory, assume actors to be both rational and selfish, may seem contradictory to the very notion of sharing (e.g., Belk 2010). However, neither of these assumptions are strictly necessary for a fruitful analysis of social dilemma situations. First, while typical analyses do require that actors are at least goal-directed (that is, motivated by incentives), it is often not necessary or desirable to make heroic assumptions about forward-looking behavior or complete information. Indeed, arguments on bounded rationality (Rubinstein 1998) are by now part of the standard repertoire of social dilemmas research (e.g., Macy and Flache 2002). Second, game theory per se does not assume selfishness. While “pay-offs” as modeled in games represent actors’ utilities (that is, their motives), these utilities do not necessarily exclusively represent actors’ own material or monetary pay-offs; it is perfectly feasible to include other actors’ outcomes in utility functions (Fehr and Gintis 2007).

TWO-PERSON SOCIAL DILEMMAS

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Prisoner’s Dilemma The best-known example of a social dilemma is the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD; Rapoport and Chammah 1965), in which two players face incentives to take advantage of one another, although mutual cooperation would make them both better off. The PD is two-sided, in that the two actors face the same dilemma and act simultaneously. Many platforms, such as Airbnb, Couchsurfing and BlaBlaCar, in principle have this two-sided nature, as both actors may face incentives for opportunistic behavior, and the PD is indeed sometimes used as a model for sharing economy interactions (e.g., Botsman and Rogers 2010, 143). However, contrary to a common misunderstanding, trust is not an issue in the PD: both actors face incentives to take advantage of the other actor, regardless of the action of the other actor. This implies that beliefs about the expected action of the other actor play no role in actors’ decision-making: it is not the case that they would be willing to cooperate on the condition that the other also cooperates. Consider online peer-to-peer markets, such as eBay. There are typically two actors, the seller and the buyer, who do not meet in person but trade via mail and wire transfers. To model their interaction in terms of a PD, we define two actions for each actor. After the seller and buyer have agreed on a price for an item, the seller has two options: to send the item to the buyer as agreed, or to keep the item (or send an item of lower quality than agreed). The buyer also has two options: to pay the agreed price for the item, or not. Obviously, the most attractive outcome for the seller is to receive the money while keeping the item, while for the buyer the best outcome is receiving the item for free. This combination of possible strategies would indeed lead to a PD (Figure 22.1), with the standard prediction that both actors would take advantage of each other, even though they would both prefer the cooperative outcome (Kollock 1999b). Although this representation of a typical eBay interaction captures the main risks involved for both players and satisfies our intuition that online exchanges are essentially cooperation problems, the resulting model is less satisfying in other respects. Most importantly, it ignores that in most online exchange markets, social conventions have emerged that require buyers to make the first move and pay up front, after which the

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280  Handbook of the sharing economy Actor 2 Cooperate Defect Actor 1

Cooperate

R, R

S, T

Defect

T, S

P, P

Actor 2

Actor 1

Cooperate

Defect

Cooperate

3, 3

0, 5

Defect

5, 0

1, 1

Note:  Cells represent pay-offs to the actors in the form (Actor 1, Actor 2) resulting from combinations of their respective choices.

Figure 22.1 Prisoner’s Dilemma with generic pay-offs (left: T > R > P > S) and numerical pay-offs (right) seller ships the item. This makes opportunistic behavior by the buyer impossible, and thus shifts all the risk of the exchange to the buyer. Similar arguments apply to some types of sharing economy interactions, such as hospitality exchanges on platforms like Airbnb or Couchsurfing. These too involve risks for both actors: for the guest, the obvious safety risk of spending the night in a stranger’s house; and for the host, the risk of theft or damage to property (and possibly also a safety risk). Yet, here also the fit is suboptimal, for example because it does not allow for what is intuitively the most likely outcome of an Airbnb encounter: that the guest will never enter the host’s house at all. Additionally, as in the eBay case, hospitality interactions are often structured such that much of the risk is shifted to one party (for example, if the accommodation is a separate apartment, the risk for the guest will be much smaller) to the extent that the interaction is no longer a two-sided problem. If this is the case, a one-side dilemma remains such as the Trust Game.

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The Trust Game and the Investment Game The Trust Game (Camerer and Weigelt 1988) can be understood as a sequential and onesided version of the PD in which one actor (the trustor) moves first, deciding whether or not to trust the second actor (the trustee). If the trustor does place trust in the trustee, the trustee decides whether or not to take advantage of the trustor (see Figure 22.2). As with the PD, the standard game-theoretical prediction for this game is a pessimistic one. Anticipating that the trustee will abuse trust if given the opportunity, the trustor will not trust the trustee; which is suboptimal for both. In contrast to the PD, the problem has a one-sided nature, in that only the trustee has an incentive to take advantage of the trustor. Another difference with the PD is that, in the Trust Game, the trustor would be willing to choose the cooperative option (to place trust) if and only if they believed the likelihood that the trustee would abuse trust were sufficiently low (this belief is what is also commonly understood as “trust”). The Trust Game has been widely used to model economic transactions that suffer from information asymmetry (Akerlof 1970), also with many recent applications to online markets (e.g., Przepiorka 2013; Resnick and Zeckhauser 2002; Tadelis 2016), and indeed features explicitly or implicitly in many accounts of the sharing economy. Consider the case of hospitality services, such as Airbnb. Although this can be analyzed as a two-sided dilemma, it seems reasonable to assume that the largest share of the risk lies on the side of the host, while the host has few incentives or opportunities to take advantage of the guest. After all, options for the host are somewhat limited: the characteristics

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Social dilemmas in the sharing economy  281 Actor 1 Place trust

Do not place trust

Actor 2

Abuse trust

P, P

S, T

Honor trust

R, R

Note:  Pay-offs to the actors resulting from possible combinations of their respective choices are represented at the bottom in the form (Actor 1, Actor 2).

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Figure 22.2  Decision tree for the Trust Game (with T > R > P > S) of the accommodation are more or less fixed, and after a host puts the accommodation on offer there is little the host could do that would take advantage of the guest. This is particularly true for cases where the host is not present during the stay, as seems increasingly common on Airbnb. The host, on the other hand, runs the risk that the guest does not behave well and trashes the apartment. In such cases, the exchange resembles a Trust Game, in which the possible actions are as follows: after the guest requests a reservation of the accommodation for a certain period, the host faces the decision to accept or reject the reservation, which respectively corresponds to “placing trust” or “withhold trust” in the Trust Game. Subsequently the guest, upon arrival, may either take good care of the accommodation, or alternatively behave carelessly and damage the property, disturb the neighbors, or even behave intentionally maliciously and, for example, engage in theft. While certainly not all guests, or indeed even relatively few, will actually have preferences to behave opportunistically, it seems reasonable to assume that at least some guests do have such preferences, and this sense the host faces a trust problem, which could be modeled as a Trust Game with incomplete information (Camerer and Weigelt 1988). In some instances actors have the possibility to act in a more fine-grained rather than binary manner, as in the Trust Game. This would be the case, for example, if the trustor has the option to use various levels of costly safeguards such as contracts or insurance to reduce risk. Such cases may be analyzed as Investment Games (Berg et al. 1995), essentially a continuous version of the Trust Game, in which the first mover decides on the degree to which she places trust in the trustee, upon which the trustee decides on a degree of honoring or abusing trust. Engaging in the interaction without any safeguards, thereby maximizing risk but minimizing transaction costs, would be analogous to maximal investment in the investment game. Another application would be the case were trustors may choose between different interactions that are more or less risky, such as in peer-to-peer ride sharing where a driver may choose the length of the ride they are willing to share. As in the trust game, the game-theoretical prediction for the investment game is that

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282  Handbook of the sharing economy the trustor, anticipating that the trustee will return nothing (that is, abuses trust) invests nothing (that is, does not trust).

N-PERSON SOCIAL DILEMMAS Most of the examples so far involve exchanges in which one actor transfers some resource to another actor and receives some benefit in return, such as in hospitality exchanges where the host is paid by the guest in exchange for lodging. Many sharing economy interactions, however, involve the pooling and redistribution of resources among more than two actors, or actors sharing a resource without immediate (material) compensation. Such non-dyadic exchanges constitute various types of N-person dilemmas, discussed next.

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Public Good Problems and Common Pool Resources In a public goods game, actors choose whether to contribute part of their resources to the production of a common resource (the public good). The sum of all contributions is then multiplied by a factor m >1 and redistributed equally among all actors, irrespective of their individual contributions. Due to this latter feature, the dominant strategy is to free-ride on the contributions of others and not contribute anything. Thus, the standard game-theoretic prediction is that the public good will not be produced. Classic examples include national defense and, somewhat closer to the topic at hand, open source software development (Kollock 1999a). Common goods games are similar to public goods games, but there the problem is use rather than production (Kollock 1998). Typical examples include overfishing, where fishermen face individual incentives to maximize their catch, but as a result the fish stock is depleted to an extent that it can no longer regenerate. While the two dilemmas are conceptually similar, result in the same suboptimal outcome, and are often discussed interchangeably (e.g., Ostrom 2006), a key theoretical difference is that common goods are rivalrous in that use of the resource by one actor diminishes the possible use by other actors, while public goods are not (see Gardner et al. 1990 for a more formal treatment). At the same time, they share the feature of non-excludability, in that it is impossible, or at least very difficult, to prevent actors from using the resource. Public- and common goods problems frequently appear in discussions of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Bradley and Pargman 2017; Erickson and Sørensen 2016; Kostakis and Bauwens 2014), and earlier in the more general context of online collaboration (Hess and Ostrom 2003; Kollock 1999a; Kollock and Smith 1996). Indeed, some early examples of collaborative consumption such as public bike sharing (Cohen and Kietzmann 2014), some types of car sharing (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012), Freecycling (Norbutas and Corten 2018) and collective toolsheds seem to share characteristics of public or common goods, in that they are not dyadic exchanges but aim at the creation of a common pool resource that is open to all. However, as Fremstad (2016) points out, many modern examples of platform-based sharing economy exchanges are excludable, as access to such collective resources can be effectively limited through membership of the platform. In this sense, the resources

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Social dilemmas in the sharing economy  283 available via sharing platforms are perhaps better characterized as club goods (Buchanan 1965), which to some extent provide a solution for the provision of public goods (also see Belk 2017).

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Generalized Exchange Systems Some types of exchanges are non-dyadic in that the actor sharing some resource does not receive an immediate return. The hospitality equivalent of such an exchange is Couchsurfing, in which hosts provide lodging without material compensation. Other examples include neighborhood sharing platforms such as the Dutch platform Peerby,1 the now defunct Neighborgoods or the Swiss Pumpipumpe, but also Facebook groups aiming at “freecycling” (Norbutas and Corten 2018). From a game-theoretic perspective, such exchanges may be modeled as Dictator Games (Forsythe et al. 1994) in which actors can choose to transfer some of their resources to a second actor, or as Helping Games, in which actors may produce a benefit to a second actor at a cost smaller than the benefit (Nowak and Sigmund 1998). At first sight, these types of interactions do not appear to be social dilemmas: the obvious unique Nash equilibrium in such cases is that the first actor gives nothing to the second actor, and there is no alternative outcome that would be more beneficial to both. A dilemma emerges, however, when such interactions take place not in isolated dyads but in larger systems, in which actors sometimes play the role of provider and sometimes play the role of receiver, as is the case in the sharing economy examples mentioned above. Then, the outcome in which no actor provides anything to another actor is still an equilibrium, but all actors would be better off2 if “help” was provided in each dyadic interaction (assuming that actors are equally often in the receiver role). Such systems, known as generalized exchange systems (Ekeh 1974), thus constitute social dilemmas at the macro level (Kollock 1999b; Yamagishi and Cook 1993). Exchanges in these systems are “generalized” in that actors do not receive immediate compensation from their exchange partners, but instead are compensated by receiving some resource from a third actor when they are in need themselves. Typical examples include assisting stranded drivers on remote mountain roads, where one does not receive immediate compensation for helping but instead hopes to be assisted in a similar manner when in need. While neighborhood lending platforms such as Peerby are exceptionally clear-cut instances of generalized exchange systems, models such as the helping game overlook that lending goods may also include an element of trust, in that the borrower may not return the item in good shape, or at all. This would suggest modeling these types of sharing economy interactions using variations of Trust Games in which the trustor (the provider), in dyadic exchanges, does not gain or even loses some utility in the situation in which trust is placed and honored, in comparison to the situation in which trust is not placed. The Lending Game (recently proposed by Kas et al. 2018) is a first attempt at modeling such exchanges. As compared to the regular trust game, the Lending Game again clearly 1   At the time of writing in 2019, Peerby had just introduced a rental option, while maintaining the option to borrow without compensation. 2   Or at least not worse off on average, in the case of the Dictator Game.

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284  Handbook of the sharing economy highlights that, from a rational point of view, sharing on platforms such as Peerby can only be explained by the fact that these exchanges take place in larger systems; since even if the lender were sure about the trustworthiness of the borrower, lending would still make the lender worse off in isolated encounters.

SOLUTIONS: INSTITUTIONS FOR COOPERATION Explaining the emergence of cooperation in social dilemmas has been the focus of a sizable literature in fields as diverse as social psychology, political science, economics, sociology, and biology, resulting in various types of solutions. Kollock (1998) distinguishes motivational, strategic, and structural solutions. Motivational solutions rely on psychological causes of cooperation, such as other-regarding preferences (e.g., Fehr and Schmidt 1999) or bounded rationality (e.g., Neyman 1985). Both the strategic and structural approaches prefer to maintain the micro-level assumptions of selfishness and rationality, and instead look for social conditions that may incentivize actors to cooperate (cf. Coleman 1964). While the strategic approach looks for conditions that leave the basic social dilemma intact (for example, repeated interaction), the structural approach introduces modifications to the rules of the stage game (for example, punishment options). These structural mechanisms can also be understood as “institutions” in the sense of “rules of the game” (North 1990) that govern interaction. As sharing economy interactions are typically mediated by online platforms that to a large extent shape the possible actions of participants, the emphasis here is on such institutional solutions.3

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Solutions for Two-Person Dilemmas A prominent type of explanation within the structural approach involves the embeddedness of the social dilemma in ongoing social relations. For the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Axelrod (1984) famously showed that if actors play the game repeatedly and can observe each other’s behavior, conditional cooperation can be sustained because the long-term benefits of mutual cooperation outweigh the short-term incentive to defect. Similar results hold for the trust game (Kreps 1990) and other dyadic social dilemmas (Friedman 1971). The logic of embeddedness extends also to social networks, where the spread of information via networks about past behavior again allows for conditional cooperation to emerge (Buskens 2002; Raub and Weesie 1990). Typical for sharing economy interactions, however, is that social embeddedness tends to be low: interactions typically take place outside established social contexts and are probably rarely repeated4 (that is, “stranger sharing”; Schor 2014). Consequently, sharing economy platforms have implemented a range of mechanisms aimed at promoting cooperation in social dilemmas. 3   Naturally, cultural and political contexts may also impact cooperation. Within Kollock’s framework, they may be seen as operating through actors’ motivations (for example, culturally determined preferences) or by changing the rules of the game (for example, through the law). 4   Although I am not aware of any empirical research that has assessed the prevalence of repeated interaction in the sharing economy.

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Social dilemmas in the sharing economy  285 Perhaps the best-known example of an institutional mechanism to promote cooperation is the widespread use of reputation systems or rating systems,5 allowing users to publicly rate their experience with their exchange partners through some type of fixed and often quantified format (for example, the ubiquitous “five stars”), or through a freeform qualitative format (for example, written reviews). Conceptually, reputation systems promote trust and cooperation in much the same way as social embeddedness does: by allowing actors to monitor each other’s past behavior, potential defectors are incentivized to cooperate or deterred from entering the market (Bolton et al. 2004b; Przepiorka 2013; Resnick and Zeckhauser 2002; Tadelis 2016). Meanwhile there is ample empirical evidence from lab experiments (Bolton et al. 2004b; Bolton et al. 2004a), field experiments (Resnick and Zeckhauser 2006), and observational studies on online markets (Diekmann et al. 2014; Kollock 1999b; Przepiorka et al. 2017; Resnick and Zeckhauser 2002) that such reputation systems do indeed tend to promote trust, and as such these systems are widely considered to be the key innovation that makes trust in online interactions (including sharing economy interactions) feasible (e.g., Botsman and Rogers 2010). Nevertheless, from a theoretical perspective, reputation systems are not without problems, which are currently only partly understood. I highlight three issues here. First, the effectiveness of reputation systems relies on the sharing of information by participants, which creates a second-order social dilemma (Heckathorn 1989) in the sense that reputational information itself is a public good. Diekmann et al. (2014) propose that other-regarding preferences and strong reciprocity may explain contributions to reputation systems; which, interestingly, reduces an initially structural solution to a motivational solution. Second, an additional second-order dilemma arises, coined the “informational dilemma” by Bolton et al. (2004a). Without a reputation system, interacting with newcomers generates private information about the trustworthiness of these newcomers that may be worthwhile in the longer run, but in the presence of a reputation system this information is no longer private, and actors instead have an incentive to free-ride on others generating this information, which in theory makes establishing a good reputation harder for newcomers. Third, reputation systems may generate arbitrary inequality through “reputation cascades” (Frey and van de Rijt 2016). Because actors prefer to cooperate with partners who already have established a reputation of trustworthiness, interaction may concentrate on just a few actors who then receive a disproportional share of the benefits from exchange, at the expense of others who might be equally trustworthy. Solutions for N-Person Dilemmas The large and to a great extent experimental literature on public goods suggests that, in the presence of sufficiently many conditional cooperators, cooperation in public goods can be achieved via various mechanisms, most prominently the possibility of costly punishment (e.g., Fehr and Gintis 2007). Other mechanisms are feasible too, however (see Chaudhuri 2011 for a review), and the most relevant of these for the sharing economy may be assortative mixing: when actors have possibilities to choose who they want to play 5   For brevity, I ignore here other widely applied solutions such as insurances and payment systems. Nevertheless, both can be understood in terms of social dilemmas: for example, in trust games, insurances modify the trustor’s pay-offs, while payment systems limit the trustee’s actions.

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286  Handbook of the sharing economy

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the public goods game with, production of the public good becomes more likely (Ahn et al. 2009; Page et al. 2005). This speaks to the earlier observation that many public goods problems in the sharing economy, being excludable, more resemble club goods than pure public goods; but also raises the question of whether sharing economy exchanges of this type can be scaled to large groups if they indeed rely on (self-)selection of participants of a certain type. Similarly, a large body of literature exists on the conditions under which common pool resources can be sustained, including the seminal work by Ostrom (1990), who formulated eight “design principles” for institutions aimed at sustaining common pool resources. The principles rely strongly on clear group boundaries and participation and self-determination of the actors using the common pool resource in creating and implementing such institutions. While these principles may to some extent apply to online communities (Kollock 1999a; Kollock and Smith 1996), whether they apply to sharing economy platforms is questionable (Bradley and Pargman 2017): these platforms often have a clear separation between the platform which creates and enforces the rules, and users who have little influence on these rules. Research on generalized exchange systems often focuses on exchanges in fixed structures (that is, “network-generalized exchange”; Ekeh 1974; Yamagishi and Cook 1993), which is less relevant to sharing economy interactions, where actors are typically free to choose who they exchange with. Takahashi (2000) studies such “pure generalized exchange” from the perspective of evolutionary game theory, and concludes that generalized reciprocity can emerge if actors can select recipients based on recipients’ previous behavior, which suggests that some mechanisms must be present to make this information available. Other research points at the importance of group solidarity (Molm et al. 2007) or social learning (Tsvetkova and Macy 2014), but with few exceptions (Norbutas and Corten 2018; Willer et al. 2012) these ideas have not been systematically studied in sharing economy settings.

CONCLUSION I hope this short chapter has demonstrated that social dilemma research has much to offer to the study of the sharing economy. In particular, I hope to have shown that the social dilemma perspective highlights strategic complexities of sharing economy interactions that are sometimes obscured by a rather loose usage of concepts such as “trust” or “commons.” For example, we have seen that exchanges with direct compensation create different types of dilemmas compared to exchanges without such compensation, and that N-person dilemmas can be expected to follow different logics compared to two-person dilemmas, and may require different solutions. Also, I also hope to have shown that by framing sharing economy interactions in terms of social dilemmas, a wealth of theoretical and empirical literature becomes available that may help to explain sharing economy phenomena, as well as inform future research. Conversely, the emergence of the sharing economy provides new opportunities to study social dilemmas in field contexts (including field experiments), due to its combination of, on the one hand, a wide variety in platforms and thereby institutional contexts, and on the other hand the fact that, due to its online nature, behavior is often recorded in detail.

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Social dilemmas in the sharing economy  287 I end with some possible avenues for such research. First, the sharing economy provides many new opportunities to study the important topic of reputation systems, and to address the issues surrounding such systems as summarized above. Second, the widespread and sometimes remarkable level of cooperation observed in the sharing economy begs the question of whether these levels are due to the implementation of adequate institutions by sharing platforms, or to self-selection by participants with certain social preferences. An answer to this question will have important implications for the growth potential of the sharing economy. Third, the success of the sharing economy raises new questions regarding the “governance of the commons” (Ostrom 1990), given that sharing economy platforms that seem to share features of common pool resources at the same time violate Ostrom’s celebrated design principles (Bradley and Pargman 2017). Fourth, the sharing economy involves new types of social dilemmas that so far have rarely been studied, such as the mixture of generalized exchange and trust that can be observed in neighborhood sharing platforms (Kas et al. 2018). Finally, the emergence of large-scale “pure” generalized exchange systems provides new opportunities to test both novel and existing hypotheses from the classic tradition of social exchange theory.

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Puschmann, Thomas and Rainer Alt (2016), “Sharing Economy,” Business and Information Systems Engineering, 58 (1), 93–9. Rapoport, Anatol (1974), “Prisoner’s Dilemma—Recollections and Observations,” in Game Theory as a Theory of Conflict Resolution, ed. Anatol Rapoport, Dordrecht: Reidel, 17–34. Rapoport, Anatol and Albert M. Chammah (1965), Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Raub, Werner, Vincent W. Buskens, and Rense Corten (2015), “Social Dilemmas and Cooperation,” in Handbuch Modellbildung Und Simulation in Den Sozialwissenschaften, ed. Norman Braun and Nicole J. Saam, Wiesbaden: Springer, 597–626. Raub, Werner and Jeroen Weesie (1990), “Reputation and Efficiency in Social Interactions: An Example of Network Effects,” American Journal of Sociology, 96, 626–54. Resnick, Paul and Richard Zeckhauser (2002), “Trust among Strangers in Internet Transactions: Empirical Analysis of EBay’s Reputation System,” in The Economics of the Internet and E-Commerce, ed. Michael R. Baye, London: Emerald Group Publishing, 127‒57. Resnick, Paul and Richard Zeckhauser (2006), “The Value of Reputation on EBay: A Controlled Experiment,” Experimental Economics, 9 (2), 79–101. Rubinstein, Ariel (1998), Modeling Bounded Rationality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” www.greattransition.org. Tadelis, Steven (2016), “Reputation and Feedback Systems in Online Platform Markets,” Annual Review of Economics, 8, 231–340. Takahashi, Nobuyuki (2000), “The Emergence of Generalized Exchange,” American Journal of Sociology, 105 (4), 1105–34. Tsvetkova, Milena and Michael W. Macy (2014), “The Social Contagion of Generosity,” PloS One, 9 (2), e87275. Willer, Robb, Francis J. Flynn, and Sonya Zak (2012), “Structure, Identity, and Solidarity,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 57 (1), 119–55. Yamagishi, Toshio and Karen S. Cook (1993), “Generalized Exchange and Social Dilemmas,” Social Psychology Quarterly, 56 (4), 235–48.

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23.  Leveraging trust on sharing economy platforms: reputation systems, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies Mareike Möhlmann, Timm Teubner and Antje Graul

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INTRODUCTION The spread of online and mobile technology has fostered opportunities for communication, connection, and coordination, fueling the rise of the sharing economy (Hawlitschek et al. 2016; Sundararajan 2016). Widespread acceptance of the sharing economy is reflected in the continued growth of a plethora of high-value start-ups such as Uber, Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, and TaskRabbit. From an information systems and management perspective, the sharing economy can be seen as a landscape of digital platforms that enable peer-to-peer exchange. Such platforms connect spare capacity with demand and foster access-over-ownership schemes such as renting or lending (Möhlmann 2015). In the peer-to-peer context, trust has been identified as a key enabler of sharing activities and a key construct in transactions between strangers (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Sundararajan 2016; Zervas et al. 2015). Trust is pivotal to sharing economy transactions, particularly because they are characterized by high uncertainty and dynamic changes (Mazzella et al. 2016; Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018). As such, trust can be understood as a willingness to commit a collaborative effort before knowing whether another person will behave appropriately (Coleman 1988). For most of human history, trust has evolved in the private context of families and communities (Burt 2000; Coleman 1988; Greif 1989; Masum and Tovey 2011). However, recent developments in information systems and technology have triggered novel ways to extend the creation of trust into digital environments. In placing individual exchange at their core, many digital sharing platforms now successfully mitigate perceptions of “stranger danger” by designing for digital trust between peers (Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018). Indeed, digitally enabled trust mechanisms, such as reputation scores and review systems, have become crucial in facilitating interactions on peer-to-peer exchange platforms (Möhlmann 2016; Usrey and Graul 2017). In this regard, scholars suggest that the spread of blockchain technology has the potential to establish “trust-free” (Beck et al. 2016; Greiner and Wang 2015), or “trust-in-noone” (Humayun and Belk 2018), secure and transparent systems, obviating the need for costly trust mechanisms established by intermediaries. Blockchain technology allows for decentralized and public distribution of digital information through distributed ledgers (Huckle et al. 2016; Swan 2015). With the help of so-called smart contracts, blockchains may facilitate validated transactions across a number of network participants referred to as nodes (Glaser 2017). In this context, mediating platform providers may be eliminated and potentially replaced by decentralized autonomous organizations (Avital et al. 2016; Beck et al. 2016; Beck et al. 2018; Jarvenpaa and Teigland 2017). 290

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Despite the promises of blockchain technology, it is important to recognize that experts call for caution. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies should not be considered silver bullets (Beck et al. 2016), and it is important to critically evaluate their potential in the explicit context of sharing economy scenarios (Hawlitschek et al. 2018). Research on the implications of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies is still in its infancy and academics have only recently begun to uncover and discuss associated theoretical aspects. Furthermore, following theories of the diffusion of innovation, it remains unclear when blockchain technologies will be widely accepted and able to serve broad, mainstream markets. More profound knowledge of the current discourse may help to evaluate users’ needs and to draw conclusions about sharing economy platforms’ potential to flourish using these technologies. The objectives of this chapter are: (1) to outline the historical evolution of trust; (2) to capture the status quo regarding sharing economy platforms maintaining reputation systems to leverage digital trust between peers; and (3) to explore the trust potential of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the particular context of the sharing economy. The chapter begins by setting trust and reputation in historical perspective, forging a bridge from our early ancestors to today’s internet users. Next, we discuss how rating and review systems are currently the dominant mechanism for establishing and maintaining trust on peer-to-peer platforms commonly found in the sharing economy. We then explore opportunities for and challenges to fostering trust based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the sharing economy. Drawing on public evaluations of the potential associated with blockchain technology, we analyze data from Reddit, a United States (US)-based platform that allows users to aggregate news and other publicly available content, which is then commented on and discussed in forums. We conclude by touching on avenues for further research.

FROM COMMUNITY-BASED TRUST TO DIGITAL TRUST: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE For most of human history, trust has been built in the private context of families and communities, as social capital theorists argue (Burt 2000; Coleman 1988; Greif 1989; Masum and Tovey 2011), on social capital shared amongst members. Sharing of personal belongings and material goods—such as accommodation, cars, bikes, clothing, and food—plays an important role in this process, as it may be seen as a pro-social act between community members that fosters trust amongst them. This idea can be explained in terms of a basic assumption of general reciprocity, which suggests that when an individual shares personal belongings as a good deed, this act of kindness will be returned or compensated in the near future (Albinsson and Perera 2012; Putnam 2000). However, sharing within families and close communities often has no specific timeframe or guidance on when the good deed should be reciprocated, and restitution may even involve a completely different situation unrelated to the original sharing transaction. Thus, trust is the key component that allows trusted community members to share “without calculating returns” (Price 1975, 4), making the social and emotional component paramount. Only through trust can individuals successfully deal with the resulting uncertainty and short-term imbalance of

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292  Handbook of the sharing economy good deeds (Hellwig et al. 2015). Consequently, there must be a high level of trust between community members, strengthened through positive experiences and re-engagement in sharing. Recurrence of this reinforcing process may translate into social capital, understood as a “connection among individuals’ social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam 2000, 19), which may in turn foster community and bonding through sharing (Albinsson and Perera 2012). In view of this self-reinforcing circle, researchers unsurprisingly argue that interpersonal, pro-social forms of sharing increase providers’ moral self-perceptions (Hellwig et al. 2015), relate to altruistic behavior (Belk 2010; Hellwig et al. 2015), and may sometimes be motivated by social desirability (Ariely and Norton 2009). Overall, trust has evolved as an important aspect of human and interpersonal relationships, building the foundation for effective transactions in a range of environments. Trust enables exchanges and transactions to take place, particularly when individuals encounter situations that are unpredictable and bear a certain potential for risk. Over time, trust in close communities evolved into trust in institutions. With the development of long-distance economic trade beyond close communities, a reputation as a trustworthy transaction partner became necessary for economic success (Greif 1989). Later, governmental and political institutions and large corporations were formed, causing a shift toward institution-based trust. In contrast to social trust, institution-based trust is based on regulation, property rights, and contracts, as well as on brand values and promises that vouch for current and future credibility (Mazzella et al. 2016; Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018). With regard to commercial transactions and risky financial operations, scholars emphasize the important role that information systems and digital technology play in building trust, and in enabling economic exchanges among strangers online (Masum and Tovey 2011). In this regard, digital technology is considered to have been helpful in unlocking the potential for building trust in the sharing economy (Mazzella et al. 2016). Indeed, platform-mediated trust is particularly salient in the sharing economy, where online platforms function as mediators between peers. Thus, online platforms enable peer-to-peer transactions involving products and services by implementing a variety of trust-building tools (Möhlmann 2016; Mazzella et al. 2016). More recently, a trend for decentralization has been driven by a vision to “eliminate intermediaries, thereby lowering operational costs and increasing the efficiency of a sharing service” (Sun et al. 2016, 6). Blockchain is a technology that seems to respond promisingly to this phenomenon. Before shedding light on this particular technology, we consider the means employed by platform operators to enhance their users’ reputation and hence facilitate the emergence of trust.

DESIGNING REPUTATION SYSTEMS TO LEVERAGE DIGITAL TRUST Many sharing economy platforms are now successfully acting as brokers between peers by designing for digital trust. Platforms act as intermediaries that facilitate trusted transactions between strangers, mainly by implementing a variety of tools that allow peers to engage in online transactions (Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018). For instance, a platform

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Leveraging trust on sharing economy platforms  293 may allow peers to display profile pictures or self-descriptions, present certifications and verifications, provide insurance cover, or implement escrow services in order to assure the safety of financial transactions (Ert et al. 2016; Ma et al. 2017; Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018; Teubner and Hawlitschek 2018). The most frequently discussed trust tools in research so far are reputation systems based on mutual star ratings and text reviews (Usrey and Graul 2017; Teubner and Glaser 2018; Zervas et al. 2015). Since transactions on sharing economy platforms typically involve first-time encounters between strangers, trust cannot be leveraged from personal histories and experiences, as was historically the case in families and communities. Peers often have no opportunity to build a history of personal interactions or gain first-hand experience of their peer’s expected behavior. Rating systems and text reviews serve to build reputation and offer peers access to information about how others have behaved in the past. Thus, ratings and reviews display accumulated social capital that offers valuable and independent signals about another individual’s behavior (Bolton et al. 2008; Mazzella et al. 2016). These tools were pioneered by online platforms such as Amazon, Booking.com, and eBay, which implemented ratings and review systems in order to establish trust between unknown buyers and providers (Belk 2015; Bolton et al. 2008; Pavlou and Gefen 2004; Masum and Tovey 2011; Rice 2012). Similar systems have since been implemented by sharing economy platforms, whereby users are typically enabled to rate their transaction partners once a transaction has been completed, and these ratings are then made publicly available. Such simultaneous reviews are a first attempt to address challenges such as skewed reviews, review fraud, and even gossiping and shaming on digital platforms (Solove 2007). This contrasts with the rating systems of some larger platforms such as Amazon (and Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, app stores, and so on), where there is no restriction, and every consumer is able to write a review or rate a product for the community, even if they have not actually purchased or used a product or service. Although platforms such as TripAdvisor may review comments before posting them publicly, lack of control is recognized as a drawback in the electronic word-of-mouth literature on digital reputation (Jensen et al. 2013). Trust Transfer and Reputation Portability Many sharing economy platforms involve rather complex trust relationships. This includes the interactions between trust in the mediating platform provider, trust in the peers engaging in transactions on the platform, trust in the shared goods or services, and even trust in the underlying technological infrastructure (Kumar et al. 2018; Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018). In this regard, trust transfers and reputation portability represent pivotal aspects in understanding trust formation processes in complex and multi-level contexts such as peer-based sharing and the platform economy (Kumar et al. 2018). Peers may build trust in a multitude of targets at different levels, and trust may refer to interpersonal trust, institutional or organizational trust, and even trust in technology (Jarvenpaa and Teigland 2017; Möhlmann and Geissinger 2018). In this regard, “trust transfer” refers to potential cross-level effects between different trust targets (Chen et al. 2015). This can refer to a situation in which one user trusts the other on a platform based on their trust in the platform itself. For example, hosts

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on Airbnb and sellers on eBay seem to “inherit” trustworthiness from the platform environment. Various studies have found empirical support for the transfer of trust from platform to users (Möhlmann 2016; Chen et al. 2015; Verhagen et al. 2006). Although most researchers seem to accept this finding as rather obvious, it is actually not straightforward, since platforms do not usually create particularly strict access controls or barriers. We assume that trust transfers may actually be two-sided or work in the opposite direction. For instance, the presence of particularly trustworthy users on a platform may render the entire platform environment, and hence the platform itself, more reliable and trustworthy. Extending the notion of trust transfer, “reputation portability” refers to a signal’s effectiveness when it originates in a different context from its current application (Teubner et al. 2019). For example, new hosts on Airbnb (with no Airbnb-based track record) might link to their long-standing history of eBay transactions as reputable sellers. Several studies suggest that trust-building may in fact work across platform boundaries. For instance, crowd workers’ performance (for example, in web development or translation) can be predicted from prior feedback scores from different contexts (Kokkodis and Ipeirotis 2016). Similarly, extant social media data (for example, from Facebook or Twitter) can be employed to infer a user’s legitimacy on novel or emerging platforms, distinguishing legitimate from fraudulent users (Venkatadri et al. 2016). In this regard, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, and particularly its notion of the free movement of data, effective from May 2018, addresses the issues of a lack of data sovereignty, impaired platform competition, and consumer lock-in effects. As the notion of “reputation portability” between consumer platforms is far from being fully understood, many future scenarios are conceivable, including panopticon-like rating transparency and surveillance as foreshadowed by the social credit system proposed by the Chinese government (see Alessandro Gandini’s Chapter 29 in this book).

UNPACKING THE TRUST POTENTIAL OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY AND CRYPTOCURRENCIES IN THE SHARING ECONOMY Recently, blockchain technology has been proposed as a promising and innovative way to eliminate the need for trust between strangers, enabling novel organizational structures in the form of decentralized autonomous organizations (Beck et al. 2016; Jarvenpaa and Teigland 2017). It is designed with the intention of emulating a “trusted computing service through a distributed protocol” (Cachin 2016, 1), which is expected to be more accountable and less prone to the common risks of centralized transactions (Zyskind and Nathan 2015). Indeed, blockchains promise to help streamline value chains, as they enable different stakeholders to easily share verified information. Employing blockchain technology allows the replacement of traditional hierarchies with distributed systems (De Filippi 2017). Ultimately, “people do not have to assess the trustworthiness of the intermediary or other participants in the network” (Nofer et al. 2017, 184).

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Leveraging trust on sharing economy platforms  295 Trust, Cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin While users have historically trusted in authorities such as central banks, the financial crisis and other developments have led them to question the wisdom of centralized hierarchies. Decentralized payment systems based on blockchain-based peer-to-peer networks are put forward as a response to this challenge (Lindman et al. 2017). Cryptocurrencies are typically free from bank and governmental regulation (Sas and Khairuddin 2017), and are considered suitable for transactions such as micro-payments, mobile payments, and peer-to-peer lending as a surrogate for traditional forms of money (Lindman et al. 2017). The most popular cryptocurrency example may be Bitcoin: an open, “transparent, fast, cost effective, and irreversible” system that relies on decentralized transactions between peers (Sas and Khairuddin 2017, 6499; see also Nakamoto 2008). Experts suggest that Bitcoin empowers users, enabling “a shift from trusting people to trusting math” (Nofer et al. 2017, 183; Antonopoulos 2014). While financial sector applications and payment systems lead the way in the recent blockchain hype, other sectors are starting to appreciate its potential and are beginning to design applications of decentralized systems for healthcare, transportation, and entertainment (Avital et al. 2016). Integration of technology promises to improve connective products and digital transactions, using blockchains as a solution for effective, trusted data management.

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Examples of Successful Applications of Blockchain Technology beyond Cryptocurrencies Although the application of blockchain technology by sharing economy platforms has not yet been widely adopted, we can start to identify several successful examples of social network applications such as Akasha, a decentralized social media network (De Filippi 2017). With regard to sharing economy applications facilitating peer-to-peer exchanges of products and services, the recently founded blockchain-based platform ShareRing aims to provide a holistic interface by combining and integrating existing applications, such as Airbnb and Uber, into a single overarching platform (Miller 2018). ShareRing claims to have the advantage that payments involve no additional fees. Rather, the system relies on its own cryptocurrency, called SharePay, which is combined with a system allowing for identity verification in order to prevent currency theft, thus establishing a secure and trusted environment for its users (ibid.). Other applications of blockchain in the sharing economy include OpenBazaar, a marketplace that facilitates sharing transactions without a “middleman,” and the decentralized, community-owned transportation platform Lazooz (De Filippi 2017). Some experts predict the beginning of an economy of “true sharing,” in which technology enables consumers to share directly (ibid.). Disadvantages and Challenges of Blockchain Technology It is important to consider not only the strengths, but also the weaknesses of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies (Beck et al. 2016). For instance, public awareness about enormous amounts of electricity involved in mining, and thus the environmental costs of adding transaction records to public ledgers, has increased recently. The public has become more aware of risks such as cyber-hacking attacks, theft, and accidental loss of “coins” (Crosby et al. 2015; Nofer et al. 2017). Indeed, scholars warn of a fragility created

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296  Handbook of the sharing economy by blockchains such as the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is susceptible to various forms of manipulation (Humayun and Belk 2018). Further, the notion that blockchains are “trust-free” has been criticized. Although blockchain technology promises high security and transparency, it still depends heavily on human intervention, for instance in the process of writing smart contracts. While these contractual agreements can be implemented automatically once they have been written (Beck et al. 2016; Morrison 2016), it may be necessary to negotiate contracts, for instance when writing new or seeking to change previously established rules. While blockchain technologies relieve users of the need to assess others’ or an intermediary’s trustworthiness (Nofer et al. 2017), successful transactions still depend on the involved peers’ trust in the underlying algorithms and in the designers and decision makers behind these algorithms (Hawlitschek et al. 2018; Humayun and Belk 2018). It has been noticed, moreover, that blockchain technology may only partially be able to address the social desires and behaviors of its users. While the blockchain may eliminate the need for institutional structures or remove the transaction costs incurred when relying on an intermediary (De Filippi 2017), paradoxically, previous research has shown that many peers are actually demanding institutional support when using these technologies (Sas and Khairuddin 2017). In this sense, cryptocurrencies may also remove a security layer as they eliminate banks’ ability to identify (malicious) actors, accept liability, or reverse erroneous or fraudulent transactions (Sas and Khairuddin 2017). Indeed, only private and “permissioned” blockchains can restrict access to trusted participants. Furthermore, blockchain technology may not align with regulation. For instance, the current European Union data protection law allows for reversibility by enabling participants to ask for their personal data to be removed from an institution’s servers. However, data entries on typical blockchains cannot be altered once documented (The Economist, 2018). In addition, blockchain technology can only assure secure transactions within the engineering framework of blockchains, but does not touch on trust outside the boundaries of its closed ecosystem (Glaser 2017; Hawlitschek et al. 2018). This is a challenge, since human behavior is not bound to digital ecosystems, particularly in the context of the sharing economy, where human interactions lie at the core of exchanges that may also take place offline (Möhlmann 2016). The Potential of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies: Public Discourse in the Reddit Community Having discussed the potential and challenges of these novel technologies in theory, we now take a closer look at the related public discourse. In seeking to investigate how the public perceives the potential of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the sharing economy, we conducted a simple yet effective study to help us to develop a more detailed understanding of public discussion of the topic in question. Our data are designed to mirror and enrich the arguments of our discussion of the latest stage of research on this topic. We analyzed forum entries from the Reddit community. Reddit is a US-based platform that allows peers to aggregate news and other publicly available content, which is then commented on, curated, and discussed in forums. We chose to use Reddit as our research

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Leveraging trust on sharing economy platforms  297 setting as it allows users to draw on a variety of sources and post all kinds of third-party content. Thus, Reddit was likely to provide us with a valuable understanding of which topics were dominating the public discourse at the time of analysis. As of 2017, the Reddit community had about half a million monthly users, and can thus certainly be considered to be one of the major sources of user-curated information aggregation in the US. Discourse analysis refers to a variety of methods employed to examine the role of language in social construction (Vaast et al. 2013). We harvested forum posts from the Reddit community in October 2017. Owing to the large volume of available data, most of which was relevant to our research objective, we used a subsample, derived by searching the Reddit forum for threads containing the four terms sharing, economy, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. We followed this procedure since it allowed us to identify threads that were directly relevant to our research objective (Jones and Alony 2008; Vaast et al. 2013). We retrieved 56 threads with a total of 1007 comments. Data points referred to forum entries reflecting individuals’ opinions and thoughts, and links to newspaper articles and other third-party content shared by community members on this topic of special interest. We determined the frequency of the four terms in the various threads. The descriptive results provide us with information on how often different terms appeared in the public discourse on Reddit. Our aggregated findings are summarized in the following. First, the Reddit discussions covered various topics, from which we identified five main thematic clusters: technical aspects, types of currency, business sectors, trust and security, and regulation (see Figure 23.1). Second, although our dataset was explicitly identified by filtering threads for relevant keywords, the term sharing economy was only mentioned 24 times in total (while the more general term sharing, which may not necessarily have been used to refer to the sharing economy, was counted 98 times). Synonyms for sharing economy, including collaborative economy, collaborative consumption, and gig economy, were not identified in the dataset. Instead, our findings reveal that topics addressing the banking industry dominated the discussion, with the term bank* counted 113 times. More than half of the keywords in the business sectors cluster referred to the banking industry, while only 10.7 percent referred to the sharing economy. Third, in the types of currency thematic cluster, we identified as many as 961 counts of the term Bitcoin: 75.6 percent of all conversations referring to different types of currency mentioned Bitcoin, while other currencies were addressed much less frequently (Ethereum 17.5 percent, Ripple 2.5 percent, Bitcoin Cash 2.3 percent, Litecoin 2.1 percent). Fourth, we detected that the Reddit community did refer to the topic area of trust and security. In the respective thematic cluster, the keywords secur* (46.9 percent), trust* (36.1 percent), and smart contract* (17.0 percent) were identified, although we did not detect extensive interest in this topic. Fifth, in comparing the popularity of the different topic areas, we found that trust and security (305 counts), and regulation (220 counts) were much less popular than the technical aspect (1723 counts) and types of currency (1272 counts) thematic clusters. In summary, the public discourse in our subsample drawn from the Reddit community was dominated by discussions of Bitcoin and the banking industry. Our results reflect public discourse focusing on the extraordinary surge in demand for cryptocurrencies in 2017, and in particular Bitcoin’s skyrocketing market prices. They suggest that this “Bitcoin hype” may have overshadowed the discourse on alternative applications of

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Regulation

Trust & Security

Blockchain Crypto Node Decentral Storage Mining Ledger Bitcoin Ethereum Ripple Bitcoin Cash Litecoin

Business Sectors

Currencies

Technical aspects

Term Frequency

0

200

400

600

800

Security Trust Smart Contract Government Regulation Law Bank P2P/peer-to-peer Commerce Sharing Economy Entrepeneur

1000

0

Technical aspects

Type of currency

Business sector

Trust and security

Regulation

Blockchain 605 (35.1%)

Bitcoin* (minus Bitcoin Cash) 961 (75.6%)

Bank* 113 (50.4%)

Secur* 143 (46.9%)

Government* 84 (38.2%)

Crypto* 398 (23.1%) Node* 255 (14.8%)

Ethereum* 223 (17.5%) Ripple* 32 (2.5%)

P2P/peer-to-peer 45 (20.1%) Commerc* 27 (12.1%)

Trust* 110 (36.1%) Smart Contract* 52 (17.0%)

Regulat* 71 (32.3%) Law* 65 (29.5%)

Decentral* 217 (12.6%) Storage* 92 (5.3%)

Bitcoin Cash* 29 (2.3%) Litecoin* 27 (2.1%)

Sharing Economy 24 (10.7%) Entrepren* 15 (6.7%)

1272 (100%)

224 (100%)

305 (100%)

220 (100%)

200

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Mining* 89 (5.2%) Ledger 67 (3.9%) 1723 (100%)

Figure 23.1  Public discourse on the potential of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the sharing economy blockchain technology. Although our dataset was identified by filtering threads for the keywords sharing, economy, blockchain, and cryptocurrency, very few posts actually referred to the sharing economy. Furthermore, trust and security were not identified as a very popular topic among Reddit community members, while a minority of discussions made reference to the notion of smart contracts, which is a key trust-building feature specific to the blockchain technology context. Our findings reveal that the public is not ignoring blockchain and cryptocurrencies, but has not yet picked up on the potential opportunities that these might bring through providing leverage in the explicit context of the sharing economy, and even fostering trust among participants in the sharing economy.

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CONCLUSION Experts suggest that urban life might be significantly improved by fostering sharing to reduce consumption, waste, and pollution, while conserving resources by exchanging underutilized assets with others (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Sundararajan 2016; Sun et al. 2016). Trust has been identified as a key enabler of sharing activities, helping to overcome risk and uncertainty by providing participants with a feeling of security (Graul and Theotokis 2016; Möhlmann 2015). In this chapter, we have outlined the historical evolution of trust, and have discussed how, for most of human history, trust and reputation have defined the core of personal relationships. Moreover, we have shed light on platforms in the sharing economy that currently build and maintain trust between peers by employing reputation systems. We have explored opportunities for and challenges to fostering trust based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the sharing economy, and have analyzed the public discourse in the Reddit community addressing these technological advances. It can be concluded that blockchain technology may offer a promising avenue for future ways in which sharing economy businesses may facilitate trust. Indeed, the integration of blockchain technology may allow for improvements regarding the decentralization of control in sharing economy applications, thus unveiling the full potential of peer-to-peer transactions online. To date, few sharing economy platforms have applied these technologies. The findings from our study even suggest that many platforms may currently be missing out. They do not succeed in raising awareness or triggering a public discourse that connects their business sector with the potential that these technologies may yield. Thus, we suggest that sharing economy platforms might take better advantage of the recent hype around blockchains and cryptocurrencies. However, sharing economy platforms must leverage this potential with great care, and be aware of the challenges and downsides that these technologies may bring, for themselves and their users. In this regard, we have critically discussed issues such as the amounts of electricity involved in mining, cyber-hacking, and data protection regulations. We have also argued that the notion of “trust-free” blockchains may be misleading. Rather than making trust obsolete, blockchain technology may alter how and whom users trust. Future research may examine how to overcome these challenges. Specifically, it is crucial to increase our understanding of how to link the advantages of this technology with the social desires and behaviors of its current and prospective users, and the human interventions necessary to set up the systems and keep them running. Indeed, human interaction lies at the core of sharing economy exchanges. Many platforms involve both online and offline interactions, such as when peers meet in person to share accommodation or a car ride after being matched online (Möhlmann 2016). So far, blockchain technology can only assure trust within, but not beyond, its narrow digital ecosystem. However, human interactions and trust relationships in the sharing economy are more complex, reaching beyond solely technological means. We encourage future research to address this gap and eventually enable sharing businesses to unlock their full potential.

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(2016), “Trust in the Sharing Economy: An Experimental Framework,” in Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Information Systems, Red Hook, NY: Curran Associates, 1–14. Hellwig, K., F. Morhart, F. Girardin, and M. Hauser (2015), “Exploring Different Types of Sharing: A Proposed Segmentation of the Market for ‘Sharing’ Businesses,” Psychology and Marketing, 32 (9), 891–906. Huckle, S., R. Bhattacharya, M. White, and N. Beloff (2016), “Internet of Things, Blockchain and Shared Economy Applications,” Procedia Computer Science, 98, 461–6. Humayun, M. and R. Belk (2018), “‘Satoshi is Dead. Long Live Satoshi’: The Curious Case of Bitcoin’s Creator,” in Consumer Culture Theory, ed. Samantha Cross, Cecilia Ruvalcaba, Alladi Venkatesh, and Russell Belk, London: Emerald Publishing, 19‒35. Jarvenpaa, S. and R. Teigland (2017), “Trust in Digital Environments: From the Sharing Economy to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations,” in Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 5812–16. Jensen, M.L., J.M. Averbeck, Z. Zhang, and K.B. Wright (2013), “Credibility of Anonymous Online Product Reviews: A Language Expectancy Perspective,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 30 (1), 293–324.

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Leveraging trust on sharing economy platforms  301 Jones, M. and I. Alony (2008). “Blogs: The New Source of Data Analysis,” Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 5, 433–46. Kokkodis, M. and P.G. Ipeirotis (2016), “Reputation Transferability in Online Labor Markets,” Management Science, 62 (6), 1687–706. Kumar, V., A. Lahiri, and O.B. Dogan (2018), “A Strategic Framework for a Profitable Business Model in the Sharing Economy,” Industrial Marketing Management, 69, 147–60. Lindman, J., V.K. Tuunainen, and M. Rossi (2017), “Opportunities and Risks of Blockchain Technologies: A Research Agenda,” in Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 1533–42. Ma, X., J.T. Hancock, K.L. Mingjie, and M. Naaman (2017), “Self-Disclosure and Perceived Trustworthiness of Airbnb Host Profiles,” in Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, New York: ACM, 2397–409. Masum, H. and M. Tovey (2011), The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mazzella, F., A. Sundararajan, V. Butt d’Espous, and M. Möhlmann (2016), “How Digital Trust Powers the Sharing Economy: The Digitization of Trust,” IESE Insight, 30 (3), 24–31. Miller, L. (2018), “Blockchain and the Sharing Economy: A Match made in Heaven? This Startup Plans to Prove It,” The Next Web, April, https://tnw.to/vuMTZ. Möhlmann, M. (2015), “Collaborative Consumption: Determinants of Satisfaction and the Likelihood of Using a Sharing Economy Option Again,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14 (3), 193–207. Möhlmann, M. (2016), “Digital Trust and Peer-to-Peer Collaborative Consumption Platforms: A Mediation Analysis,” working paper, July 22. Möhlmann, M. and A. Geissinger (2018), “Trust in the Sharing Economy: Platform-Mediated Peer Trust,” in Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy, ed. N. Davidson, M. Finck, and J. Unfranca, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 27‒37. Morrison, A. (2016), “Blockchain and Smart Contract Automation: How Smart Contracts Automate Digital Business,” PwC Next in Tech, March 20, http://usblogs.pwc.com/emerging-technology/blockchain-and-smartcontract-autom​ation-an-introduction-and-forecast/. Nakamoto, N. (2008). “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. Nofer, M., P. Gomber, O. Hinz, and D. Schiereck (2017), “Blockchain,” Business and Information Systems Engineering, 59 (3), 183–7. Pavlou, P.A. and D. Gefen (2004), “Building Effective Online Marketplaces with Institution-Based Trust,” Information Systems Research, 15 (1), 37–59. Price, J.A. (1975), “Sharing: The Integration of Intimate Economies,” Anthropologica, 17 (1), 3–27. Putnam, R.D. (2000), “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” in Culture and Politics: A Reader, ed. L. Crothers and C. Lockhart, New York: St Martin’s Press, 223–34. Rice, S.C. (2012), “Reputation and Uncertainty in Online Markets: An Experimental Study,” Information Systems Research, 23 (2), 436–52. Sas, C. and I. Khairuddin (2017), “Design for Trust: An Exploration of the Challenges and Opportunities of Bitcoin Users,” in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction 2017, 6499–510, doi:10.1145/3025453.3025886. Solove, D.J. (2007), The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sun, J., J. Yan, and K.Z. Zhang (2016), “Blockchain-Based Sharing Services: What Blockchain Technology can Contribute to Smart Cities,” Financial Innovation, 2 (26), doi:10.1186/s40854-016-0040-y. Sundararajan, A. (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Swan, M. (2015), Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy, Farnham: O’Reilly Media. Teubner, T. and Glaser, F. (2018), “Up or Out: The Dynamics of Star Rating Scores on Airbnb,” in ECIS 2018 Proceedings, 1–13. Teubner, T. and F. Hawlitschek (2018), “The Economics of Peer-to-Peer Online Sharing,” in The Sharing Economy: Possibilities, Challenges, and the Way Forward, ed. P.A. Albinsson and B.Y. Perera, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Publishing, 129–56. Teubner, T., F. Hawlitschek, and M.T.P. Adam (2019), “Reputation Transfer,” Business and Information Systems Engineering, 61 (2), 229‒35. Usrey, B. and A. Graul (2017), “False Positives: How Double-Sided Review Systems Affect Consumers’ Rating Valence,” paper presented at the North American Conference of the Association of Consumer Research, San Diego, CA, October. Vaast, E., E.J. Davidson, and T. Mattson (2013), “Talking about Technology: The Emergence of a New Actor Category through New Media,” MIS Quarterly, 37 (4), 1069–92. Venkatadri, G., C. Zhong, and K.P. Gummadi (2016), “Strengthening Weak Identities through Inter-Domain

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Trust Transfer,” in Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web, ed. J. Bourdeau, New York: ACM, 1249–59. Verhagen, T., S. Meents, and Y.H. Tan (2006), “Perceived Risk and Trust Associated with Purchasing at Electronic Marketplaces,” European Journal of Information Systems, 15 (6), 542–55. Zervas, G., D. Proserpio, and J. Byers (2015), “A First Look at Online Reputation on Airbnb, where Every Stay is Above Average,” working paper, doi:10.2139/ssrn.2554500. Zyskind, G. and O. Nathan (2015), “Decentralizing Privacy: Using Blockchain to Protect Personal Data,” in Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Security and Privacy Workshops, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 180–84.

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24.  Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy* 6

Jérôme Mallargé, Alain Decrop and Pietro Zidda

INTRODUCTION Collaborative consumption, by its very nature, alters the service evaluation process in the sharing economy. As an illustration, consider the story of John from Brussels who wants to visit a friend in Paris:

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To reach Paris, John decides to use Blablacar, a well-known long distance carpooling service, which is appealing because he hopes to keep the costs down and also wants to meet new people. On the day of his departure, John waits for Bob, a stranger driving to Paris, whose online profile makes him look quite serious; he also has pretty good evaluations. Yet Bob is 15 minutes late. In addition, John has an unpleasant surprise when the car finally arrives at the meeting point; it was described as a 5-seater, but the car is smaller than implied, and the two other guys in the rear seat already have filled the car’s trunk with their luggage. While engaged in some nice conversation, John spends the next three hours squeezed in a tiny car with his bag on his lap. Amazingly, he seems to manage it and does not feel unhappy.

This short story illustrates a typical situation for many collaborative consumers, as reflected in their testimonials (Stephany 2015). Collaborative exchanges differ from traditional commercial exchanges, especially with regard to customer satisfaction. Companies such as Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, and Deliveroo have dramatically changed the way people consume products and services all over the world. Most of these collaborative initiatives involve peer-to-peer relationships, in which acquisition and distribution processes are coordinated through online platforms (Hamari et al. 2016), whether for a fee or for free (Belk 2014b). This triadic relationship distinguishes these collaborative practices from traditional dyadic exchanges (Benoit et al. 2017), such that they involve a peer service provider, a service user, and a platform between them. The triad makes it more complex to identify the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder; it also raises new issues with respect to consumers’ evaluations of their collaborative experiences. A key role of the collaborative platform is to build trust, in that it facilitates contacts and exchanges and provides support (Ikkala and Lampinen 2015). In turn, the uncertainty inherent to peer-to-peer exchanges may diminish. Moreover, people’s willingness to engage in offline collaborative exchanges often depends on their perceived similarities with the peer service provider (Kunz and Seshadri 2015), whether those similarities refer to shared statuses, ethos or values (Decrop et al. 2018). Still, exchanges between strangers are not the only source of uncertainty. The outcome and service delivery are also uncertain, because the peer providing the service usually is not a professional. The *  The authors thank Marie Dewitte, a Master’s student at the University of Namur, Belgium, for contributing to this chapter.

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304  Handbook of the sharing economy extreme ­heterogeneity that results makes it difficult for consumers to develop expectations. Furthermore, the service situations sometimes mimic what they would experience in their everyday life (for example, hosting a friend), or participants in the sharing economy may be consumers and providers successively (for example, guest today, host next month). These traits create a basis for empathy and blur roles, potentially influencing the evaluation process. In addition, exchanges can vary over a range, from pure sharing, which is characterized by love, a lack of reciprocity demands, and the irrelevance of money, to pure exchange, which entails reciprocity, impersonality, and a monetary basis (Belk 2014a; Habibi et al. 2016). According to Habibi et al. (2016), each collaborative initiative is unique and falls somewhere between these two extremes, depending on the relative weight of each prototypical characteristic of a sharing or commodity exchange. Collaborative consumption thus takes place in a context in which the logics are associated with market and non-market economies (Scaraboto 2015). This mix of prototypical characteristics illustrates the complexity of evaluating collaborative experiences and their differences with traditional forms of exchange, including sources of (dis)satisfaction. All these elements appear to influence how collaborative consumers evaluate collaborative exchanges. This chapter therefore seeks to contribute to extant literature by investigating the consumer satisfaction process in the sharing economy, identifying features that differentiate this context from more traditional settings, and providing an alternative explanation of the satisfaction process in collaborative service settings.

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CONSUMER SATISFACTION IN TRADITIONAL AND SHARING ECONOMIES Consumer satisfaction is a summary state of psychological processes. Oliver (2015, 8) defines it as: “the consumer’s fulfillment response. It is a judgment that a product/service feature, or the product or service itself, provided (or is providing) a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment, including levels of under- or overfulfillment.” It comprises both affective and cognitive dimensions. The cognitive dimension is central to the disconfirmation paradigm (Oliver 2015), which anticipates that consumers compare the effective performance of a product/service against their expectations. In the two last decades, a few authors have challenged the overarching disconfirmation paradigm and have brought empirical evidence to support alternative accounts of satisfaction (Arnould and Price 1993). For example, Fournier and Mick (1999) identify a number of anomalies and paradoxes in the disconfirmation paradigm and suggest that satisfaction is dynamic by nature. Several modes of (dis)satisfaction coexist (e.g., Fournier and Mick 1999; Oliver 2015; Vanhamme 2001), and a consumer can switch from one mode or prototype of (dis)satisfaction to another, or even maintain “balancing paradoxes.” Using a product could evoke satisfaction, but stress or anxiety at the same time. If the consumer does not manage the paradox well, it can lead to negative consequences. Herzberg et al. (1959) propose an alternative view of the satisfaction process, which they call two-factor theory. They argue that consumers may be satisfied and dissatisfied at the same time, and that the drivers of satisfaction (that is, intrinsic factors or motivators)

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Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy  305

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may differ from the drivers of dissatisfaction (that is, extrinsic or hygiene factors). Hygiene factors might eliminate dissatisfaction but cannot increase satisfaction. This perspective has prompted some interesting conceptualizations of (dis)satisfaction, which suggest that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are actually two separate constructs (e.g., Maddox 1981) and that people feel satisfaction and dissatisfaction independently with respect to a particular consumption experience (Mackoy and Spreng 1995). Little research has attempted to investigate the concept of satisfaction within the sharing economy. Möhlmann (2015) studies two collaborative practices (Airbnb and Car2Go) using a quantitative approach and identifies cost savings, familiarity, trust, utility, service quality, and community belonging as the main determinants of satisfaction. According to Tussyadiah (2016), enjoyment, cost saving, and amenities consistently affect satisfaction in peer-to-peer accommodation services. For guests renting private bedrooms, for example, social benefits have a positive impact on satisfaction, but sustainability has a negative effect. Other researchers use a relational benefit approach (Gwinner et al. 1998) to measure impacts on commitment and loyalty (Yang et al. 2017). Yet these studies present limitations, in that they address classical paradigms and concepts of satisfaction, often based on the disconfirmation paradigm. Because collaborative consumption implies a distinct type of exchange, the revised context may lead consumers to change their attitudes or behaviors toward consumption (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012; Botsman and Rogers 2010); it also might imply a shift in their expectations and evaluation criteria. In our attempt to deepen the understanding of satisfaction processes related to collaborative services in the sharing economy and to identify how they differ from traditional services, we build on the two-factor theory and investigate sources of (dis)satisfaction. We also consider how the unique characteristics of collaborative exchanges affect the evaluation process; in particular, we specify the role of the collaborative platform (for example, how consumers evaluate the experience offered by the platform versus the experience which is lived with the peer).

METHODS AND RELATED FINDINGS To clarify the evaluation process and the roots of (dis)satisfaction with respect to collaborative exchanges, we adopt a qualitative approach, which can generate unique insights into how consumers and providers behave, and why (Belk et al. 2013). We combine two complementary methods: an analysis of archival online data, and critical incident techniques (Flanagan 1954). Considering both tangible and intangible exchanges that require different levels of involvement and trust, we investigate three major sectors of the sharing economy (PwC 2016): accommodation, transportation, and goods. Accordingly, we start with a discussion of the findings emerging from our online data analyses, which reveal similarities and differences across initiatives and sectors and provide initial insights into the evaluation process paradigms. Then we discuss the results of our critical incident technique, before summarizing with a general discussion of the main contributions of this chapter.

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306  Handbook of the sharing economy Sharing Experiences: Thematic Analysis of Online Data Online qualitative research can generate a deep understanding of a phenomenon through a naturalistic and unobtrusive approach that may include netnography or analyses of archival data (Kozinets 2006). We analyzed thematically more than 2000 posts (in French and English) about 23 collaborative consumption initiatives in the three focal sectors. These posts, collected from forums and blogs, describe (dis)satisfying experiences of consumers and the sources of their (dis)satisfaction. We only considered messages posted after 2010, to ensure we had timely information. What did you expect? Most messages describing collaborative accommodation experiences refer to Airbnb or Couchsurfing. The former is a commercial system, allowing travelers to stay in another person’s home for a fee or even to rent the space. In contrast, Couchsurfing is a non-commercial hospitality network that offers sleeping accommodations for free. The comments describing these experiences reveal a key difference in terms of how consumers perceive and refer to the two systems, sometimes even comparing them explicitly. The data suggest different mindsets and ethos (that is, behavioral norms and codes of conduct) for the two collaborative initiatives. Depending on whether the accommodation is free of charge, consumers consider distinctive elements in their evaluation approach, as the two following quotes illustrate:

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I have been guest and host on Airbnb. No bad experiences, except a guest who canceled 3 hours after his foreseen arrival time. I didn’t refund him because we already had prepared the bedroom and refused other persons. It seems normal . . . but I proposed new dates. Airbnb is great but it takes time to discuss by e-mails with your hosts and if their answers do not convince you, go on your way. I often hosted people from everywhere and it is a great pleasure to give them a lot of good tips. It is often not expensive and is really friendly. (Nadège, Switzerland) I have used Couchsurfing since 2010. Honestly, I strongly recommend it!! It is a good way to travel with a small budget but this is not the main advantage of Couchsurfing. Above all, the goal is meeting locals, sharing their daily life, their culture and also their advice and good tips. You have to know that Couchsurfing is a state of mind. Staying with a local in his couch, that is not like a hotel. You are still a little bit dependent on your host and on his habits, and each experience is unique. You may have a bedroom or sleep on the ground, share meals together or maybe not see your host at all. To summarize, you must be open-minded and ready to improvise, to adapt yourself and especially share your time with your host. (Cocci47)

As these two quotes reveal, expectations differ depending on whether travelers use a commercial system like Airbnb or a free one such as Couchsurfing. Money is not a factor for the Couchsurfing experience, though the informant also suggests that every experience is different, leaving much room for improvisation. Couchsurfers do not form clear expectations about what they will get, as they depend on their hosts. The key word is thus “adaptation.” In contrast, travelers’ stories about Airbnb consistently refer to well-defined elements, including more formal relations and planning, as well as procedures such as cancellations, similar to hotels. Airbnb users also mention using concrete elements such as pictures or ad descriptions obtained during their reservation as points of comparison for their post-experience evaluation. Their evaluation of the experience seems

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Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy  307 more rational and closer to a traditional disconfirmation paradigm, as illustrated in the following review. Compared with Couchsurfing users, they adopt an “I get what I paid for” logic, even if social and relational factors still might exert some effect: I am back from New York since July 11, hosted in an Airbnb apartment. As promised, here is the feedback: ●  Apartment: first floor apartment of individual house, independent, conform to the description on the website and even better. Around 50 m², a fitted kitchen, air conditioning, a garden, phone/internet/ television and nicely decorated. ●  Owner: very kind and helpful. They offered us a barbecue when we arrived and they brought us back to the airport at the end. They speak French. ●  Location: located in a calm area, 30 min. away from Time Square by bus. Recommendations by previous guests are strictly conform to what I have lived. I paid $1057 for 15 days, we were 4. For me that was perfect! (ledzep68, France)

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It’s all about money, or nearly so Other posts we collected for the online data analysis pertain to a carpooling service in Europe (BlaBlaCar) and two car-sharing systems: Autolib (which works like Zipcar) that handles its own car fleet, and Drivy, a peer-to-peer system that allows users to rent the use of their personal car to others. In all three cases, exchanges are monetized; only BlaBlaCar and Drivy entail peer-to-peer exchanges. This exchange appears important for BlaBlaCar users, though they also express complaints about the evolution of the service and changes in mindsets. Initially perceived as a service for helping people, sharing the cost of travel, or avoiding driving long distances alone and silently, it has evolved into a low-cost alternative to taking the train or bus: For 4 years, I have been user of Blablacar and I have seen how the mindset changed from mutual aid and solidarity to a seller–consumer relationship (even if it is not always the case). My story? A well-defined drive (time and location), a female driver who didn’t come (and didn’t answer to my call) and a nightmare for me to arrive at time to Lyon for my first job day. So, I asked the website to refund me. They said it is ok if the driver does not confirm the drive within the 8 days. Well, 3 weeks later, I called back Blablacar and they said that the f****** driver has already been indemnified and they remind me cancellation terms and conditions. I don’t like the way the website is taking. (Maxime73)

Such an evolution creates misbehaviors and frustrations, reinforcing the perception of the service as being commercial, or what some users call simply “an improved taxi.” Similar to the findings for accommodations, dissatisfaction stems from situations wherein the service provider and the user do not share the same ethos and values (that is, mutual aid and solidarity for Maxime73). A similar source of frustration emerges in car-sharing systems if previous users fail to respect the car, the next user, or the renter. Users appear mainly interested in cost benefits and convenience. The frustration increases even more when the platform reacts poorly or inappropriately, as Maxime73 indicated. Moving away from the sharing principles, and the frustration about changing codes of conduct, reflect Bialski’s (2018) findings, which show that Airbnb exchanges are not about hospitality, often reflect an economic imperative, and thus promote ideals different from an ideological or aesthetic regime.

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308  Handbook of the sharing economy It is my pleasure to give and to receive Some people subscribe to non-profit platforms such as Freecycle.org or KidiTroc in which they can give (or obtain) items for free. For the majority of people using those platforms, the pleasure of giving leaves them with no expectation of returns. They are happy to offer new life to their furniture, appliances, or clothing because it is good for the environment and can help someone. They do not expect reciprocity, just a thank-you. Yet it is not uncommon for a receiver to give something in return, on their own initiative. When receivers share chocolates, flowers, or jam, it results in a pleasurable experience. Furthermore, these users often mention that giving, recycling, and using secondhand shopping sites is a way of life, and they denounce current society and its prioritization of money, as the following quote illustrates:

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Even if I can, I refuse to buy new clothes. First, to have not the same uniform clothes that everybody has, and second, because I find those same clothes in second-hand trades. For instance, I had spotted a Manoukian dress for €100 and 3 months later I found it on a second-hand trade for €5. My boots? Yeah a really nice pair that I bought €10 on eBay because the girl received them for Christmas and she didn’t like them. And well, finally, this is above all for the pleasure to meet people on eBay and “Le Bon Coin,” because in a consumption society, we consume and we throw away, not because it doesn’t work anymore but because we don’t like it anymore. Moreover, giving is a selfish pleasure because we make someone happy and I like it! At the opposite, I make me happy too in buying myself really nice pieces. (Pauldine)

Of course, one should question such positive, altruistic, and progressive discourses that might reflect self-selection and extremism biases of online archives. Such acts, described as transgressive and fighting the market economy, are paradoxically determined by capitalism itself. In line with Livingstone (2018, 117), with his reference to charity, altruistic and secondhand exchanges are not transformative but rather are part of capitalist society. These exchanges even become commodities and fetishized ideas, representative of materialistic interactions among people. Finally, codes of conduct define these exchange processes, but often refer to principles of good behavior (for example, being on time). Key sources of frustration are free-riders, disrespectful peers, scammers, or the platform itself. The last two sources are connected: platforms are often criticized for failing to exert enough control over posts and profiles. Poor or inappropriate responses from the platform to a request (for example, mediation, recovery) are another source of dissatisfaction. Thus platforms function as exchange facilitators, such that they are perceived as competent only if the exchange goes well. If a problem occurs, platforms become a main source of dissatisfaction, especially in monetized exchanges. Our findings thus highlight a number of elements that inform (dis)satisfaction formation in the context of sharing experiences. Relational elements (for example, respect, availability, relational investment) appear to be the main sources of satisfaction when the exchange is not monetized; in contrast, functional elements take priority in monetized exchanges (for example, convenience, price, quality). These findings accord with previous research into the role of sociality in exchanges (that is, core to the offer or not) and how it depends on the monetization of shared experiences (Hellewig et al. 2018).

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Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy  309

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Critical Incident Technique: Structuring (Dis)satisfaction Criteria We carried out a critical incident analysis to deepen the insights gained from the thematic analysis of online data. This method supports a systematic analysis of data and has been used successfully in prior service research, especially to identify the sources of (dis)satisfaction in service encounters (e.g., Bitner et al. 1994; Bitner et al. 1990). For this study, we selected 56 critical incidents posted online during summer 2017 among Belgian collaborative consumers (68 percent women, mean age = 35 years). An incident had to meet several criteria to be included in the sample (Bitner et al. 1990): (1) relate a sharing experience; (2) be very satisfying or dissatisfying; (3) be a discrete episode; and (4) be sufficiently detailed to be visualized by the researcher. In line with our previous analyses and the differences observed in the evaluation processes, the 56 critical incidents were analyzed and classified in four groups and ten subgroups, defined according to whether the experiences were (dis)satisfying in a (non-)monetized context. Figure 24.1 depicts this classification of incidents. In Groups 1 and 2, informants reported incidents that left them dissatisfied with their sharing experience. All three sectors identified in the previous section were represented. The main causes of dissatisfaction are the platform (subgroup 1A), the service (subgroup 1B), and the peers (subgroups 1C, 1D, and 2A). In particular, 1B refers to incidents for which users do not obtain what they expected; 1C refers to incidents for which peer providers are responsible (for example, driver did not come to the meeting point); and 1D involves problems with former users (for example, a previous user has not mentioned damage to the car). Finally, the subgroup 2A refers to incidents for which a peer distorted the system (for example, reselling a secondhand gift). Groups 3 and 4 feature incidents that indicate a satisfying sharing experience. Subgroup 3A includes incidents for which service expectations were met; 3B refers to experiences in which consumers shared pleasurable moments with their peers. In subgroup 4A, the source of satisfaction is the act of sharing itself, whether giving or helping; whereas in 4B, meeting and discussing with people add value to the exchange. Finally, subgroup 4C pertains to functional attributes such as quality, rapidity, and free services that produce satisfaction for respondents. This analysis of critical incidents confirms the importance of relational and functional elements for (dis)satisfaction formation, depending on the monetization of the exchange. Monetizing exchanges seems to lead users to form expectations (about the peer provider and the platform), resulting in a rational evaluation based on the disconfirmation paradigm. Even when functional elements prevail, though, many informants also mention relational notions. The relational dimension thus is central, regardless of exchange characteristics (for example, tangible versus intangible, monetized or not), but the absence of relational elements does not seem to be a source of dissatisfaction. Instead, it reduces satisfaction. Therefore, Herzberg et al.’s (1959) two-factor model appears relevant to collaborative consumption. In a monetized context, collaborative consumers consider functional elements as part of the dissatisfaction continuum, such that unsatisfactory performance can lead to dissatisfaction, but an acceptable or outstanding performance on these elements will not produce satisfaction. In this context, functional elements could be considered extrinsic or hygiene factors, as illustrated by the following:

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Yes

Is it a monetized exchange?

Figure 24.1  Classification of incidents (N = 56)

Is the sharing experience satisfying?

No

Is it a monetized exchange?

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No

Yes

No

Yes

Group 4

Group 3

Group 2

Group 1

Source/ Object?

Source/ Object?

Source/ Object?

Source/ Object?

Services themselves

Act of Sharing (social)

Act of Sharing (good deed)

Act of Sharing (social)

Services themselves

Distorting Users

Former Service Users

Peer Service Providers

Services themselves

Collaborative Platforms

Subgroup 4C

Subgroup 4B

Subgroup 4A

Subgroup 3B

Subgroup 3A

Subgroup 2A

Subgroup 1D

Subgroup 1C

Subgroup 1B

Subgroup 1A

Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy  311 [I am] dissatisfied because the owner presented a room for two persons and the possibility to have additional beds. Finally, we were in a kind of opened attic with no doors and a window without blind and three mattresses on the floor. No intimacy . . . we heard systematically what the owner did. We got few contacts with her. I think she did it for money. I really thought that kind of rental meant welcome, sharing of experience, discussion, advices, etc. (Odile)

As explained by Odile, a lack of functional elements engenders dissatisfaction. But when asked what could be done to make the experience more satisfying, she mentioned relational elements: “Be more warmhearted and more welcoming towards her guests.” As Hellwig et al. (2018, 138) find in their research concerning Airbnb: “the accommodation is at the core of the transaction and sociality is the extra that is nice, but is not expected and cannot be ‘demanded’.” It also illustrates what Bialski (2018) called the commoditization of the private sphere, moving away from the concept of hospitality. An opposite reasoning applies for non-monetized exchanges. Functional elements are part of the satisfaction continuum; the absence or a weak performance of functional elements leads not to dissatisfaction but to a lack or a reduction of satisfaction. As illustration, Marie explains how she receives second-hand tools and how relational elements prevail, in her experience:

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I sent an email to the platform to see if someone has second-hand tools that he does not use anymore. I received a mail after 3 days from a generous person giving me 12 tools. Moreover the pleasure to obtain it for free, that was also an extremely pleasant meeting. I think it was also a pleasure for him. I am grateful for what he does . . . I did not receive any pictures and I wondered how the tools would be. I was positively surprised of their condition! . . . His response was exhaustive, he spent time to check what he had. Yeah a huge enthusiasm to share each other. (Marie)

It is important to note that functional elements can lead to satisfaction in non-monetized context only if relational elements (that is, intrinsic factors or motivators) are present. We summarize the main findings in Table 24.1.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In combining two methodologies, this study offers a deeper understanding of the sources of (dis)satisfaction. The results of the critical incident technique confirm the findings that emerged from the online data analysis, which suggest the importance of relational aspects, especially in non-monetized contexts. Monetized exchanges are likely to be evaluated according to the disconfirmation paradigm, whereas during sharing experiences the confirmation of expectations is important, but it does not systematically lead to satisfaction. Sources of satisfaction do not appear to be the same as antecedents of dissatisfaction, which is in line with Herzberg et al.’s (1959) two-factor theory. Our data also highlight some compensation phenomena. The platform performances might be dissatisfying, yet the overall experience could be evaluated positively, due to the peer-to-peer relation or simply because the service is delivered as expected. Thus, satisfaction is not static but rather a dynamic process involving multiple factors. Different modes of (dis)satisfaction appear to coexist (Fournier and Mick 1999; Oliver 2015; Vanhamme 2001). Each mode reveals how (dis)satisfaction responses emerge. We

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312  Handbook of the sharing economy Table 24.1  S  ummary of research findings about evaluation processes in the sharing economy

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Exchanges

Dominant paradigm observed

Monetized

Disconfirmation paradigm (i.e., service must meet most expectations)

Nonmonetized

Two-factor theory (i.e., service must match some criteria)

Two-factor theory applied to collaborative exchanges Intrinsic factors

Extrinsic factors

Relational elements: Respect ● Honesty ● Availability ● Involvement (time and effort) ● Relationship with peer ● Pleasure

Functional elements: ● Convenience ● Price ● Quality ● Easy to use Relational elements: ●  Honesty (peers and platform) Relational elements: ● Respect ● Honesty (peers) ● Pleasure ●  Symbolic rewards (e.g., thank you, smiles)

●

Relational elements: Availability ● Involvement (time and effort) ● Relationship with peer Functional elements (only when relational elements characterize the exchange): ● Convenience ● Price ● Quality ● Easy to use ●

identified two modes of satisfaction and two modes of dissatisfaction within the sharing economy. First, “satisfaction-as-pleasure” is often evoked and related to feelings of happiness provided by sharing, giving, meeting, or helping. It is especially present in non-monetized exchanges and represents a reason why people participate in collaborative initiatives. Second, “satisfaction-as-delight” principally relates to two elements, depending on whether exchanges are monetized or not. In non-monetized exchanges, the main element is trust. Informants appreciate the level of trust an unknown person shows in hosting them or allowing them to travel in their cars. Another element refers to receiving more than expected, whether material (for example, the host leaves chocolates on the pillow) or immaterial. In this case, delight is deeper and related to the feelings that the exchange produces within the actors. It often (but not exclusively) occurs when people use the service for the first time. These two modes of satisfaction are relevant for both monetized and non-monetized contexts but are stronger in non-monetized settings. Two modes of dissatisfaction emerge from our data as well: “dissatisfaction-asdisappointment” and “dissatisfaction-as-indignation.” Collaborative users and providers may be upset by the misbehavior of their peers. In terms of the collected incidents, peers represent the main source of dissatisfaction, whether the exchange is monetized or not. The many sharing experiences we analyzed indicate that these two modes systematically operate together: sadness is mixed with or transformed into anger. This feeling is even

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Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy  313 stronger when users distort the main goal of the sharing initiative. The two modes of dissatisfaction also emerge on the platforms, especially if these fail to exert sufficient control or are not making enough service recovery efforts. In these two situations, dissatisfactionas-indignation prevails, reinforced by perceptions of unfair treatment (as illustrated in the quote from Maxime73). Notably, unlike satisfaction, dissatisfaction modes apply to both monetized and non-monetized exchanges. Platforms are perceived as responsible when exchanges are monetized. In non-monetized settings, the dissatisfaction roots go beyond peers. Similar to satisfaction, the causes of dissatisfaction refer to human values, philosophy, education, and society. More than the transactional exchange, people evaluate the social context and related values. With this study, we confirm Fournier and Mick’s (1999) suggestion that a single satisfaction score cannot account for a complete evaluation, especially in a collaborative context. We emphasize the complexity of evaluating a sharing experience, due to the triadic relations. The role of platforms is well documented, yet the respective roles of users and providers are not well understood in peer-to-peer sharing communities, especially in the case of service failures. Platforms have a crucial role to play, due to their centrality in the relationship. By exerting some control over profiles and posts, platforms can create the foundation for a better experience. They improve utilitarian value by doing what they are expected to do (ease the exchange, exert control, build trust), but they also enhance relational value. Improved control can circumscribe fake profiles and distortions, which can generate satisfaction and reduce the main causes of dissatisfaction. Still, “although requirements of self-curation can mitigate unwanted behaviors, they can also deter people from too many rules and people feel stifled by them” (Philip et al. 2018, 172). Platforms should clarify the roles that each partner must play in the exchange (especially with respect to recovery phases, to avoid perceptions of unfair or imbalanced treatment). This issue is fundamental when the exchange is monetized, because platforms are perceived as after-sales agents in this case. By reacting properly and rapidly, platforms can limit consumer frustration. Finally, collaborative services should focus their value propositions on relational elements. Our analysis suggests that these elements are key to generate satisfaction in monetized and non-monetized contexts. Such a goal could be achieved by improving communications, with both users and providers, about the principal objectives of collaborative initiatives and the general mindset underlying them. It also may be necessary to remind disruptive participants of the platform’s basic values and shared ethos, to avoid potential problems. More than just building trust between strangers, platforms must co-produce confidence among these peers (Philip et al. 2018).

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314  Handbook of the sharing economy Belk, Russell W., Eileen Fischer, and Robert V. Kozinets (2013), Qualitative Consumer and Marketing Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Benoit, Sabine, Thomas L. Baker, Ruth N. Bolton, et al. (2017), “A Triadic Framework for Collaborative Consumption (CC): Motives, Activities and Resources and Capabilities of Actors,” Journal of Business Research, 79, 219–27. Bialski, Paula (2018), “Home for Hire: How the Sharing Economy Commoditises our Private Sphere,” in Sharing Economies in Times of Crisis: Practices, Politics and Possibilities, ed. Anthony Ince and Sarah M. Hall, New York: Routledge, 83–95. Bitner, Mary Jo, Bernard H. Booms, and Lois A. Mohr (1994), “Critical Service Encounters: The Employee’s Viewpoint,” Journal of Marketing, 58 (October), 95–106. Bitner, Mary Jo, Bernard H. Booms, and Mary Stanfield Tetreault (1990), “The Service Encounter: Diagnosing Favorable and Unfavorable Incidents,” Journal of Marketing, 54 (January), 71–84. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, New York: HarperBusiness. Decrop, Alain, Giacomo Del Chiappa, Jérôme Mallargé, and Pietro Zidda (2018), “‘Couchsurfing has made me a better person and the world a better place’: The Transformative Power of Collaborative Tourism Experiences,” Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 35 (1), 57–72. Flanagan, John C. (1954), “The Critical Incident Technique,” Psychological Bulletin, 51 (July), 327–58. Fournier, Susan and David G. Mick (1999), “Rediscovering Satisfaction,” Journal of Marketing, 63 (4), 5–23. Gwinner, Kevin P., Dwayne D. Gremler, and Mary Jo Bitner (1998), “Relational Benefits in Service Industries: The Customer’s Perspective,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 26 (2), 101–14. Habibi, Mohammad Reza, Andrea Kim, and Michel Laroche (2016), “From Sharing to Exchange: An Extended Framework of Dual Modes of Collaborative Nonownership Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 277–94. Hamari, Juho, Mimmi Sjöklint, and Antti Ukkonen (2016), “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (9), 2047–59. Hellewig, Katharina, Russell Belk, and Felicitas Morhart (2018), “Shared Moments of Sociality: Embedded Sharing within Peer-to-Peer Hospitality Platforms,” in Sharing Economies in Times of Crisis: Practices, Politics and Possibilities, ed. Anthony Ince and Sarah M. Hall, New York: Routledge, 125–41. Herzberg, Frederick, Bernard Mausner, and Barbara B. Snyderman (1959), The Motivation to Work, 2nd edition, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Ikkala, Tapio and Airi Lampinen (2015), “Monetizing Network Hospitality: Hospitality and Sociability in the Context of AirBnB,” in Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Vancouver, BC, 1033–44. Kozinets, Robert V. (2006), Netnography: Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, London: SAGE. Kunz, Werner and Sukanya Seshadri (2015), “From Virtual Travelers to Real Friends: Relationship-Building Insights from an Online Travel Community,” Journal of Business Research, 68 (9), 1822–28. Livingstone, Nicola (2018), “Franchising the Disenfranchised? The Paradoxical Spaces of Food Banks,” in Sharing Economies in Times of Crisis: Practices, Politics and Possibilities, ed. Anthony Ince and Sarah M. Hall, New York: Routledge, 125–41. Mackoy, Robert D. and Richard A. Spreng (1995), “The Dimensionality of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction: An Empirical Examination,” Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, 8 (January), 53–8. Maddox, Neil R. (1981), “Two-Factor Theory and Consumer Satisfaction: Replication and Extension,” Journal of Consumer Research, 8 (1), 97–102. Möhlmann, Mareike (2015), “Collaborative Consumption: Determinants of Satisfaction and the Likelihood of Using a Sharing Economy Option Again,” Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14 (3), 193–207. Oliver, Richard L. (2015), Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer, 2nd edition, New York: Routledge. Philip, Heather E., Lucie K. Ozanne, and Paul W. Ballantine (2018), “The Rise and Fall of Peer-to-Peer Collaborative Consumption: A Perspective from Two Types of Collaborative Consumption Practices,” in The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Collaborative Consumption, ed. Pia A. Albinsson and B. Yasanthi Perera, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 159–82. PwC (2016), “Shared Benefits: How the Sharing Economy Is Reshaping Business across Europe,” http://www. pwc.co.uk/issues/megatrends/collisions/sharingeconomy/future-of-the-sharing-economy-in-europe-2016.html. Scaraboto, Daiane (2015), “Selling, Sharing, and Everything in Between: The Hybrid Economies of Collaborative Networks,” Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (1), 152–76. Stephany, Alex (2015), The Business of Sharing Economy: Making it in the New Sharing Economy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Revisiting satisfaction with collaborative exchanges in the sharing economy  315

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Tussyadiah, Iis P. (2016), “Factors of Satisfaction and Intention to Use Peer-to-Peer Accommodation,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 55 (May), 70–80. Vanhamme, Joëlle (2001), “L’influence de la surprise sur la satisfaction des consommateurs—étude exploratoire par journal de bord,” Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 16 (2), 1‒31. Yang, Shuai, Yiping Song, Sixing Chen, and Xin Xia (2017), “Why Are Customers Loyal in Sharing-Economy Services? A Relational Benefits Perspective,” Journal of Services Marketing, 31 (1), 48–62.

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25.  Customer goodwill: how perceived competence and rapport infuence eWOM’s diagnosticity of peer-to-peer and professional access-based services Christine Pitt, Theresa Eriksson and Kirk Plangger

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INTRODUCTION When service quality is difficult to discern, modern consumers often rely on past ­customers’ electronic word of mouth (eWOM) to inform purchase decisions (Ert et al. 2016; Pitt et al. 2017). In particular, purchases of experiences (for example, restaurants, hotels) are difficult to evaluate for their quality pre-consumption, making purchases of experiences somewhat speculative (Litvin et al. 2008; Nelson 1970). Past customers’ evaluative eWOM (for example, reviews and ratings) has been found to have significant impact on purchasing and other consumer behaviors (Chatterjee 2001; Chen et al. 2011; Erkan and Evans 2016). However, consumers who rely heavily on eWOM may be misled by overly positive ratings and reviews on digital platforms (Zervas et al. 2015). These inflated ratings exist even when expectations are not met (Cook 2015; Etzioni 2017). While this display of customer goodwill—forgiveness, sympathy, and trust—towards service providers might be desirable in some contexts, it can result in eWOM that is not reflective of the service quality experienced and is therefore not diagnostic. Diagnosticity refers to the degree to which information helps a customer assess and form an attitude toward a product or service (Herr et al. 1991). Two service characteristics that aid goodwill production are low competence trust in the service provider (Schor 2016; Matzler et al. 2015), and a strong rapport between the customer and the service provider (Fatima and Mascio 2018; Gremler and Gwinner 2000; Gwinner et al. 1998). These two characteristics are especially relevant for peer-to-peer service providers, where customers may not perceive a high degree of provider competence yet develop a strong rapport with the provider. This chapter explores how the level of goodwill a customer may have towards a service provider can impact eWOM’s diagnosticity. The chapter makes five contributions to the marketing, and access-based services literatures. First, the literature review investigates the link between customer goodwill and eWOM in peer-to-peer access-based services. Second, a conceptual framework is developed that unpacks how goodwill, produced by customers’ trust in the service provider and the level of rapport between customers and a service provider, influences eWOM’s diagnosticity. Third, this framework is explored in three industry vignettes that compare professional and peer-to-peer access-based service providers regarding how goodwill drives rating inflation. Fourth, practical managerial prescriptions are provided to gain diagnostic feedback to help improve providers’ service quality and enhance success. Fifth, a research agenda for further academic inquiry into customer goodwill behaviors and their unintended consequences is presented. 316

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Customer goodwill  317

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eWOM AND GOODWILL There is extensive literature on eWOM and its effects on purchase decisions, what compels a potential customer to seek or produce eWOM, and what effect it might have on the firm (Cantallops and Salvi 2014; Chatterjee 2001; Litvin et al. 2008). Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004, 39) define eWOM as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet.” eWOM allows individual customers’ thoughts, experiences, and opinions to be easily communicated and accessed (Dellarocas 2003). This provides valuable insights into various dimensions of customer satisfaction and service quality (Geetha et al. 2017; Mauri and Minazzi 2013). Potential customers often rely on eWOM as an important and trustworthy information source (Öğüt and Onur Taş 2012), especially in the case of decisions involving high uncertainty. Peer-to-peer access-based services involve a high level of uncertainty and risk as the providers are perceived to be amateurs or less competent (Chou et al. 2016). eWOM has been identified as a key factor in fostering trust and mitigating perceived risk (Ert et al. 2016). An example of a peer-to-peer access-based service is Airbnb, a peer-to-peer service where consumers can access an alternative form of accommodation to hotels provided by home owners or renters. The platform includes prominently featured reviews from confirmed previous customers, as well as other information such as pictures of the host and the accommodation (Guttentag 2015). This use of eWOM can ease potential customers’ uncertainty before staying in a stranger’s home. On many digital platforms that facilitate e-commerce, average or aggregated customer ratings provide useful information on perceived quality experienced by a range of past customers in a simple visual cue (Flanagin et al. 2014; Mudambi et al. 2014; Sparks and Browning 2011). However, recent eWOM research indicates that individuals use average or aggregated ratings and often pay little attention to the combination of the number of ratings and the number of reviewers (Flanagin et al. 2014). These average or aggregated customer ratings are often relied upon heavily as indications of service quality, and as such these numerical figures often serve as decision heuristics (Adomavicius and Kwon 2012; Sparks and Browning 2011). Thus, the combination of eWOM, aggregated customer ratings, and other service provider information can help to direct the choice of customers seeking a service. Customers are motivated by different reasons to create eWOM. Westbrook (1987) theorizes that customers build up tension through consumption of a product or service that can be released by telling others about their experience (Westbrook 1987). This results in word of mouth, which can be positive, neutral, negative, or mixed depending on the thoughts and feelings provoked during the customer’s experience (Bae et al. 2017; Westbrook 1987). Other reasons why consumers produce eWOM are concern for other consumers (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004; Yen and Tang 2015; Yoo and Gretzel 2011), economic incentives, or altruistic reasons, believing that they can help both future consumers and the firm (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). Regardless of the motivating factors, eWOM’s valence can be altered by the production of customer goodwill towards the service provider. Part of the concept of social capital, goodwill has been defined as “the sympathy, trust, and forgiveness offered to us by friends and acquaintances” (Adler and Kwon 2002, 18). In the marketplace, individuals develop

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318  Handbook of the sharing economy relationships with companies, products, brands, and service providers similar to relationships with other individuals (Fournier 1998). Thus, goodwill generated towards the service provider can also improve the customers’ attitude towards the provider (e.g., Fatima and Mascio 2018). Furthermore, goodwill can be observed by how customers describe and rate their experiences with a service provider. This chapter explores two ways of encouraging customer goodwill production, namely, low perceived service provider competence, and the level of rapport between the customer and the service provider.

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Goodwill and Perceived Competence Customers perceive a service provider’s level of competence by assessing the provider’s skills, experience, and standards, as well as evaluating the reliability and capability of the provider to deliver the promised service (Fatima and Mascio 2018). Drawing on signaling theory, service providers’ perceived experience or expertise can act as signals of service quality that may alter customers’ service expectations before consumption (Boulding and Kirmani 1993; Connelly et al. 2011; Spence 1978). Customers notice whether service providers represent themselves as professionals (individuals who possess relevant experience in the industry or have been educated or trained for this industry) or peer-to-peer service providers (individuals who do not have relevant experience and may not have the appropriate training or education) and, based on this, perceive different levels of competence to deliver the promised service. For example, when customers select a peer-to-peer access-based service provider, they may perceive them to be more amateur than a professional service provider, therefore decreasing trust in the selected provider’s competence. The psychological contract between providers and their customers outlining the level of service quality they can expect to receive can also inform the perceived competence of a service provider (Ashforth and Humphrey 1997; Plangger et al. 2013). For example, a customer will likely expect lower service quality of a less experienced provider than of a more experienced provider. However, less experienced service providers are also likely to engender goodwill with their customers and other stakeholders, including forgiveness for service failures, sympathy for inexperience, and trust that the service will eventually be delivered (Spence and Rutherfoord 2003). Service providers who range from experienced to less experienced will exhibit different tangible evidence (Shostack 1977), such as staff size and standardization of décor. While the core service (for example, transportation, accommodation, prepared meal) is likely similar regardless of the level of experience, the difference in tangible evidence may create different conditions under which customers and service providers might interact. Customers of a peer-to-peer service are more likely to interact with the provider personally (for example, the driver, the landlord, the chef) than with a professional service provider (Tussyadiah and Pesonen 2016). This type of connection between the customer and provider can range from online communication to an in-person interaction, and likely creates more intimacy (Ert et al. 2016; Tussyadiah and Pesonen 2016). Thus, the resulting increased intimacy with less experienced service providers supports customer goodwill and reciprocity, leading to more favorable customer reviews compared to more experienced providers (Fehr and Gächter 2000). Trust in the service provider’s competence contributes to service quality expectations in customer‒service provider psychological contracts through signaling quality standards.

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Customer goodwill  319 Conversely, if there is a lack of trust in the provider’s competence due to inexperience, goodwill is more likely to be produced through the establishment of a more intimate and direct relationship with the service provider. Due to peer-to-peer access-based service providers having less relevant experience, they are more likely to receive favorable, yet less diagnostic eWOM.

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Goodwill and Rapport Developed during service encounters, rapport between the service provider and the customer is essential for a deep relationship. It allows a mutual understanding of the other party’s feelings and ideas, and the ability to communicate effortlessly (Gremler and Gwinner 2000; Gwinner et al. 1998). Rapport is defined as “the customer’s perception of being connected to and having an enjoyable interaction with one or more service provider employees” (Gwinner et al. 1998, 161). Because it elicits feelings of reciprocity and affection in customers, strong rapport positively influences a customer’s goodwill toward the service provider and can result in inflated ratings and overly optimistic reviews (Cialdini and Goldstein 2002; Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016; Jiang et al. 2009). The quality of the service interaction between the customer and service provider is the principal factor that produces rapport. It can be created with a single encounter, even if the parties have never interacted before, making the age or frequency of the customer‒provider relationship irrelevant (Gremler and Gwinner 2000; Gwinner et al. 1998). Specifically, rapport is developed by having a personal bond and enjoyable interaction (Gremler and Gwinner 2000). A strong level of rapport needs four elements: familiarity, mutual self-disclosure, extra attention, and civility (Macintosh 2009). Familiarity refers to the extent to which service providers know their customer, whereas mutual self-disclosure is the exchange of information in order to enhance the service experience. Extra attention indicates the customization of treatments, and civility is the mutual consideration and respect that a customer and a service provider have for each other. Strong customer‒provider rapport has a positive impact on customer satisfaction and word of mouth (Gremler and Gwinner 2000; Fatima and Mascio 2018), as well as producing more effective and efficient service recoveries (DeWitt and Brady 2003). Thus, strong rapport fosters customers’ goodwill toward towards service providers and results in more favorable eWOM (Fatima and Mascio 2018).

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Customers who have goodwill towards their service providers will produce less diagnostic eWOM, including inflated ratings and overly optimistic and positive reviews of the service experienced. Two service characteristics that positively impact the goodwill produced by customers are the perceived lack of competence in the service provider, and a strong rapport between customers and providers. Thus, we propose a conceptual framework that describes the production of goodwill and the resulting effect on eWOM (see Figure 25.1). With weak rapport and high perceived competence in the service provider, a low level of goodwill will likely be produced, and eWOM will be more diagnostic than with a

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320  Handbook of the sharing economy Rapport

High

Strong

Low goodwill produced = Highly diagnostic eWOM

Medium to high goodwill produced = Varying degrees of diagnostic eWOM

Low

Perceived Competence

Weak

Low to medium goodwill produced = Varying degrees of diagnostic eWOM

Highest goodwill produced = Weakly diagnostic eWOM

Figure 25.1  Customer goodwill and eWOM diagnosticity strong rapport and a low perceived competence; whereas in the case of strong rapport and high perceived competence, the production of goodwill will be medium to high and will produce varying effects on eWOM diagnosticity. Weak rapport and low perceived competence will result in low to medium goodwill and varying degrees of eWOM diagnosticity. In the next section, we examine this framework in three industry contexts that compare service providers in traditional and sharing economies.

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INDUSTRY VIGNETTES To further illustrate and support the conceptual framework, we examine three vignettes focusing on specific industries. We adopt Bardhi and Eckhardt’s (2012) definition of access-based services to refer to market-mediated transactions that do not result in ownership of a good or product. We define these services along an experience spectrum with the two extremes resulting in being perceived as professional or peer-to-peer. Professional access-based services imply not only that the provider possesses the appropriate knowledge and skills, but also that the organization and its servicescape has standardized and consistent tangible qualities. In contrast, peer-to-peer access-based service providers may not possess the appropriate knowledge and may not have consistent or standardized tangible qualities among service providers. These vignettes focus on customer‒provider rapport, perceived competence, and goodwill trust creation in the personal transportation, hospitality, and food preparation industries, as well as the diagnostic consequences for eWOM. Both professional and peer-to-peer access-based services are explored within each industry. In each industry, we highlight the “tangible evidence” that customers use to assess services (Shostack 1977).

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Customer goodwill  321

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Personal Transportation Industry This section focuses on transportation services that allow people to be transported by car within a city for business or leisure purposes. We will examine two groups of transportation service providers: taxis and ride-share services. We consider taxi services as a professional access-based service, as taxi drivers must complete some form of training and in some cases complete a test. For example, in London, taxi drivers must pass the “knowledge test,” a test that usually requires 2‒4 years of studying and tests the individual’s geographic knowledge of the city (Transport for London 2018). In contrast, ride-share services such as Uber and Lyft require the individual to be a licensed driver, own a car in acceptable condition with the appropriate insurance, and pass a background check (Uber n.d.). We consider ride-sharing services as peer-to-peer access-based service providers. Professional and peer-to-peer forms of access-based transportation services will vary in the degree of rapport developed between the customer and the provider, along with the level of perceived competence of the provider. These variations produce different levels of goodwill and will likely impact customers’ eWOM evaluating the service. Customers using taxi services often have high perceived competence of the individual drivers, as they expect them to have significant experience driving in the city as well as local knowledge (Rahman et al. 2008). Perceived competence is further established through tangible and reliable service aspects such as professionally branded taxis, and standardized car interiors that usually include the appropriate signage encouraging customers to fasten their seatbelts and a taxi meter indicating the price of the service. Taxi drivers usually display their identification cards that also signal to the customer that the driver most likely has some form of professional training. However, rapport between the customer and the driver will likely be low or medium, depending on the service experience and the frequency of the service encounters with the individual driver. Taxi services may only elicit a low degree of rapport, since it is a highly regulated service in many jurisdictions with enforced safety protocols separating drivers from passengers (for example, separating glass or bars, security cameras, posting the passenger bill of rights, distracting back-seat advertising) providing a standardized rather than a tailored, empathic experience. These factors are not conducive to a warm and bonding experience that build rapport. Instead it contributes to the purely transactional nature of the interaction. The relatively high trust in the service provider’s competence, along with the low potential for rapport, likely leads to a low level of goodwill being created toward the service provider. Customers of ride-share services (for example, Uber, Lyft) likely perceive a low competence of their drivers, as they are not assured of the drivers’ training or experience compared to taxi drivers. Tangible aspects of the service, such as the use of a personally owned car, can provide signals to the customer regarding the driver’s amateur status. This can contribute to the customer’s low perceived competence of the driver. In many jurisdictions, ride-share services are not bound by the same professional training, rules, and regulations that taxi services face, thus perceptions of reliability and assurance may suffer. However, there are factors that increase the customer rapport with the driver. For instance, assurance, empathy, and responsiveness are established prior to the driver picking up the passenger. The platform from which the customer has requested the ride will provide them with the first name and number plate of their driver. They are able to track the driver’s arrival and greet each other with first names. The driver is also not restricted

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322  Handbook of the sharing economy by a strict code of conduct enforced by many taxi companies, and is able to dress how they wish. When a low degree of perceived competence is combined with a relatively high likelihood of significant rapport, it should lead to high goodwill towards the service provider by the customer. In short, taxi services have a relatively high perceived competence but a low potential for rapport, which likely leads to a low level of goodwill produced by the customer. In contrast, ride-share services have a relatively low perceived competence but a high potential for rapport, that likely leads to a high level of goodwill being created toward ride-share drivers, which partly explains these services’ inflated ratings.

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Hospitality Industry The tourism industry, including travel and hospitality, broke a revenue record in 2017, partly due to the expanded offerings and choices available to customers (Langford and Weissenberg 2018). Besides hotel services (for example, chain hotels, highway motels, bed and breakfasts), customers can also choose to stay at accommodation-share services. This allows individuals to rent out a space in their home, or their entire home, to tourists or guests. Between these hotel- and accommodation-share services, customers likely perceive differences in the competence of the service provider and experience variations in the rapport that develops. We here explore these differences by comparing chain hotel and accommodation-share services. We consider chain hotels as professional access-based service providers, as a business license is required to operate a commercial chain hotel, which must meet certain standards and requirements to receive a formal regulated star rating. On the other hand, we consider accommodation-sharing services as a peer-to-peer access-based service, as they do not require a business license to operate, depending on the laws and regulations of the host country or city. There are also minimal requirements and standards to become a host on an accommodation-sharing platform. Chain hotel customers are more likely to perceive a high degree of competence in their provider. Chain hotels have an established history with standardized accommodation star ratings, as well as professionally trained and educated staff who provide a high degree of service reliability and assurance (Kim and Cha 2002). Moreover, the hotel facility itself, uniformed staff, concierge desks, and 24-hour receptions provide tangible indicators of the provider’s competence. These tangible indicators are also some of the requirements needed to receive a recognized and approved rating. However, due to the transactional nature of these services, it can be difficult to develop rapport, depending of course on the interaction with hotel staff (for example, doorman greetings, good concierge recommendations, bartender’s life advice). Therefore, with their high degree of perceived competence, and often low to medium rapport with customers, chain hotels produce a low to medium level of customer goodwill. Accommodation-share customers likely have low perceptions of the service providers’ competence. As the customer is staying in the provider’s home, it may signal to the customer the possibility of their lacking formal training and having little experience. Whereas chain hotels have additional services such as a formal concierge desk and 24-hour reception desk, the accommodation-share will likely offer minimal services. However, rapport is likely to be highly developed, as the owners or landlords are either present during or meet customers at the beginning or end of the stay. The intimate environment of a private

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Customer goodwill  323 home can stimulate empathic interactions that encourage a sense of responsiveness, and display local knowledge. The low level of perceived competence combined with a highly developed rapport leads to a high level of goodwill being generated by customers of accommodation-share services, and results in inflated ratings and positive reviews. In short, compared to hotel services, accommodation-share services elicit a low level of perceived competence by their customers. In contrast, the level of rapport between service providers and customers is likely relatively higher with accommodation-share services than hotel services. These lead to higher levels of goodwill being produced for accommodation-share services compared to hotel services, which partly explains the higher ratings and more positive reviews overall for accommodation-share services.

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Food Preparation Industry The food preparation industry refers to traditional business models such as restaurant dining and takeaway meals, as well as meal-share services. Similar to the above industries, professional and peer-to-peer access-based services in the food preparation industry vary in terms of the level of perceived competence and the strength of the rapport developed between customers and service providers. Below, we examine and compare two types: chain restaurants and meal-share platforms. We consider chain restaurants as professional access-based services due to the regulations that restaurants must follow in accordance with regional health codes and labor laws. In contrast, we consider meal-sharing to be a peer-to-peer access-based service, because of the lack of regulations imposed on the service provider. Chain restaurants (for example, PF Chang, Pizza Hut, TGI Fridays) elicit perceived competence from customers based on their reputation, highly trained and specialized staff, standardized menus and offerings, as well as professional food safety and quality licenses for service locations. However, a server may serve multiple customers at any one time, which could lead to low perceived empathy (for example, special requests not honored), reliability (for example, many staff serving a table), and responsiveness (for example, high customer‒staff ratio may lead to wait times) on the part of frontline staff. This may impact the rapport developed between customers and service providers. Customers will likely have a high level of trust in the competence of chain restaurants, but develop low rapport, which would lead to a low level of goodwill produced by customers. Customers of meal-share services (for example, EatWith.com, MealSharing.com, ShareYourMeal.net) are likely unaware of the competence of service providers, other than eWOM on the platform. This means the customer has little assurance of the service provider’s knowledge, skills, and possible certifications. However, rapport is likely developed with meal-share services, since private home settings offer more intimate interactions that lead to tailored dining experiences that are very responsive to the customer’s desires. Because of the low level of trust in the competence of the service provider, along with the highly developed rapport, meal-share services will likely create more customer goodwill, leading to inflated average ratings and more positive reviews than chain restaurants. In short, chain restaurants offer a high degree of perceived competence in the service provider compared to new meal-share services. In contrast, rapport is likely relatively lower in chain restaurants than with meal-share services. These differences lead to a relatively higher customer goodwill being produced in meal-sharing services, and the

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324  Handbook of the sharing economy resulting inflated ratings and more positive reviews compared to traditional food preparation services.

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DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Online ratings and reviews are the new reputation currency of new and established services, regardless of whether they are a professional or a peer-to-peer access-based service. However, customer eWOM is becoming overly positive and less diagnostic of the customers’ experiences, as indicated by customer rating inflation, leading to decreased relevance and lower diagnostic ability. Thus, eWOM is becoming less useful to ­customers and service providers (Cook 2015; Etzioni 2017; Zervas et al. 2015). We propose a conceptual framework that partly explains the production of goodwill towards service providers, which dilutes diagnosticity of eWOM. This is elevated in sharing economies, such as ride-share, accommodation-share, and meal-share service providers in our three industry vignettes. Generally, these peer-to-peer access-based service providers elicit a low level of perceived competence, combined with relatively high potential of a strong rapport being developed between the customer and the service provider during the service experience. There are several questions that future research should explore to investigate this situation. How will individuals gain unbiased and diagnostic information about service providers to inform their purchases, when almost all ratings are near perfect and almost all optimistic? How can service providers get diagnostic feedback to improve their service delivery? How can peer-to-peer access-based services encourage more diagnostic eWOM? What are other unintended effects of customer goodwill and their potential consequences? The conceptual framework, along with the findings of the vignettes, can be translated into several service provider prescriptions (see Figure 25.2). In the first quadrant, since goodwill is relatively low towards the service provider, eWOM should be diagnostic and therefore useful in identifying service quality issues and potential remedies. To remain competitive, providers in this quadrant should develop more rapport with customers to boost customers’ ratings and more positive reviews. In the second quadrant, providers face an uncertain environment, where they have little rapport with customers and have few signals of competence. These providers need to focus on either developing their rapport with customers or gaining and publicizing their skills and experience to signal to customers their competence. From this framework, we can observe two competing, yet steady-state business models in quadrants three and four which also map onto the professional and peer-to-peer accessbased services, respectively. Both business models elicit customers’ goodwill, which makes the provider competitive in its industry in terms of eWOM, but they signal dramatically different levels of competence to their customers. In quadrant three, providers need to ensure that rapport is maintained or further strengthened, as well as providing more tangible signals of competence. While rapport also needs to be maintained or further strengthened, in contrast, quadrant four providers should not signal their experience, skills, or other methods of increasing competence perceptions outside of the mandatory or regulated competence signals.

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Customer goodwill  325 Rapport

Low

Perceived Competence

High

Weak

Strong

Quadrant 1

Quadrant 3

eWOM: Highly diagnostic and useful

eWOM: Varying degrees of diagnosticity and usefulness

Prescription: Develop strong rapport with customers

Prescriptions: Maintain rapport with customers and tangible signals of competence plus conduct market research to improve service quality

Quadrant 2

Quadrant 4

eWOM: Varying degrees of diagnosticity and usefulness

eWOM: Non-diagnostic and not useful

Prescriptions: Develop strong rapport with customers or tangible signals of competence

Prescriptions: Maintain rapport with customers and conduct market research to ensure and improve service quality

Figure 25.2  Implications and prescriptions

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CONCLUSIONS With the proliferation of mobile devices, eWOM is accessible now more than ever, and often used by potential customers before deciding on a service provider. Yet, eWOM is increasingly non-diagnostic of the customer experience. We propose that customer goodwill—composed of forgiveness, sympathy, and trust—is a main element driving this change. This chapter has conceptually and empirically explored two factors that encourage customer goodwill towards service providers: service providers’ perceived competence, and rapport with customers. We explored customer goodwill production in both professional and peer-to-peer access-based contexts, specifically the personal transportation, hospitality, and food preparation industries. With this exploration, we can prescribe different managerial and competitive strategies for service providers based on whether they possess a high (low) level of perceived competence and are likely to develop rapport with customers. However, if all service providers follow these, then eWOM risks being non-diagnostic, and thus not useful to potential customers. In this potential situation, it becomes less clear what the future role of eWOM will be, and therefore we have provided several questions to guide future research.

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326  Handbook of the sharing economy

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Customer goodwill  327 Herr, Paul M., Frank R. Kardes, and John Kim (1991), “Effects of Word-of-Mouth and Product-Attribute Information on Persuasion: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (4), 454‒62. Jiang, Lan, Joandrea Hoegg, Darren W. Dahl, and Amitava Chattopadhyay (2009), “The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 778‒91. Kim, Woo Gon and Youngmi Cha (2002), “Antecedents and Consequences of Relationship Quality in Hotel Industry,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 21 (4), 321‒38. Langford, Guy and Adam F. Weissenberg (2018), “2018 Travel and Hospitality Industry Outlook: Reimagining the Travel Experience,” Deloitte, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consumer-business/articles/travelhospitality-industry-outlook.html. Litvin, Stephen W., Ronald E. Goldsmith, and Bing Pan (2008), “Electronic Word-of-Mouth in Hospitality and Tourism Management,” Tourism Management, 29 (3), 458‒68. Macintosh, Gerrard (2009), “Examining the Antecedents of Trust and Rapport in Services: Discovering New Interrelationships,” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 16 (4), 298‒305. Matzler, Kurt, Victoria Veider, and Wolfgang Kathan (2015), “Adapting to the Sharing Economy,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 56 (2), 71‒7. Mauri, Aurelio G. and Roberta Minazzi (2013), “Web Reviews Influence on Expectations and Purchasing Intentions of Hotel Potential Customers,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 34, 99‒107. Mudambi, Susan M., David Schuff, and Zhewei Zhang (2014), “Why Aren’t the Stars Aligned? An Analysis of Online Review Content and Star Ratings,” in Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3139‒47. Nelson, Phillip (1970), “Information and Consumer Behavior,” Journal of Political Economy, 78 (2), 311‒29. Öğüt, Hulisi and Bedri Kamil Onur Taş (2012), “The Influence of Internet Customer Reviews on the Online Sales and Prices in Hotel Industry,” Service Industries Journal, 32 (2), 197‒214. Pitt, Christine S., Kirk A. Plangger, Elsamari Botha, et al. (2017), “How Employees Engage with B2B Brands on Social Media: Word Choice and Verbal Tone,” Industrial Marketing Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. indmarman.2017.09.012. Plangger, Kirk, Jan H. Kietzmann, Leyland F. Pitt, et al. (2013), “Nomen est Omen: Formalizing Customer Labeling Theory,” AMS Review, 3 (4), 193‒204. Rahman, M. Mizanur, Tanweer Hasan, and Fumihiko Nakamura (2008), “Development of Professional Driver Adjustment Factors for the Capacity Analysis of Signalized Intersections,” Journal of Transportation Engineering, 134 (12), 532‒6. Schor, Juliet (2016), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4 (3), 7‒22. Shostack, G. Lynn (1977), “Breaking Free from Product Marketing,” Journal of Marketing, 41 (2), 73‒80. Sparks, Beverley A. and Victoria Browning (2011), “The Impact of Online Reviews on Hotel Booking Intentions and Perception of Trust,” Tourism Management, 32 (6), 1310‒23. Spence, Laura J. and Robert Rutherfoord (2003), “Small Business and Empirical Perspectives in Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, 47 (1), 1‒5. Spence, Michael (1978), “Job Market Signaling,” in Uncertainty in Economics, ed. Peter Diamond and Michael Rothschild, New York: Academic Press, 281‒306. Transport for London (2018), “How to Become a London Taxi Driver,” July, http://content.tfl.gov.uk/knowledg​ eoflondonprospectus.pdf. Tussyadiah, Iis P. and Juho Pesonen (2016), “Impacts of Peer-to-Peer Accommodation Use on Travel Patterns,” Journal of Travel Research, 55 (8), 1022‒40. Uber (n.d.), “Driver Requirements: How to Drive with Uber,” https://www.uber.com/en-CA/drive/requirements/. Westbrook, Robert A. (1987), “Product/Consumption-Based Affective Responses and Postpurchase Processes,” Journal of Marketing Research, 24 (3), 258‒70. Yen, Chih-Lun Alan and Chun-Hung Hugo Tang (2015), “Hotel Attribute Performance, eWOM Motivations, and Media Choice,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 46, 79‒88. Yoo, Kyung-Hyan and Ulrike Gretzel (2011), “Influence of Personality on Travel-Related Consumer-Generated Media Creation,” Computers in Human Behavior, 27 (2), 609‒21. Zervas, Georgios, Davide Proserpio, and John Byers, J. (2015), “A First Look at Online Reputation on Airbnb, Where Every Stay is Above Average,” SSRN Working Paper, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2554500.

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PART VII

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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SHARING ECONOMY

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26.  Constructing the collaborative consumer: the role of digital platforms Annmarie Ryan and Gabriela Avram

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INTRODUCTION The term “sharing economy” has been commonly used in recent years to refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, and forms of work. The term “sharing economy” (SE) refers to an economic model that involves providing access to underutilized resources. Other frequently used terms include peer-to-peer (P2P) economy, collaborative consumption, and piecemeal work (Ferrell et al. 2017) or the “gig economy” (Sundararajan 2015). In this chapter, we will focus on one aspect of the sharing economy, that is, collaborative consumption. According to Benoit et al. (2017) collaborative consumption can be characterized as triadic, involving interaction between three actors, namely a platform provider who enables exchange, a customer who seeks access to assets, and a peer service provider who grants this access. The intermediary role of the platform provider is an important distinction in collaborative consumption, as it establishes the asset provider as an important actor, who remains external to the platform provider. The focus of this chapter is to reveal the work of the intermediary to bring into being the type of consumer needed for the proliferation of the sharing economy and the successful realization of the intermediary’s brand value or promise (see Onyas and Ryan 2015). Specifically, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the sharing economy phenomenon by examining in-depth the sociotechnical systems and human practices involved, specifically those deployed in the construction of the “collaborative consumer” agencement, meaning a composite consisting of heterogeneous elements including humans, material and technical devices, which flexibly adjust to one another and act collectively (Cochoy et al. 2016). As such, we discuss and critique elements of the current discourse on the sharing economy in order to reveal the constructed nature of the collaborative consumer, who we consider neither as self-evident nor naturally occurring. From this perspective, our interest is less on whether the sharing consumer exists independently of their interactions in market or non-market-based contexts (Eckhardt and Bhardi 2016). Instead we point to how and where the specific qualities of the collaborative consumer are invoked and how these include instrumental market logics, alongside more pro-social relationship logics. The sharing economy makes the distinction between social and economic exchange troublesome, with the two becoming intertwined as market actors draw on both forms of practice in their participation in collaborative consumption. For example, we will show how hosts and guests are: (1) guided by market norms of reciprocity in renting through Airbnb, whereby hosts seek to optimize resources (Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016) and where prior social ties are not required for the fulfillment of the exchange; and also (2) guided by norms of social relationships in the form of gift giving (leaving gifts for 329

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330  Handbook of the sharing economy guests on arrival, or for hosts on departure), or where hosts join community forums. As such, we do not agree with the assertion that these two worlds can or should treated as distinct (see Bardhi et al. 2014). Indeed, it is the conscious overlap of these two worlds by members of the collaborative consumption agencement that is of interest to us. This active blurring of market and non-market positions is echoed by Sutherland and Jarrahi (2018) in their important review of the role and nature of digital technologies in shaping the digital economy. Here, the authors describe how the platform works to encourage, and then benefits from, collective action where “participation in the SE is entangled with larger social movements, and the mediator builds off of the social capital of communities, neighborhoods, or professional groups” (ibid., 332). While efforts to bring about a hybrid pro-social‒economic actor might be regarded as mistaking or masking one for the other (Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016), we believe these practices are so prevalent, and the blurring of the social and economic exchange so fundamental to the collaborative economy, that these efforts and, importantly, counter-efforts are worthy of study. Early research on the sharing economy focused on sharing as the oldest type of consumption (Belk 2009). When considering the plethora of sharing activities where consumers co-create the sharing economy by writing reviews, sharing videos, and so on, Belk (2013, 484) sees the primary question to be “how sharing possessions online enhances our individual and aggregate senses of self.” The role of digital platforms, then, was to primarily support this “natural sharing behavior,” rendering it frictionless (Botsman and Rogers 2010). Indeed, “by transcending the perspective that information is something to be owned, bought, and sold, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Google, and many other such sites have ushered in a new era of sharing that has quickly been embraced by millions” (Belk 2009, 715). We take a different perspective, to suggest instead that digital platforms do not merely support natural sharing behavior, but shape what it is to be a sharing or collaborative consumer; even going as far as to bring the collaborative consumer into being. We concur with Eckhardt and Bardhi (2016) that in market-mediated exchanges in the sharing economy, consumers do not act purely from a pro-social perspective. We point, however, to the importance for platform owners that users (for example, guests and hosts in peer-to-peer renting) perform as social actors while carrying out market exchanges. We point to the social‒material agencement put in place to bring this about, but where efforts to construct this agencement are met with many resistances or misfires (Callon 2015). We argue that the success of markets operating in the sharing economy is dependent on the successful construction of the collaborative consumer/consumer‒supplier dyad; for, as suggested by Beauvisage et al. (2012, 2), “a market exists only because it is the byproduct of rules, agreements and arrangements between the key stakeholders who take part in it.” Cochoy suggests that we need to “know more about the actors, processes and activities involved in the configuring of contemporary market relations” (Cochoy 2005, 854). Collaborative consumption requires collaborative suppliers and buyers and a means of exchange between them. In taking a sociomaterial approach, we point to digital platforms as a “collaborative consumption apparatus,” that plays a role in equipping market relations with rules, standards, and evaluation systems (after Cochoy 2005). Further, the success of the consumption experience depends on the successful articulation of all the agencement’s constituencies: “If one is missing or fails, the action fails; if all are properly ‘aligned’, market exchange is successful and the consumption experience follows” (Cochoy et al. 2016, 5).

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  331 Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from consumer research, market studies, computer science, and information systems, with a thorough analysis of existing literature on sharing economy platforms (with a specific focus on Airbnb), we will draw attention to the apparatus behind the construction of the collaborative consumer, including the actions of consumers themselves. We follow Cochoy et al. (2016) and others to say that digital platforms are not static backdrops to action: they partake in action; specifically, those actions directed at bringing about the collaborative consumer. As such, we do not pursue the notion that the collaborative consumer is ready-made nor a natural state, but rather that it is a construction, alongside any other construction of the consumer we have witnessed in the history of the consumer (see Cochoy 2005). This perspective contributes to existing literature from consumer culture theory on the sharing economy by describing the active role played by digital platforms, their creators, and others acting in the network (including consumers) in inscribing the character of the collaborative consumer.

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LITERATURE REVIEW The sharing economy has been endowed with certain characteristics. For example, it is regarded as driven by consumers seeking alternatives to hyper-consumption, and as a method for consumers to actively engage collaborative practices that are facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies. Rather than being driven by self-interest, the SE has traditionally been regarded as facilitating a collective good, giving rise to many social and environmental benefits as consumers are buying less and sharing more, giving up things for access to the services that those things deliver. Earlier research on consumer communities and customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction gives us a sense of the qualities of a functioning sharing economy, such as being governed by trust, consciousness of kind, and being community based. Bardhi et al. (2014) further distinguish market and non-market mediated forms of access to resources facilitated by the sharing economy. The latter are those exchanges embedded in social relationships, governed by community norms and, according to Eckhardt and Bardhi (2016), motivated by pro-social motives that help to sustain social relationships rather than utilitarian individual motives. These utilitarian individualized motives govern market-based sharing economy transactions, such as those Eckhardt and Bardhi (2016) characterize as mediated by commercial platforms. These are regarded as “motivated by individual and utilitarian motives, [where consumers] avoid identification to the object being accessed and to the other ­consumers in market exchanges, and are governed by market norms of tit-for-tat or negative reciprocity” (ibid., 221). As such, those sharing economy exchanges carried out in non-market situations are regarded as more authentic than exchanges carried out in the “market.” However, this distinction stands in contrast to recent claims that the lack of adoption of the SE by consumers is due to a lack of trust. For the successful enrolment of consumers into the SE economy, then, trust—a pro-social construct—has to not only to be demonstrated but also be largely constructed. Sutherland and Jarrahi (2018, 332) describe how the intermediary establishes a system of legitimacy, encouraging participants’ confidence in other participants and in the process of mediation itself. Features of digital platforms play a role here, with for instance the use of reviews, which work to manage consumers’ and other users’ reputation capital (Sundararajan 2013), making,

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332  Handbook of the sharing economy according to Möhlmann (2015), trust-building aspects of the SE platform critical to the business model’s success. Consumer sharing practices have emerged as an important theme in the marketing literature, particularly within consumer culture theory (CCT). For example, there have been studies on buyer‒seller interactions in swap meets where participants come to dispose of, share, and acquire consumer objects outside of the mainstream marketplace (Belk et al. 1988), or engage in practices outside of the exchange paradigm more generally (Belk and Coon 1993). More recently, there has been increased attention given to new forms of consumption practice such as car sharing (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). There is a tendency in the extant research to focus on individualized identity projects (Belk 2013), or consumer motives, perceptions, and experiences of the sharing economy (Milanova and Maas 2017). There has been a lack of attention to the role that objects and devices play in collaborative consumption (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016). What is interesting to note is that even in studies that address the wider system in which consumer sharing and collaboration occurs, and where a digital platform is highlighted, the platform itself is not the subject of study (e.g., Giesler 2006). Further, when the governance of sharing systems is discussed, the emphasis is on consumers’ attitude to governance, rather than on studying how governance of collaboration is policed (see Hartl et al. 2016). While the specific affordances of digital technologies to shape action (Sutherland and Jarrahi 2018) have been largely missing within CCT, they have received much more attention elsewhere. For example, Calo and Rosenblat (2017, 1651) describe the contemporary consumer as “a mediated consumer, meaning that her interactions occur through a platform that a company can closely monitor and that it took great pains to design and architect.” Or, with a focus on the supply side of the SE, Rosenblat and Stark (2016) describe how information and power asymmetries produced by the Uber application are fundamental to its ability to structure control over its workers. While the current consumer-centric model has given rise to very interesting insights into consumer culture and value creation, it does not sufficiently acknowledge the active role of digital platforms, in themselves, in enabling, supporting, and capacitating consumers to engage in collaborative consumption. Configuring the Collaborative Consumer Subject Taking a market studies approach, we view the collaborative consumer subject as a hybrid collective whose capacity to act depend(s) on how it is constituted (Hagberg 2016). The use of a market studies approach has found fruitful ground in consumer and market research (see, e.g., Cochoy 2005; Kjellberg 2008; Grandclement and Gaglio 2011; Bajde 2013). A central point of difference between a market studies approach and more cultural or discursive approaches to understanding consumer behavior is that, from the former perspective, the collaborate consumer is seen as not defined a priori, “whose behavior is either hardwired in their brains, or is to be explained by their position in communities, networks and cultures” (Cochoy et al. 2016, 3). Instead, Michel Callon draws our attention to the collective nature of agency in describing market agencement (Callon 2008). The notion of agencement goes beyond an account of the structural relationships between actants in actor networks, to consider sociotechnical arrangements from the point of view of their capacity to act and to give meaning to action (Çalışkan and Callon 2010). From this, we get the notion of “agencing,” which can be referred to as a series of capacitating

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  333 efforts or, more generally, the act of arranging in agencement. This is what Callon (2008) refers to as “strategies for realizing sought-after economic agencies” (as cited by Araujo and Kjellberg 2009, 201). Drawing on Callon (2015, 4), “reconfiguring an agency means (re)configuring the socio-technical agencements constituting it, which requires material, textual and other investments.” This sensitizes us to the possibility of competing efforts to shape and equip actors to perform different envisioned types of economic agency (Hagberg and Kjellberg 2010). Further, “agencing activities” generate misfires (Callon 2015), which suggests that to bring about the “collaborative consumer subject” requires ongoing tinkering of the collaborative consumption agencement. As described by Hagberg (2016), agencing involves the continuous arranging of the elements of practices, accompanied by continuous adjusting of these elements in relation to other elements of the practices in which they are included. Three dimensions of this work are particularly important in our analysis of the role of digital platforms in intervening to shape and configure collaborative consumption, that is, the performative nature of market shaping devices, distributed agency, and the notion of inscribing programs of action in market devices (Akrich 1992). Performativity in our case refers to digital platforms actively intervening in the configuration of the collaborative consumer subject; that is, the platform simultaneously produces the world in which the collaborative consumer is enacted, made relevant and meaningful where “their apparent solidity or obviousness only holds inasmuch as this ceaseless work of translation stabilizes a heterogeneous actor network which ‘performs’ them and gives them their coherence” (Licoppe 2010, 182). Similar to Fuentes and Sörum (2018), then, we are concerned with how digital platforms are designed for and also used in the enactment of market actions. From an agencing perspective, agency changes when the network changes. Agency therefore does not reside within the individual, but is contextual and contingent. Agents and actors, from a market studies perspective, are recognized as hybrid collectives, involving a mix of elements (expertise, devices, meanings) kept together in links or associations. The capacity to act collaboratively is therefore held together by the actions of a range of actors and devices (Hagberg and Kjellberg 2010). Further, according to Hagberg (2016), agency is acquired through various agencing process(es) and constantly changing. Fuentes and Sörum (2018) importantly remind us that while agency can group around certain actants, it remains distributed. “Thus while some actants in the network can have more agency than others, the agency of the actant is always contingent upon its relations with other actants in the assemblage” (ibid., 5). Certain actors in the network, for example designers or technologists, can inscribe action in technical devices; meaning a “text inscribed into an object together with instructions on how to use that object” (Akrich 1992). For agencing to be successful, designers, in broad terms, must first interest and persuade the actors to play the roles ascribed to them (Akrich 1992); this can be called enrolment. Devices are therefore “prescriptive and encourage certain actions, while making others more difficult to perform” (Fuentes and Sörum 2018, 4). This is not a deterministic or teleological process, and is open to misfires; for example, where certain rules of programs of action are “mis-translated” into local action. Indeed, according to Callon (2015), failures and breakdowns are constitutive of performativity. Therefore, it is important to analyze the dynamics and ongoing efforts to agence market actors.

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334  Handbook of the sharing economy

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METHOD In this chapter we focus on a single case of the sharing economy, that is, Airbnb, a peerto-peer short-term online accommodation platform founded in 2008. On the Airbnb platform, hosts advertise their properties—which range from a couch in their house to the whole house, boat, tree house or castle—the facilities they offer, and name their price per night. Guests—people unknown to hosts—request to book the property for specific dates. For some of the properties, booking is instant, but in the majority of cases, the host has to approve the guests for their specified dates. At the time of writing in October 2018, the platform lists nearly 5 million homes in 191 countries, and more than 300 million guest arrivals.1 Methodologically we were guided by Akrich (1992, 207) and others to follow “disagreement, negotiation, and the potential for breakdown” in the configuring of the collaborative consumer agencement. This means that in our data collation and analysis we sought out specific details of the operation of the platform, its governance mechanisms, but also how these evolved over time in response to misfires (Callon 2015) and resistances of varying forms from consumers, providers, and those that became stakeholders over time. The authors have undertaken long-term online observation on the platform as frequent users from the guest perspective. One of the authors also interacted with a platform as a host for four years. For this study, Airbnb official resources such as https://www. airbnb.ie/, https://www.airbnb.co.uk/, https://blog.atairbnb.com, https://press.atairbnb. com and https://airbnb.design/ were used to document the platform’s evolution and the various functionalities. A number of social media accounts (that the author with hosting experience was following) were also included as a source of documentation (for example, Facebook Groups such as Airbnb: Host Free To Vent, Airbnb News, Airbnb tax issue Ireland and pages such as Airbnb Hell and Homes not Hotels—No Airbnb). Also, the authors have extracted and analyzed their own correspondence with and through Airbnb for confirming specific changes. A diary held between June 2017 and May 2018 aimed to document interface elements through screen shots and observations. The authors performed thematic analysis together on the data collected, discussing and analyzing the different aspects reflected in the data. The three themes below—practicing collaboration, profiling and policing collaboration, and ongoing tinkering with the system—emerged from the analysis.

ANALYSIS To understand the role of digital platforms in bringing about the collaborative consumer, we put forward that these platforms are not merely there to enable a presiding tendency, but actually intervene to shape consumers towards a particular form of collaborative consumption practices. Importantly, these digital platforms bring together both consumers and service providers, as well as a range of technology-enabled features or devices (including rating and reviewing systems), and therefore act to organize the collaborative consumption 1

 https://press.atairbnb.com/fast-facts/.

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  335 agencement. The platform as a device shapes a range of activities of the consumer, the service provider, as well as having to contend with the responses of other agents and stakeholders which become enrolled in the agencement, including city councilors or representatives from the “mainstream” tourism sector. Throughout this analysis we will draw attention to how the platform works to inscribe certain courses of action by establishing the collaborative consumer as a brand value of Airbnb. Following this we will consider how the technologies at play work to inscribe action but also, as described in our final section, are open to misfires where the consumer and other actors work to subvert the system.

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Theme 1: Practicing Collaboration As a way to describe how the Airbnb platform establishes its interest in the collaborative consumer, we look primarily at its marketing practices, including branding but also communications on new service offerings. We aim to show how the platform enables participation in the sharing economy, and as such is a vehicle to “practice” collaborative consumption. We are interested in the language in use as well as visuals used to portray the sharing economy in action, for example, homeliness, local, meeting “real” people, the role of experiences and a whole “Airbnb lifestyle.” In short, this section is about how the collaborative consumer is portrayed or represented. When the platform was launched in 2008, it was called Airbedandbreakfast.com. Early on, the owners understood the importance of good visuals for attracting guests and directed their efforts toward making the interface enticing, showing details from inside and outside real homes, illustrating a variety of lifestyles from different destinations. Airbnb was extremely successful at bringing its offer to the fore by linking in with major events, for which the platform provided alternative accommodation by tapping into the local potential and eliciting people’s natural hospitality and solidarity tendencies (as was the case with the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro 2016, and the free listings during Hurricane Sandy in the United States in 2012). Importantly, the brand promise of the platform could not be communicated solely via marketing communications, but needed to be embedded into the design of the platform to make it work. For example, Gebbia (2016, 9:29), one of the Airbnb founders, emphasized that “a well-designed reputation system is key for building trust,” and that “design can overcome our stranger-danger bias.” He accepted that the company “didn’t get it right” from the beginning, and several of the processes (such as introductions and reviews) had to be tweaked repeatedly; we return to this in theme 3 below. The Airbnb message evolved continuously, following the message it was trying to send to its users: ●● ●● ●● ●●

in 2009, “Find a place to stay—Rent nightly from real people in 750 cities in 72 countries”; in 2014, “Welcome home—Rent unique places to stay from local hosts in 190+ countries”; in 2017, “Book unique homes and experience a city like a local”; in 2018, “Airbnb—A place for ‘everyone’.”

We draw attention to language used here such as “real” and then “local” to describe how Airbnb wishes to portray its service offering and its role in the sharing economy, enabling

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336  Handbook of the sharing economy consumers to have seemingly unmediated access to each other, without recourse to the “market.” Finding a place to stay while travelling is portrayed by the platform, then, as an opportunity to live like a local; the platform offers “homes” anywhere in the world, and the most tempting ones that could inspire the user’s wanderlust are brought forward. The guests are encouraged to “Travel the world with Airbnb,” and a selection of attractive top-rated homes populate the landing page https://www.airbnb.com.mt/s/homes. The potential guest can explore the offering using several filters to narrow down the number of available homes to the ones that suit their needs for the particular trip. A profile of the host is available for each home. This is an example:2 “Hi, I’m Alex. I’m communicative and open to almost anything;) I like to be outdoors and physically active. I look forward to welcoming nice guests in our living community.” Together with the reviews, this allows the guest to get an impression of the personality of the host(s), the atmosphere in the house, and what can they expect when they get there. These are a few examples of reviews for the same host: Gloria May 2018 Alex was great with communication right from the start. Really good recommendations, amazing shower and cute cats! Would definitely stay there again:)

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Dermot May 2018 When you enter this place, you will meet the perfect family: everyone is beautiful! Alex & Magda are really kind & will help you with anything you need. The apartment is really spacious and perfectly decorated: I felt at home. In terms of location, you are at walking distance from Jardin des Tuileries which is absolutely a must do! Otherwise, you are located few metro stations from downtown or places of interest. You can go for this apartment without a doubt;) Josh May 2018 We had a really nice stay at Alex’s place. We arrived quite late because we missed our train and Alex went to bed late, cause he waited for us. Thank you so much!!! The room and the flat are huge and in a good shape. We would definitely recommend this room and will book it again next time we’re in Paris;)

These features, at their most basic level, are vital for the function of the platform, but they also form features in the construction of the collaborative consumer, as we discuss in theme 2 below. Guests are also supported when attempting to contact a host (through questions and a suitably sized text box), so that they provide the right amount of information that a host usually needs for making the decision to host or not (Gebbia 2016, 9:07). The supports offered to hosts are vital here. Airbnb recognizes that the success of consumer experiences is reliant on hosts playing their part. For example, the platform provides an easy-to-use, step-by-step template. The template, including safeguards, is not just in service of the host, however, and includes the interests of potential guests. For example, the template goes into details related to personal space, looking to expose 2   All the examples in this chapter are fictitious, but based directly on actual content and on the authors’ own experience with the platform. Actual content could not be reproduced due to the very restrictive Airbnb Terms of Service (https://www.airbnb.ie/terms).

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  337 whether this is a spare bedroom or a room in use when there are no guests there (see https://www.airbnb.com.mt/become-a-host/). This “scaffolding” (Avram 2019) of sharing one’s home experience makes the onboarding process relatively stress-free. The potential host can contact a professional photographer through Airbnb if they do not feel confident taking the photos themselves. These features equip the hosts in becoming professional members of the sharing economy, who can share their homes, but with important support mechanisms and safeguards in place. The collaborative consumer as represented by Airbnb is one who seemingly resolves any tension between being a market and non-market actor. Figures 26.1a–b and Figure 26.2

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Figure 26.1a  Mock-up of a sample communiqué from Airbnb

Figure 26.1b  Mock-up of a sample new host communiqué from Airbnb

Source:  Transcript from the Gebbia TED Talk, “How Airbnb Designs for Trust.”

Figure 26.2  Airbnb co-founder Gebbia (2016)

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338  Handbook of the sharing economy demonstrate that Airbnb welcomes the new host as a member of a community (Figure 26.1a), but also as a profit-making market actor (Figure 26.1b); Gebbia, co-founder of the platform, describes in his TED Talk how sharing and commerce are not incompatible (see Figure 26.2). Community-based dimensions of the platform also include a Community Center (https://community.withairbnb.com/), which is now part of the services Airbnb is offering for its hosts, involving local face-to-face meet-ups and publication of hosts’ stories. Further, it offers periodical Global Host Q&As and an annual host convention, Open Airbnb. All these serve as examples of socialization of Airbnb hosts, equipping the actors as both profit-seeking market actors, and socially minded members of the SE community. Importantly, from the outset the platform creators wished to not only shape the users of their service through the digital platform, but to operate as a rule provider in the SE itself.

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Theme 2: Profiling and Policing Collaboration In this section, we consider how the collaborative consumer agencement is inscribed in features of the Airbnb platform, including devices such as rules and procedures, enabling its performance, acting as a form of digitally mediated governance (Fuentes and Sörum 2018). Of the many features on the Airbnb platform aimed at inscribing the collaborative consumer we will focus on host‒guest interaction, user identity authentication, reducing risk, and the review process. Once the host has taken the initiative to share the space on the Airbnb platform, the process of offering accommodation and accepting guests is highly regulated. These regulations have grown over the years, in response to user and other stakeholder actions. In the early days, once a host had accepted a guest for specific dates, their email address and phone number were provided to the guest so that they could communicate freely. Nowadays Airbnb highly encourages people to communicate solely through the platform, and does not provide email addresses any more. This allows it to keep a record of the messages exchanged for litigation cases. It also removes the possibility that, on a future trip, the guest could contact the previous host directly to arrange hosting and bypass Airbnb. This is an example of the platform agencing a certain form of collaborative consumer (Fuentes and Sörum 2018): one who remains a customer of Airbnb, rather than engaging in other “freelance sharing.” The authenticity of user identities is a crucial feature in sharing economy platforms and has been subject to widespread debate in light of fake accounts and their impacts. Therefore, while the sharing economy conjures up images of shared and reciprocal human interaction, in the online world this requires heavy policing. For example, on April 30, 2013, Airbnb introduced the Verified ID concept.3 Users were offered the opportunity to earn a “Verified ID” badge on their profile by matching their online identity (via existing Airbnb reviews, LinkedIn, or Facebook) to offline ID documentation, such as confirming personal information or scanning a photo ID. A host could request their guests to have a Verified ID if they also went through the process of earning this “badge.” These badges act as an evaluation device, enabling users to assess not only the quality of the ­accommodation but also the trustworthiness of the provider. As such, we would assume 3

 https://blog.atairbnb.com/introducing-airbnb-verified-id/.

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  339 that such devices are benign 21st century equivalents, or indeed shortcuts, to brand reputation that providers in the accommodation mainstream market are afforded over time. However, they also act to privilege social media users, and exclude others who do not own such profiles. Moreover, by verifying identity in this way the platform now has another mode of surveilling their users, as they are able to access other information shared in a different context (that is, to “friends” on Facebook). This has become important in the context of risk minimization, as we shall see below. A further example of ongoing attempts to bring about the sharing consumer is the emergence of a number of trust features that have expanded in time as Airbnb had to deal with a series of negative experiences on the side of both hosts and guests. This page, https:// www.airbnb.ie/trust, demonstrates a range of these features currently made available on the Airbnb platform. The varied interventions make clear that the sharing economy requires ongoing efforts to bring about the sharing consumer and service provider. On the Airbnb platform, reviews are one of the mechanisms meant to create trust between guests and hosts. We also know from the work of Mellet and colleagues that online reviews, rather than merely being a facilitation of consumer expression and democratization of market exchange, are in reality mediated sociotechnical practices where “the outcome of the valuation process depends strongly on the material specifications of the system” (Mellet et al. 2014, 8). While initially the guest and host sides were independent (one could leave a review without any obligation on the other side), currently the reviews are made public only after both sides have submitted their reviews. The veracity of the reviews is frequently questioned, as a bad review can reflect upon the reviewer, making them an undesirable guest or provider. This has meant that the consumer and provider have become implicated in each other’s evaluation. This can act as a form of policing of sharing behavior, where each will act to self-regulate their behavior in order to elicit the much-needed positive review; needed, as a negative review will impact on their ability to secure future bookings, for both the provider and the consumer. An example is offered in Figure 26.3, whereby guests tentatively remark on negative aspects of a stay in a well-regarded listing. This is further evidenced from the comment below from a user on AirHosts forum, which describes the crafted nature of reviews aimed at the reviewers’ own reputational capital rather than being a comment on their experience. This also leads to review inflation where, for example, according to Zervas et al. (2015) nearly 95 percent of Airbnb properties boast an average user-generated rating of either 4.5 or 5 stars (the maximum); virtually none have less than a 3.5 star rating. See the (slightly altered) excerpts below for an example of this: Leslie-Anne August 2017 Jerome and Isabelle were friendly and helpful hosts. Danielle went out of her way to speak in English and help us to find our way around the town. We stayed in the self-contained annex. Nothing provided for breakfast and no local shop, but Isabelle gave us some milk when we asked. It’s not clear from the photo but the bed is on the floor, which may be awkward for some visitors. John August 2017 Great place to stay and if it wasn’t for the excess street noise it would have been perfect. Jerome was very friendly and the check in was easy. Secure parking is a bonus.

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Source:  airhostsforum.com (2016).

Figure 26.3  Routinely replying to guest review: yes or no?

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Theme 3: Ongoing Tinkering with the System In this section we consider the ongoing shaping of the collaborative consumer actor network in response to performativity misfires; that is, when the efforts to agence the collaborative consumer are not successful, are met with resistance, or other counter efforts. This suggests, then, that the Airbnb platform is not at liberty to act in some totalitarian way in working to bring about and capacitating the collaborative consumer, but must instead operate within an actor network, that it has an ability to shape, but so too do other actors; albeit with varying degrees of power and control available (see Fuentes and Sörum 2018). Iterations in the features and devices used on the platform become crucial to examine, therefore, as this gives evidence of responses made to performative misfires as human and non-human actors perform outside the script, providing a source of innovation in the system. The designers at Airbnb have been clear from the outset that the technological features of the site are critical in bringing into being their desired users (hosts and guests). This is seen in the early “design for trust” initiative, equipping users to share just enough of the right information to illicit trust and negate “stranger danger.” This project is seen as ongoing by Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, who is quoted as saying: “Now we know design won’t solve all the world’s problems. But if it can help out with one, if it can make a dent in this, it makes me wonder, what else can we design for next?” (Gebbia 2016, 15:21). Below, we list a series of functionalities that were added to Airbnb throughout its ten years in existence: ●● ●● ●●

2011: introduction of the Social Connections feature, allowing to connect the service to one’s social graph via Facebook Connect; 2012: the $1 million host insurance protection introduced; 2012: Wish Lists feature introduced;

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  341 ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

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●●

2015: Resolution Centre created, allowing users to request or send money for things related to the Airbnb trip; 2016: Work Booking feature introduced, helping organizations to “manage workrelated Accommodations, Experiences and Events”; 2016: Airbnb Trips; 2017: Airbnb Experiences; 2017: Social Payments, the ability to split the bill, after acquiring start-up Tilt; 2017: Airbnb Restaurants, helping guests to book restaurants in the areas where they travel (following the acquisition of Resy); 2018: Airbnb for Professional Hosts (https://www.airbnb.ie/host/professional).

The innovations in features can be categorized as brand extensions on the one hand, and governance controls on the other. For example, including trips, events, and experiences has added to the Airbnb platform, extending its reach and position in the sharing economy. This is of interest to us in that as the span of services grows the likelihood for increased policing of users becomes more apparent. The second category of innovations is clearly an example of ongoing efforts to align consumer and host behavior with the principles of the sharing economy espoused by Airbnb. For example, maintaining trust at the point of interaction is supported by the presence of the Resolution Centre, which stays relatively hidden until needed. The current direction of the platform is becoming a one-stop-shop for “end-to-end travel—everything from booking to transportation to the experiences you have, the restaurants you go to, the people you might meet,” as emphasized by its chief marketing officer in an interview.4 The brand identity claims to “enable people to live like a local,” as illustrated by the “live there” slogan. When studies showed that some categories of Airbnb guests were discriminated against (Edelman and Luca 2014), in 2016 Airbnb took the initiative of adopting an antidiscrimination policy, taking steps “to make its community fair for everyone.”5 With this, the rules for a host cancelling a booking became tighter, leading to quite a rigid approach (see Figure 26.4b). Also, various experiments were imposed on random hosts, making it more difficult for them to choose their hosts (Figure 26.5). In the early days, as Airbnb short-term rentals were just a few and the service was not well known, it put emphasis on being a “community model” and took advantage of the fact that the authorities had no clear strategy for dealing with such cases. Once the platform became well known and it started to attract more and more hosts in big cities popular as tourist destinations, such as New York, Paris, and Barcelona, the adverse effects (scarcity of medium- and long-term rented accommodation, gentrification, overwhelming numbers of tourists in comparison to local population) started to appear. Airbnb was repeatedly fined for breaking national and local rules and regulations, and even completely banned in cities such as New York and Berlin.6 In spite of this, listings in these cities continue to appear. Recently, Airbnb has had to cancel thousands of 4  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/airbnbs-cm​ o-reflects-on-ad-strategy-influencers-and-expanding-travel-services/article34055728/. 5  https://blog.atairbnb.com/fighting-discrimination-and-creating-a-world-where-anyone-can-be​ long-anywhere/. 6  https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2016-06-22/places-with-strict-airbnb-laws.

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Source:  Facebook (2018).

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Figure 26.4a  Post on the @homesnothotels Facebook page

Source:  Facebook (2018).

Figure 26.4b  Comment on Airbnb official Facebook page

Source:  airhostsforum.com (2016).

Figure 26.5  Post on airhostsforum.com

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  343 r­eservations, after Japan’s government put in place a new law around home-sharing, requiring hosts to register their listing and display their license number by June 15, 2018 to remain active.7 Critical views on Airbnb are often shared on social media in response to their statements (see example in Figure 26.4a). Airbnb Citizens appears as a social responsibility wing of Airbnb, but primarily it would seem offer support for citizens lobbying for Airbnb in their cities. Under this brand, Airbnb is sharing data on Airbnb “communities”: number of hosts and guests, average occupancy level. Such data are regarded by Airbnb as an important driver of “authentic travel that creates a positive impact in destinations around the world . . . [shared] as part of this commitment to working together with transparency” (source: https://www. airbnbcitizen.com). These efforts are clearly being made as an attempt to respond to the misfires created by the influx of professional hosts (hoteliers as well as landlords) with Airbnb citizens acting as a kind of prosthetic (Callon 2008) to the Airbnb platform. At the most recent Q&A event (Airbnb 2018), one of the company founders, Brian Chesky, emphasized that the company is still invested in the core community of hosts, in spite of the growing proportion of business-owned accommodation advertised on the platform (Bernardi 2018). These additional supports offered to equip the collaborative consumer include Home Sharing Clubs “to help hosts come together to advocate for fair home sharing laws in their communities” aimed at “demonstrating how home sharing benefits neighborhoods.” A more recent adjustment is the promise of making hosts shareholders of Airbnb, where they have asked the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if its rules around security ownership can be revised. This serves as another example of ongoing attempts to enroll and indeed maintain enrollment of the SE asset owners/ service providers (that is, the hosts). The collaborative consumer agencement does not happily sit neatly within single user practices, but in response to growing matters of concern (see Geiger et al. 2014), the platform draws its attention to more macro-level issues, adapting its policies to extend to and enroll governments and policy makers; for example, in December 2016 it released the Airbnb Policy Tool Chest, a resource for governments to consider as they draft or amend rules for home sharing.

DISCUSSION In this chapter, we followed Cochoy et al. (2016) and others to say that digital platforms are not static backdrops to action but partake in action; specifically, those actions directed at bringing about the collaborative consumer. In taking a market studies approach we view the collaborative consumer as a hybrid collective whose capacity to act depend(s) on how it is constituted. The collaborative consumer is constituted on the Airbnb platform, through users’ interaction with a range of features that not only enable, but also shape action. For example, we have shown how both guests and hosts become implicated in each other’s evaluation through the specific review process on Airbnb. This in one way may be regarded as mimicking ‘traditional’ collaborative interaction, by ensuring mutuality and   https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44409187.

7

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344  Handbook of the sharing economy even reciprocity in the exchange. However, we would point to the role being played by the reviews in the performance of trust. Further, the reviews are not simply, nor voluntarily, written, but are clearly mediated and managed by the platform itself (see Mellet et al. 2014). Further, while Botsman and Rogers (2010) contend that technology makes sharing frictionless, we can see in this case that this frictionless-ness is temporary and requires much effort to maintain (Licoppe 2010). It is, in essence, the outcome of technology-mediated practices, rather than an input into collaborative consumption. These many efforts, including in the marketing and branding work by Airbnb, but also in the functioning of the many features of the platform, work to create the sharing economy at the point of experience, with a complex sociotechnical apparatus operating in the background. Our analysis has described how a sociotechnical apparatus, sponsored by the collaborative consumption intermediary (that is, the platform), works to produce the collaborative consumer: an actor imbued with qualities of both the social and the economic actor. Rather than attempting to define market and non-market exchanges as distinct, we trace the conscious overlap of these worlds by members of the collaborative consumption agencement (also see Sutherland and Jarrahi 2018). This interest stems from Airbnb’s own attempts to resolve any tensions between these positions. In short, the Airbnb platform is performative, in that it works to carefully construct the world in which the collaborative consumer can be enacted by inscribing programs of action in its emergent features devices (Akrich 1992). The case of Airbnb is, further, an illustration of digital platforms as persuasive technology. “Captology” (computers as persuasive technology) has been defined by Fogg (2003) and referred to as “persuasive design” by Hasle and Christensen (2008). In this case, the persuasive intention of the platform creators is continually “negotiated, resisted, and translated by other actors than the persuasive designers, stakeholders and technologies” (Glud et al. 2009). This leads to the need for ongoing tinkering that we have described in our case analysis. As Akrich (1992) points out, for agencing to be successful designers, in broad terms, must first interest and persuade the actors to play the roles ascribed to them. This role alignment is also temporary, with users (individually, or acting in user networks) identifying and building their own work-arounds. Further, Airbnb’s attempt to resolve the tensions between market and non-market exchange are only ever partly successful, requiring further enrollment of more macro-level actors, that is, policy makers, in its ongoing efforts not only to shape its user network, but in defining the SE itself.

CONCLUSION This chapter demonstrates that platforms in the sharing economy actively shape and construct the collaborative consumer. Far from being the technological infrastructure that would enable a “natural” will for sharing to flourish without friction (Belk 2013; Botsman and Rogers 2010; Sundararajan 2013), platforms in the sharing economy are part of a network of actors that construct the collaborative consumer. Drawing on a sociomaterial approach, this chapter seeks to highlight how a network of stakeholders shape the collaborative consumer’s possibilities through the production of different arrangements, and an active intervention of platforms which actively stabilize the network

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Constructing the collaborative consumer  345 through technology adaptations. This approach allows us to consider a number of themes in the sharing economy and digital platforms, including the role of online reviews and the performance of trust. This chapter is not meant as a straightforward critique of the role of technology platforms in surveilling and disciplining consumers, but, as McFall and Moor (2018, 2) put it, it is about “how human agency is made to fit with existing and emerging industry techniques and measurement practices.” The collaborative consumer is a requirement of the sharing economy, and therefore a collaborative consumer agencement is required for its enactment. This involves the work of a myriad of actors including guests, hosts, platform owners, other (emergent) stakeholders, but also, crucially, a range of devices that are produced and reproduced to continually adjust and align the network following performativity misfires (Callon 2015). We believe that taking a market studies approach to the sharing economy proves useful in describing its function, and in particular draws attention to the making of the collaborative consumer. Airbnb is just one example, but there are many analogous platforms throughout CE, and given the increased scrutiny being paid to these, this form of analysis is important as it draws our attention to the collaborative consumer as sociotechnically constructed. Regarding future research, taking a market studies approach to understanding the constructed nature of the collaborative consumer raises interesting further research opportunities. For example, in exploring how this approach speaks to debates regarding “authentic” and “manufactured” identity positions in online platform interactions, or how constructing an identity of the collaborative consumer becomes crucial in creating a market differentiated from the tourism industry.

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REFERENCES Airbnb (2018), “Host Q&A with Brian Chesky and Airbnb Leaders,” Airbnb, video recording, October 5, https://youtu.be/wbqCIboC4ro. Akrich, Madeleine (1992), “The De-Scription of Technical Objects,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 205‒24. Araujo, Luis and Hans Kjellberg (2009), “Shaping Exchanges, Performing Markets: The Study of Marketing Practices,” The SAGE Handbook of Marketing Theory, ed. Pauline McClaren, Michael Ster, Barbara Stern, and Mark Tadajewski, London: SAGE, 195–218. Avram, Gabriela (2019), “This Is Our City! Urban Communities Re-appropriating Their City,” in The Hackable City, ed. Michiel De Lange and Martijn de Waal, Singapore: Springer, 129‒51. Bajde, Domen (2013), “Consumer Culture Theory (Re) Visits Actor–Network Theory: Flattening Consumption Studies,” Marketing Theory 13 (2), 227–42. Bardhi, Fleura, Daniele Dalli, and Matteo Corciolani (2014), “Examination of Resource Acquisition Practices,” paper presented at the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) Conference, Helsinki. Bardhi, Fleura and Giana M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881–98. Beauvisage, Thomas, Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Vincent Cardon, et al. (2012), “Online Consumer Reviews,” paper presented at the 2nd Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop Dublin, Ireland, June 7‒8. Belk, Russell W. (2009), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 715–34. Belk, Russell W. (2013), “Extended Self in a Digital World,” Journal of Consumer Research, 40 (3), 477–500. Belk, Russell W. and Gregory S. Coon (1993), “Gift Giving as Agapic Love: An Alternative to the Exchange Paradigm Based on Dating Experiences,” Journal of Consumer Research, 20 (3), 393–417. Belk, Russell W., John F. Sherry Jr, and Melanie Wallendorf (1988), “A Naturalistic Inquiry into Buyer and Seller Behavior at a Swap Meet,” Journal of Consumer Research, 14 (4), 449–70. Benoit, Sabine, Thomas L. Baker, Ruth N. Bolton, et al. (2017), “A Triadic Framework for Collaborative

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346  Handbook of the sharing economy Consumption (CC): Motives, Activities and Resources and Capabilities of Actors,” Journal of Business Research, 79 (2017), 219–27. Bernardi, Monica (2018), “The Impact of Airbnb on Our Cities: Gentrification and ‘Disneyfication’ 2.0,” Commons Post, October 2, http://labgov.city/thecommonspost/the-impact-of-airbnb-on-our-cities-gentrificati​ on-and-disneyfication-2-0/. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, London: Collins. Çalışkan, Koray and Michel Callon (2010), “Economization, Part 2: A Research Programme for the Study of Markets,” Economy and Society, 39 (1), 1–32. Callon, Michel (2008), “Economic Markets and the Rise of Interactive Agencements: From Prosthetic Agencies to Habilitated Agencies,” Living in a Material World: Economic Sociology meets Science and Technology Studies, 1, 29–56. 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Gebbia, Joe (2016), “How Airbnb Designs for Trust,” video recording, TED Talks, https://www.ted.com/talks/ joe_gebbia_how_airbnb_designs_for_trust (accessed September 27, 2018). Geiger, Susi, Debbie Harrison, Hans Kjellberg, and Alexandre Mallard (2014), “Being Concerned about Markets,” Concerned Markets: Economic Ordering for Multiple Values, ed. Susi Geiger, Debbie Harrison, Hans Kjellberg, and Alexandre Mallard, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1–18. Giesler, Markus (2006), “Consumer Gift Systems,” Journal of Consumer Research, 33 (2), 283–90. Glud, Louise Nørgaard, Anders Albrechtslund, and Henrik Harder (2009), “The Persuasive Qualities of Maps,” Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Persuasive’09), ACM, New York, Article 27, https://doi.org/10.1145/1541948.1541985. Grandclement, Catherine and Gerald Gaglio (2011), “Convoking the Consumer in Person: The Focus Group Effect,” Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices, ed. Detlev Zwick and Julien Cayla, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 87‒114. Hagberg, Johan (2016), “Agencing Practices: A Historical Exploration of Shopping Bags,” Consumption Markets and Culture, 19 (1), 111–32. Hagberg, Johan and Hans Kjellberg (2010), “Who Performs Marketing? Dimensions of Agential Variation in Market Practice,” Industrial Marketing Management, 39 (6), 1028–37. Hartl, Barbara, Eva Hofmann, and Erich Kirchler (2016), “Do We Need Rules for ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’? Governance in Collaborative Consumption Communities,” Journal of Business Research, 69 (8), 2756–63. Hasle, Per and Anne-Kathrine Christensen (2008), “Persuasive Design,” in Handbook of Research on ComputerMediated Communication, ed. Sarah Kelsey and Kirk St Amant, Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing Group, 447–98. Kjellberg, Hans (2008), “Market Practices and Over Consumption,” Consumption, Markets and Culture, 11 (2), 151–67. Licoppe, Christian (2010), “The ‘Performative Turn’ in Science and Technology Studies: Towards a Linguistic Anthropology of ‘Technology in Action’,” Journal of Cultural Economy, 3 (2), 181–8. McFall, Liz and Liz Moor (2018), “Who, or What, is Insurtech Personalizing?” paper presented at the 5th International Workshop of Market Studies, Copenhagen, June.

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Mellet, Kevin, Thomas Beauvisage, Jean-Samuel Beuscart, and Marie Trespeuch (2014), “A ‘Democratization’ of Markets? Online Consumer Reviews in the Restaurant Industry,” Valuation Studies, 2 (1), 5–41. Milanova, Veselina and Peter Maas (2017), “Sharing Intangibles: Uncovering Individual Motives for Engagement in a Sharing Service Setting,” Journal of Business Research, 75, 159–71. Möhlmann, Mareike (2015), “Building Trust in Collaborative Consumption Services Facilitated through an Online Platform,” Academy of Management Proceedings, 2015 (1), 12738, https://doi.org/10.5465/am​ bpp.2015.12738abstract. Onyas, Winfred Ikiring and Annmarie Ryan (2015), “Exploring the Brand’s World-as-Assemblage: The Brand as a Market Shaping Device,” Journal of Marketing Management, 31 (1–2), 141–66. Rosenblat, Alex and Luke Stark (2016), “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers,” International Journal of Communication, 10, 3758‒84. Sundararajan, Arun (2013), “From Zipcar to the Sharing Economy,” Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/20​ 13/01/from-zipcar-to-the-sharing-eco/. Sundararajan, Arun (2015), “The ‘Gig Economy’ is Coming. What Will it Mean for Work?” Guardian, July 26, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/26/will-we-get-by-gigeconomy. Sutherland, Will and Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi (2018), “The Sharing Economy and Digital Platforms: A Review and Research Agenda,” International Journal of Information Management, 43, 328–41. Zervas, Georgios, Davide Proserpio, and John Byers (2015), “A First Look at Online Reputation on Airbnb, Where Every Stay is Above Average,”, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2554500.

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27.  Performing (in) the community: accounting, biopower and the sharing economy Penelope Van den Bussche and Jeremy Morales

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INTRODUCTION Online platforms in the “sharing economy” refer to their users as members of a community. Such designations present platforms as spaces of belonging, although not everyone accepts that presentation or identifies with this discourse. The literature has debated whether this discourse creates a sense of community (Philip et al. 2015) or is rejected (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). In this chapter we study how this discourse of community intersects with accounting. We show that the combination of accounting and a discourse of community encourages users to display, regulate, and put to market their “private life” and “authenticity.” These platforms use accounting to perform what they label as “communities,” which we describe as populations of neoliberal subjects acting as entrepreneurs of the self. The discourse of community conveys the idea of exchanges between “peers” who are more interested in its social dimension than its economic benefits (Botsman and Rogers 2010). It is very surprising, then, that such peer-to-peer interaction involves the expectation and giving of reviews. Users may consider themselves as peers, but this does not prevent them from assessing, ranking, and grading the performance they receive. Their assessments foster the emergence of norms and rules (Zervas et al. 2015; Jeacle 2017), and even rituals and beliefs. Reviews create visibilities and craft an image of a community, but also frame interactions and define accepted behavior. The fact of belonging to the community is displayed, confirmed, and performed through these reviews. This chapter further argues that joining sharing platforms leads some users to follow a process that makes “private life” and “authenticity” productive. This relates to what Foucault (2004a, 2004b) termed “biopower,” or the inscription of life in regimes of power. We build on this theory to argue that sharing platforms encourage users to engage their selves on the platform, disclosing personal characteristics and enmeshing their private lives with power relations. Sharing platforms allow users to display private aspects of their lives, stage their authenticity, and engage their selves, thus inscribing life in power relations. These platforms use accounting techniques to produce calculable spaces (a population of calculated subjects), calculating selves (individuals who view themselves as entrepreneurs), and valuations of life itself. There is some debate over where the boundaries of the sharing economy lie (Murillo et al. 2017). Here, we focus on peer-to-peer platforms where private users can share belongings (for example, their apartment or their car) or skills (for example, cooking platforms where users can sell home-made meals). Professionals have invaded many of these platforms, but we are interested in users who consider themselves amateurs offering 348

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Performing (in) the community  349 genuinely private belongings and skills. As we want to study the discourse of community, we focus on platforms and users who take positions in such discourse (either to reproduce it or to challenge it), and situations where the same person can be on either side of a transaction. We thus study peer-to-peer platforms to investigate the penetrating rise of economic reasoning in users’ personal lives, and the pervasiveness of biopower as it extends and makes “authenticity” and “private lives” productive. In the rest of this chapter we discuss how the idea of being part of a community encourages users to display their private lives and authenticity on these platforms. This leads us to investigate how accounting constructs users as calculable selves. We argue that user reviews constitute evaluation metrics that provide users with prisms for managing their performance, acting as calculating selves. We discuss the extent to which accounting performs the community by creating visibilities and stabilizing norms, rituals, and implicit definitions interactions. A further section shows that sharing platforms can put a value on life itself. We conclude that community-building through accounting constitutes an advanced form of biopower, turning individuals into entrepreneurs of the authentic, private self.

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PUTTING PRIVATE LIFE AND AUTHENTICITY TO WORK: COMMUNITY AS BIOPOWER Sharing platforms (supposedly) present and trade ordinary people’s personal belongings and skills (Botsman and Rogers 2010), not professionally supplied goods and services. The belongings and skills made available are typically linked to users’ private lives: their home, their car, their cooking skills. Behind the ideas of sharing and belonging to a community, users provide an image of their private life for online display. Online platforms want to distance themselves from “traditional” businesses and encourage users to see themselves as peers and thus share aspects of their personal lives with the community. The first step upon joining a sharing platform is setting up a personal profile, including a personal picture and a biography. The profiles make members visible and help to build the image of a community. In their profiles, users report their personal tastes, creating a feeling of familiarity. The platforms encourage users to highlight the personal link between themselves and the belongings and skills on offer. This promotion of “authenticity” is consistent with the view that sharing platforms enable and promote social connections (Botsman and Rogers 2010). Even the inclusion of “irrelevant” information is promoted as a way to display more “authenticity.” For instance, some platforms guide users with questions about personal tastes (for example, in music) or encourage them to describe some personal connection with the objects or services they display. Users can create a feeling of authenticity through captions, for example referring to traditional meals (“my mum’s recipe”) on “collaborative cooking” platforms. Public displays of users’ personal lives and authenticity have important consequences for building up a sense of belonging. Users can feel as though they are in fact interacting directly with each other: the transaction remains in the realm of the personal. User profiles not only make the peers visible, but they also make the platform itself less visible: people are not interacting with the platform, but through the platform with other profiles,

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350  Handbook of the sharing economy that is, other people, and this gives them the feeling that they are interacting with the community itself. Behind the ideas of taste and authenticity, these platforms thus create the image of a community to mask capitalist aspects of the transaction and to encourage users to display aspects of their personal lives online. Users who make deliberate efforts to “stage” themselves and remain “authentic” are mobilizing their selves in this interaction. They are not only putting personal belongings and skills on the market, but also aiming to display their “authentic self.” The literature has discussed whether online profiles can shape the sense of self (Belk 2013, 2016). Users do not necessarily completely identify with the image they project on a platform. Pressures to express oneself are not always met with unquestioning acquiescence (Costas and Fleming 2009; Fleming and Sturdy 2011). Instead, users may disidentify with the narrated imaginary of authenticity they project. Yet these platforms become spaces of self-demonstration and, as such, tend to fix the terms on which users can express their identity. As Foucault (2001) argued, even if there is no “inner truth” corresponding to such manifestations of the self, these manifestations become channels for “publicizing” one’s self and making it visible to others. Butler (2005, 113–14) further considers that “the self must appear in order to constitute itself and that it can constitute itself only within a given scene of address, within a certain socially constituted relation. . ..Self-examination . . . becomes a way of giving oneself over to a publicized mode of appearance.” Sharing platforms act as scenes of self-demonstration where users can exteriorize a version of themselves that will be endorsed by other people’s reviews. Sharing platforms, then, offer a space of belonging where users can engage their self and display personal aspects of their lives, although not everyone will do so. People can also use the wide range of sharing platforms to project a wide range of selves with different characteristics. Having several representations of one’s self on different platforms involves a risk of identity fragmentation, but enables a person to relate the multiple features of the self to different spaces for identification. The sharing economy as a whole can itself be seen as a single space for identification when a user’s feeling that they belong because they are active on at least one platform becomes more important than the specific community to which they belong. In this view, participating in one platform is a way to belong to one specific community, but participating in any platform (or many platforms) is a way to belong to the community of communities made up of users of online sharing platforms. As these sharing platforms oversee monetary transactions, they are in effect providing users with a value for their private life and “authenticity” (their projected self). Capturing personal characteristics and making them productive corresponds to what Foucault theorized as biopower, or the inscription of life itself in regimes of power (Foucault 2004a). Biopower targets individual characteristics and inscribes a person’s life in the economic realm (Fleming 2014; Foucault 2004a; Munro 2012; Rose 1990, 2001). On sharing platforms, biopower works through the online display of a person’s private life and self. However, this display remains voluntary and freely chosen. Biopower is not coercion, but targets free conduct. The sharing platforms provide techniques—accounting measures of performance—for exactly that purpose. We now turn to the effects of these metrics.

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Performing (in) the community  351

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REVIEWS AS QUANTIFICATION AND COMMENSURATION: CONSTRUCTING POPULATIONS OF CALCULABLE SELVES The idea that the sharing economy is about building communities does not prevent online sharing platforms from promoting a constant process of evaluation. They expect their members to give and receive reviews (Beer and Burrows 2013; Jeacle 2017; Jeacle and Carter 2011; Kornberger et al. 2017; Wiertz and de Ruyter 2007; Zervas et al. 2015). The process is relatively similar across platforms: both parties in a transaction are asked to review each other once the transaction is over. The form is also relatively standard, with almost all reviews including a quantitative section with several criteria to grade, and a qualitative comment section (Beer and Burrows 2013; Jeacle 2017). User-generated reviews are a highly structured kind of feedback. One powerful possibility offered by reviews is the production of quantified metrics (Jeacle and Carter 2011). Quantification works through a double measurement process, first creating categories to turn qualities into quantities, and then aggregating these quantities into a single figure (Power 2004). The construction of categories is a first step in turning qualities into measurable quantities. For instance, home-sharing platforms might ask their users to rate the “cleanliness” or “communication” of the other party, while car-sharing platforms may encourage assessment of the other person’s level of talkativeness. Defining the criteria to be used to assess the transaction helps to create measurable categories. This process of categorization makes heterogeneous entities and phenomena more commensurable. This kind of commensuration is both destructive and creative (Mehrpouya and Samiolo 2016; Samiolo 2012; Sauder and Espeland 2009). Commensuration is destructive because it erases something specific (the qualities) to achieve comparison and aggregation (Espeland and Stevens 1998; Robson 1992). Commensuration therefore means choosing what is worth making visible; a choice obscured by an apparent neutrality (Samiolo 2012; Sauder and Espeland 2009). Commensuration is also creative, it is not “a simple reflection of the world but [a process] of transformation, it reconfigures [the world]” (Desrosières and Kott 2005, 2). Indeed, creating categories creates ways for people to be (Hacking 2002), and ways for them to make sense of the world (Espeland and Stevens 1998). Asking users to assess specific criteria means choosing for them what they should deem most important in the transaction. This choice is performative: the criteria highlighted in the reviewing process become visible and gradually more important for users. The second-order measurement process aggregates numbers in order to create further measurements and ratios (Power 2004). Several criteria presented separately in a review are aggregated into a single figure or grade. The platforms rarely publicize the formula they use to produce such aggregate scores (Jeacle and Carter 2011; Scott and Orlikowski 2012), and when they do so the information is never attached to the reviewing process, nor displayed next to reviews, but is tucked away in guidelines or Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). The second-order measurement process is thus opaque, but not without consequences, as the aggregation of large numbers of reviews makes them look less biased and more reliable (Scott and Orlikowski 2012). The quantification process thus constructs the apparent objectivity of the infrastructure (Jeacle and Carter 2011; Scott and Orlikowski 2012). As Jeacle and Carter (2011) posit, systematic reviews create a feeling of certainty, controllability, and order that directly contribute to the building of trust in the platforms.

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Through “the elegance of the single figure” (Miller 2001, 382), quantification enables the calculation of a single grade for each user, and therefore creates a basis for comparison, rankings, and differentiation between users. The platforms can generate more accounting, metrics of metrics, and more categorizations (“super users” for example). The platforms can also use reviews to alter users’ positions in search results. In such cases, a user searching for a product or service sets off an algorithm that compiles reviews (as one criterion among others) to rank user profiles in terms of their “relevance” to the search. These algorithms sort and rank users, such that through grading and ranking, reviews stimulate competition between users. In short, online reviews by platform members measure, sort, and rank users by means of quantification and commensuration. Reviews provide metrics and encourage users to draw on them when using the platform. Reviews construct a quantified space in which users themselves are organized by being made measurable. They take heterogeneous characteristics and turn them into quantified and thus comparable selves, and a calculable space. Reviews turn users into what Foucault (2004b) called a population: a calculable group that can be measured and acted upon. Whereas disciplinary power aims to control individuals’ behavior by constructing “docile bodies,” biopower aims to guide free individuals by controlling the environment in which they move and act, creating a milieu in which circulations are measurable and manageable (Foucault 2004b; Munro 2012). The milieu is the space in which metrics can be calculated in order to describe and understand the population. Sharing platforms constitute such a defined space, a milieu within which subjects are brought to compete. User-generated reviews constitute a technique of biopower that platforms can use to manage the population of users. On sharing platforms, reviews produce quantification and commensuration that act as a form of biopower to construct a population of calculable selves. As we will now argue, they also provide users with criteria to manage their own performance, turning them into calculating selves.

REVIEWS AS MEASURES OF PERFORMANCE: PRODUCING CALCULATING SELVES Although reviews are light-hearted in appearance, they encourage one user to grade and assess another user. Reviews are evaluations, and the online platforms provide users with an infrastructure to assess and monitor each other’s performance, delegating enforcement of control to users (Kornberger et al. 2017). Users can even oversee the reviews themselves, assessing whether they are helpful or not (Jeacle 2017). User-generated reviews therefore form the basis for generating more user-generated reviews, as the pressure to evaluate creates more evaluations (Beer and Burrows 2013) in a mise en abyme of the review. Reviews are publicly displayed to everyone on user profiles. Their public nature creates a field of visibility that acts as a form of surveillance (Townley 1993, 1996). Evaluation, visibility, and surveillance instill (or reinforce) pressure on performance. As the overall grade is incrementally reiterated after each transaction, the pressure on performance is frequently repeated, becoming almost continuous. Systematic, reiterated evaluations create a performance measurement system. The accounting literature argues that performance measurement systems influence individuals’ behavior and sense of self (Hoskin

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Performing (in) the community  353 and Macve 1986; Lambert and Pezet 2011; Miller and O’Leary 1987). Users monitor each other’s performance and make this monitoring visible through the reviews. Reviews materialize users’ performance and influence their visibility in search results. Beyond control and surveillance, reviews create a sense of rationality. As the choices made to allow quantification and commensuration are invisible, only the rapid decisionmaking tool remains (Porter 1996). Reviews appear manageable. By making selected aspects of transactions visible, reviews render these aspects governable (Townley 1993). Aggregated into single figures, criteria appear rational and manageable (Miller 2001). Reviews thus offer tools to self-assess, make decisions, and manage one’s own profile. Reflecting on reviews received helps to understand what sort of behavior will increase the chances of good reviews. These metrics create calculating individuals (Miller 2001; Rose 1991; Rose and Miller 1992), equipped to analyze their skills and belongings according to pre-set calculative prisms of understanding. Each good review improves the user’s overall standing, and users can track their performance, receiving instant gratification in the satisfaction of having their self-worth reflected in a rising number. Accounting encourages individuals to see themselves, and act, as entrepreneurs making rational decisions in market-like situations. The literature has described discourses of “enterprise” and “entrepreneurship” through which individuals increasingly view and lead their lives as “enterprising selves” in an extension of the “enterprise form to all forms of conduct” (Du Gay 2004, 38). This explains why users do not think of reviews as coercive. Instead, because they represent pointers to what can be improved (Grey 1994), reviews are seen as benevolent indicators assisting users in their self-development. A concern for self-maximization is seen as positive, because in a neoliberal society seeing oneself as an entrepreneur is highly valued (Cooper 2015; Foucault 2004a; Costa and Saraiva 2012). Seeing one’s life as an entrepreneurial project (Du Gay 2004; Du Gay et al. 1996) also relates to an “ethic of personhood” (Du Gay 2004, 41) that promotes an ideal of the responsible, autonomous individual (Du Gay et al. 1996; Du Gay 2004; Rose 1999). Even users who claim to see online platforms as communities they “belong to” tend to use the reviews as tools to act as entrepreneurs, and see quantified measures and rankings as cues to improve their position on a market. Metrics enable users to regulate themselves locally and autonomously (Rose and Miller 1992). However, although the platforms decentralize the performance of control to users, they centralize the infrastructure of control itself (Kornberger et al. 2017). The platforms assign grades to user profiles and keep track of their behavior on the platform. And, most importantly, they define the criteria to be used when performing the controls. The centralized infrastructure of control is what defines what is made visible and what is not; what is valued in the transactions and what is not. Sharing platforms do not enforce any actions or decisions, but they provide the criteria that are deemed worth evaluating, thus influencing the way users make sense of the interaction. This form of power is not coercive, but creates a milieu in which the categories of judgment are designed to influence free conduct (Foucault 2004b; Munro 2012; Weiskopf and Munro 2012). As the reviews concern personal belongings and skills, they influence the way users manage their private lives on the platforms. Sharing platforms lay down the categories of judgment, the measures of performance, and the prisms through which users can understand not just the transactions but also themselves, and start to manage their

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354  Handbook of the sharing economy personal existence as an enterprise. Sharing platforms thus produce calculable spaces—a population of calculated subjects—and calculating selves, individuals who think of themselves as entrepreneurs. These platforms can then manage their population of calculating selves inside a calculable space, and leave the users to self-regulate autonomously. We now explore in more depth how this population intersects with the discourse of community.

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PERFORMING THE COMMUNITY: EMERGING PATTERNS OF VISIBILITY AND NORMATIVITY Normalization of formal reviews might seem counterintuitive in an environment that claims to promote equality and familiarity, as a bad review could destroy a “friendship,” hampering the construction of a sense of cohesion. And yet users explain that it is their duty to give reviews (Wiertz and de Ruyter 2007) as a favor to other users (Peddibhotla and Subramani 2007). As users base their own decisions to engage in a transaction on the reviews displayed (Wiertz and de Ruyter 2007), they see the giving of reviews as a way to reciprocate (Peddibhotla and Subramani 2007). The online platforms inscribe reviews in a norm of reciprocity (Gouldner 1960), and thus frame reviews as a duty for members of the community. Some platforms even indicate when a user has failed to post a review. Through their reviews, users also signal anything they consider to be in breach of the community’s values, and try to exclude outsiders, in a way not dissimilar to gossip in more traditional communities (Elias and Scotson 1965). Like any community, an online community relies on its members to exert social control over each other. However, unlike most communities, in virtual communities control is exerted through formal reviews. Compatibility between formalism and a feeling of cohesive belonging is negotiated through an idea that the community consists of amateurs. Accounting studies of digital platforms have discussed the links between online reviews, trust, and amateur status (Jeacle 2017; Jeacle and Carter 2011). The evaluation process originally emerged to foster trust in the platforms themselves, but user-generated reviews are even more strongly associated with mistrust of professional expertise (Jeacle 2017; Jeacle and Carter 2011). Qualitative comments typically adopt an informal tone, reinforcing the impression of members’ amateur status (Jeacle and Carter 2011), which is perceived as a guarantee of “authenticity.” The reviewing process thus materializes the construction of users as a group of amateurs, as opposed to a group of professionals. Online reviews are formalized but also largely scripted. Reviews on sharing platforms are mostly very positive, if not routinely perfect (Zervas et al. 2015). This positive bias only applies to platforms used by people who see themselves as a community of amateurs, and is not found when reviews concern dealings with a professional. On sharing platforms, reviews target the other party rather than their belongings, skills, or a transaction. These reviews are about assessing peers, members of the same community, fellow amateurs who do not deserve to suffer harm from a bad review. Users who are unhappy with a transaction are more likely to refrain from posting a review than to give a bad (or even average) review, unless they deem the situation unacceptable. Presenting reviews as part of community life, sharing platforms encourage users to signal only unacceptable user behavior, not slightly imperfect behavior. As a result, users only bring marginal transactions to the attention of the platform. Instead of having

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Performing (in) the community  355 to correct all imperfect behaviors, platforms can focus on the most serious breaches of the norms, thus optimizing costs of control. In other words, the reviews establish an acceptable deviation from the norms of the community. This is also consistent with a biopolitical way of governing, punishing only what is unacceptable for the group instead of punishing every deviation from the norm (Foucault 2004b; Munro 2012). Interestingly, the positive bias of reviews does not mean that there is no pressure on performance. Even users who admit to giving only perfect reviews paradoxically draw on others’ reviews to decide on a transaction. Users also treat the reviews they give differently from the reviews they receive. Reviews given are positively altered to respect the community’s norms and avoid upsetting other users who, as amateurs, do not “deserve it”; reviews received are apparently considered to escape this process and used as a “rational” tool. Similarly, reviews received are not analyzed as being automatically positive; instead, they encourage personal investment to secure the perfect evaluation. Norms structuring online reviews thus tend to appear. Not everyone will follow the norms, but users who feel they belong to the community almost always will. Even some users who distance themselves from the discourse of community adhere to the norms and follow the principles of what constitutes acceptable deviations. Even though users do not necessarily interact offline (Arvidsson and Caliandro 2016), more or less harmonized norms of behavior, routines, and beliefs emerge. Reviews thus not only create visibilities—of transactions, of users, of user participation in the shared practice of constant reviewing, and even of the population of users itself—but also perform the discourse of community by reproducing and materially displaying the idea of friendly social interactions between users. Reviews appear in profiles and show which users are “active” or “dedicated” members. Through reviews, belonging is displayed, confirmed, and performed. When they post a review, users perform the community. Reviews make the community visible and make users visible within the community. A friendly review expressed in the informal tone of the amateur displays the user’s authenticity. Implicit norms of behavior, rituals, and beliefs emerge; they are not always followed but, like any social norm, constitute a reference used (by those who believe in the community, and by some who do not) to define what a “normal” or “acceptable” interaction should be. The act of reviewing thus relates to being a member and reasserts the reviewer’s belonging to the community. This sense and discourse of community do not necessarily match any scientifically approved definition of what a community is or should be; yet some of the people involved choose to use the word “community” when talking about their behavior on sharing platforms. The platforms themselves link reviews directly to users, in order for reviews to materialize the community’s activity in a positive way and generate trust in the platforms. The review system also enables the decentralization of control (Kornberger et al. 2017). Accounting is what performs and constitutes the community.

A COMMUNITY OF ENTREPRENEURS: VALUING PRIVATE LIFE AND THE SELF The sharing economy’s accounting practices perform an online community. They also offer assessments of the monetary value of the belongings and skills traded on a digital

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356  Handbook of the sharing economy marketplace. Even non-monetary platforms may have a points-based valuation system. Platforms in the sharing economy thus frame the way users value private attributes and inscribe them in a market. It is not surprising that platforms creating marketplaces for people to meet and share impose quantified valuation mechanisms to determine prices for exchanges. However, the presentation of personal information and the private nature of the belongings and skills offered combine to engage the self in a monetary valuation. The platforms choose the criteria used to quantify private aspects of their users’ lives. Private attributes can then be understood as potential resources for revenue generation. These valuation mechanisms transform private life into an asset to be traded on the platforms, and thus encourage users to analyze their personal existence in economic terms. Similarly, the review process produces accounting measures of the self and makes them public. By linking reviewing metrics to the users themselves, sharing platforms create categories for users to understand not just the transaction but also themselves. Reviews provide tools for valuation of the self. Valuation technologies help to determine what is valuable and how to measure value: they produce, identify, and attribute “worth” (Crepaz et al. 2016; Stark 2009). They are technologies of selection, identification, and distinction within hierarchies of worth (Coslor 2016; Karpik 2010; Lamont 2012). Sharing platforms provide users with pre-set prisms of valuation and worth attribution. Reviews provide users with categories, frames, and metrics that they can draw on to measure their selfworth and maximize their “value.” Such valuation practices, applied to the self, foster a personal connection between users and evaluations. Again, not everyone will feel such a connection. Yet the proximity between identity and evaluations can foster user attachment to the metrics by triggering strong emotional reactions (Sauder and Espeland 2009), such as acute joy or pain in response to a review. Reciprocally, users can value other users’ personal attributes. Reviews, then, constitute accounting metrics and valuation tools that enable users to compare themselves and strive for maximization of the self (Munro 2012; Weiskopf and Loacker 2006; Weiskopf and Munro 2012). They encourage users to see themselves not only as enterprising selves (Du Gay et al. 1996; Sturdy and Wright 2008) but also as “entrepreneurs of the self ” (Grey 1994), trying to improve the value of their personal life in a competition for the value of the self. Entrepreneurs of the self “put their lives to work” (Cooper 2015, 14) and compete with each other by turning their life and personal attributes into a productive asset. Sharing platforms use accounting metrics to perform a community as an arena where users value themselves and others in a market of entrepreneurs of the self. Users of sharing platforms see and present their self as an asset. Once calculated and aggregated, the categories used for reviews appear both rational and manageable, encouraging users to invest in their private life in order to increase their performance. A private life can thus be managed. Users can invest in it, for example, by changing their furniture, or adapting their menus on cooking platforms. Digital reviews have been shown to have direct impacts on daily practices (Orlikowski and Scott 2013), with some users disposing of furniture, changing the route of their car journeys, and so on. As entrepreneurs of the self, users invest in their profiles, skills, and belongings in order to maximize their value, with material consequences. Entrepreneurs of the self can use sharing platforms to perform and manage their private lives.

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Performing (in) the community  357 There are also intangible consequences, as the way users relate to others is reshaped. Neoliberal discourses encourage the reconfiguration of interpersonal relations as contractual relationships (Du Gay 2004; Weiskopf and Loacker 2006). In the sharing economy, users regularly ask family and friends to help them with transactions concluded on a platform, often in exchange for monetary compensation. For example, a user letting a home via an online platform may ask a family member or friend to greet the guest users and hand over the keys. As even more aspects of private life come to be understood in economic terms, doing something for nothing and gift-based exchanges increasingly come to resemble a “waste” or a “loss”; that is, they are considered opportunity costs. Family and friends can thus be seen as potential resources for increasing self-worth. Entrepreneurs of the self mutually understand each other as resources (Grey 1994). Similarly, users can start to measure belongings and skills that are not yet assigned a value on platforms in terms of opportunity costs. The economic prism of analysis thus pervades more aspects of the self. Individuals thus make their lives into a project (Grey 1994), echoing the neoliberal construction of the self as an enterprise (Cooper 2015). Life, including social relationships, is rendered productive and understood as an investment that entrepreneurs of the self make to maximize their self-worth. The idea that identity and life itself can be the target of organizations trying to control their members through biopower is not new (Fleming 2014; Fleming and Sturdy 2011). Several studies explore how organizations produce normative controls (Alvesson and Willmott 2002; Fleming and Sturdy 2009) targeting subjectivities. They exhort individuals to “be themselves” in an effort to tie those selves to the organization, by either redefining identities or bringing them into the realm of the organization. Identities are made productive for the organization. For example, employees’ identities can be used to co-produce the public image of the organization (Endrissat et al. 2015; Fleming 2014; Land and Taylor 2010). One example is given by Land and Taylor (2010), who describe how a company selling outdoor accessories asked its employees to write about their own outdoor trips on the company’s blog. This is quite similar to the “real-life stories” of users being used as communication material by online platforms. But users of sharing platforms are not employees of the platforms. The intersection of accounting and the sharing platforms’ idea of a community—the sharing platforms’ biopolitical architecture—creates a form of control over users that encourages them to link their private, personal life to the organization. The discourse of users forming a community enables platforms in the sharing economy to create a measurable population, and equips this population with valuation metrics. Injunctions to “be oneself ” are made more productive through valuation metrics and constant feedback from other users, themselves participating in, and subjecting themselves to, the platforms’ biopolitics. Through the (e)valuation process, the community normalizes the entrepreneurs of the self and controls, values, and manages its members’ private life, authenticity, and subjectivity.

CONCLUSION This chapter has studied the intersection between a discourse of community and accounting techniques in the sharing economy. Use of the term “community” presents the activity of platforms as being about users, their authentic selves and their personal lives.

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358  Handbook of the sharing economy This is what supposedly differentiates “sharing” platforms from “traditional” businesses. But this chapter has argued instead that sharing platforms turn users into a population of entrepreneurs of the self. Producing quantifiable assessments of users’ worth, they provide them with metrics to “manage” their private life, value their “authenticity” and improve their self. We have argued that sharing platforms use accounting to “perform” the community. We did not try to assess whether or not platform users “really” form a community. Instead, we discussed how some users take positions within the discourse of community, either to reproduce it or to challenge it. What we observed is the emergence of certain behaviors, routines, and beliefs, especially relating to the production and consumption of reviews. Users who reproduce the discourse of community present the review process as a favor, or a duty, to other users. The community, even if it only exists as such in the user’s imagination, normalizes reviews (reviewing becomes part of any “normal” interaction on the platform, as does consuming reviews), as well as their contents (only bad members or outsiders would resist pressure to frame reviews as friendly and benevolent). Reviewing becomes a moment of reasserting the feeling of belonging to the community, by displaying respect for the norms of the community. The reviews themselves are made visible and create visibilities: of the users, of their actions and interactions, of their participation in a shared experience. Reviews, in that sense, display “the community” for all to see, and materialize interactions between users. Accounting practices, in the form of communication of quantified aggregations of user-generated reviews, constitute and perform the community. This chapter further argued that the combination of a discourse of community with the proliferating accounting practices that perform such a community produces what Foucault (2004a, 2004b) termed “biopower,” or the inscription of life itself in regimes of power. The calculative practices of sharing platforms turn their users into a population of calculable selves. The community is to the sharing economy what the territory is to national statistics (Foucault 2004b): a space of quantification and normalization. Reviews also indicate to users which dimensions of their private lives can be managed in order to compete on the platform. Platforms decentralize to users the task of producing the information that describes the population and monitoring each other’s performance, yet retain control over the metrics, algorithms, and criteria for evaluation. These platforms are open enough to let users make “free” decisions, yet controlled enough to guide the population by defining categories for evaluation and thereby fixing what is important and what is not. Even users who distance themselves from the discourse of community still use the metrics and tools that encourage them to act as entrepreneurs. Resistance and criticism can emerge, but they target the community and leave accounting unchallenged. This chapter built on Foucault’s work to study how sharing platforms extend biopower to reach our “private” and “authentic” selves. The idea that users are part of a community means that they are encouraged to include their own private life in the transaction, and assess private attributes of others in their reviews. The calculative practices of sharing platforms thus turn these private dimensions into a calculable space. Sharing platforms provide users with predefined categories of what is valuable and worth managing, and in doing so they define the criteria of valuation to be applied to users’ private lives. On sharing economy platforms, accounting gives users a way to measure the value of their private lives. Sharing platforms offer users a set of accounting practices to transform

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Performing (in) the community  359 their personal life into tradable assets. Private life itself becomes enmeshed with power relations. Constant evaluations provide users with a quantified measure of their worth and that of others. As they encourage users to display authenticity and their amateur status, they do not target skills or belonging so much as users’ very selves. Users are positioned as entrepreneurs of the self, working to maximize their self-worth. They can use the platforms’ accounting metrics to value and manage their self. As conceptualized by Foucault, biopower targets life itself and constitutes the subject as an entrepreneur of the self, viewing their life as a series of investments to increase self-worth (Foucault 2004b; Munro 2012). The sharing economy extends biopower by encouraging users to value, manage, and invest in their private life. Sharing platforms thus make private and personal aspects of life productive, and capture the bulk of the value created as a result. They make their users into a population set in the milieu of a community, and control the categories and metrics of valuation for the users’ selves. The sharing economy captures ways of life and makes authenticity productive by bringing the private and personal into the realm of economic reasoning. By focusing attention on some aspects of life rather than others, the sharing metrics inform and define what is important and help to establish a normalized view of an “authentic” life. They provide a form of “private accounting” portrayed as an accounting of belonging, a “sharing accounting.” The appeal of the idea of a community is not new. In fact, the very idea that platforms are about sharing and fostering a sense of belonging to a community could be seen as appealing to a romantic view of the past that laments the demise of a more authentic community life, now replaced by capitalist bureaucracies and individualistic, impersonal market relations. Yet the idea that markets should not be only about trading but also about sharing, not only about value but also about values, not only about skill but also about authenticity, is interesting not because it is evidence of resistance to capitalism but because it shows how capitalism is capturing even more aspects of life itself. Through discourses of authenticity, amateur status, and private life, the sharing economy is extending biopower into aspects of our lives that used to remain outside the market, and is encouraging us to see our private life as an investment that we should manage as good entrepreneurs. The sharing economy, by providing us with an accounting system for our private life, is extending the biopolitical transformation of subjects into entrepreneurs of the self.

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28.  The rhetoric of sharing: managerial literature on the sharing economy* 8

Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając

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INTRODUCTION The emergence of so-called sharing economy platforms in the past decade has been accompanied by the publication of numerous popular management books heralding these platforms as the ne plus ultra of the new digital economy, and thus of the economy tout court. Following an insight by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005), I analyze how these books’ discourse of legitimacy for the sharing economy (SE) is part of a contemporary “spirit of capitalism.” Indeed, following van Dijck and Nieborg (2009) and Dror (2015), I define SE publications as manifestos—in other words, texts that employ rhetorical devices for persuasive ends—that aim to sever an allegedly compromised past from the coming future, one that promises not only individual, but also universal benefits (Lyon 1999). This chapter sets out to map the rhetorical strategies at play in these discourses of legitimation, which have become crucial to our economic imaginary. Legitimation is to be understood here as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman 1995, 574). More specifically, I argue that these texts engage in a form of boundary-work, which, following Gieryn (1983, 1999), I understand as a strategic practical action undertaken by scientists to delineate the borders between science and what is considered non-science (or between particular fields) in order to build or defend some professional authority. I further claim that the type of boundary-work involves rhetorical strategies that engage in boundary-blurring (Lamont and Molnar 2002). The argument I put forward is that popular management books on the SE can depict the latter as heralding a future society only by diluting language and blurring distinctions between categories usually seen as opposed. These linguistic operations then enable the SE to be framed both as part of capitalist economy and as part of its alternative (Richardson 2015). They can thus be seen as a component of a strategy aimed at overcoming oppositions with a view to shaping broad support for these emergent economic practices. Several authors have analyzed popular management literature as sites of legitimation. But no publications exist that provide a comprehensive overview of the landscape of SE *  The research in this chapter was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part of the Mobility Plus Programme (agreement 1262/2/MOB/IV/15/2017/0) and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. The author wishes to thank the editors and the reviewers, as well as Steven Corcoran and Tomasz Zając for their help in developing the chapter. Data collection information: the author collected and analyzed the research material herself in fall 2017 at the University of California at Berkeley, and in spring 2018 at Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland.

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The rhetoric of sharing  363 literature and present it to a broad readership. The aim here is to contribute to such work. Further, by framing this literature as shaping the next generation of celebratory Web 2.0 discourse, I make explicit the projection of a future based on this technology, and its collapsing of oppositions usually taken to be irreducible. In so doing, I focus on the cultural tropes that are used to elicit support for, and commitment to, practices depicted as separate from other modes of provisioning, such as standard employment. The scope of the analysis is limited to successful English-language management books that are designed to popularize the SE. By way of proceeding, after describing the Web 2.0 manifesto-style vision of society that these books put forward, I provide a methodological note on the choice of publications. I then discuss how the popular management literature on sharing blurs three important boundaries: those between “the old” and “the new” economy, between the firm and the crowd, and between gift and market economies. In conclusion, I attend to the accomplishments of boundary-blurring and look at the intended audience(s) of its manifestos.

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

BACKGROUND What’s Mine Is Yours (Botsman and Rogers 2010) was arguably the first important widely read book to announce the arrival of what has variously been termed the “sharing economy,” “collaborative consumption,” or the “access,” “gig,” or “platform economy.” Publications such as The Mesh (Gansky 2010), The Sharing Economy (Sundararajan 2016), or Platform Revolution (Parker et al. 2017) quickly followed. A cursory read suffices to show that these publications all share a similar rhetorical strategy: they encourage us to believe that we have entered a radically new era of capitalism’s development, one marked by digital technology’s enabling of mass micro-entrepreneurship. Constructing this era as strongly discontinuous from that of corporate capitalism, they seek to advance it as offering a brighter vision for the future. By basing provisioning on access to rather than ownership of assets (for example, cars, tools, holiday accommodation space), they claim that it is linked with a triple promise. First, the SE is heralded as ushering in a more inclusive economy, one that lowers the entry barriers for individuals by enabling a flexible micro-entrepreneurial engagement, which relies on utilizing one’s assets and skills via digital platforms. Second, it is claimed that the SE has social benefits: a link is made between the reliance of its imagery and the technical design of platforms on peer-to-peer exchanges and the ideal of contributing to better-networked, closely knit local communities. Finally, SE promises more ecologically sustainable consumption, allowing previously underused assets to be more fully utilized (Martin 2016). There is an established conviction that digital platforms, including SE networks, are the most dynamically developing sector of the economy and the locus of today’s innovation (Srnicek 2016). Yet, similar to any other emergent institutions, platforms inevitably trigger social conflict. We can observe this especially wherever the impact of platforms is very marked. For instance, the biggest short-term rentals broker, Airbnb, has suffered a backlash, notably in cities with mass tourism where it contributed to diminishing housing stocks such as Barcelona, San Francisco, Paris, and New York. These platforms have come under multiple institutional pressures and seek legitimacy among many different audiences, such as travellers, home owners, city governments, hotel

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364  Handbook of the sharing economy associations, trade unions, tenants’ organizations, and national as well as supranational political bodies. Legitimacy becomes a focus when organizations seek to justify their actions by coupling them with a broader system of cultural meaning. Innovations (including new organizational forms, such as SE platforms) helping to accomplish these goals are being legitimated by strategic use of persuasive language; that is, rhetoric (Suddaby and Greenwood 2005).

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

MAPPING THE POPULAR SHARING ECONOMY LITERATURE The notion of the “sharing economy” is a highly contested one (Schor 2014). Here I advance an understanding of it as a Western managerial trend which has accompanied the growth of most United States-based—especially in California—Web companies (Slee 2015), which combine platform-based exchange, access, and forms of “peer-topeer” collaboration (Acquier et al. 2017). I thereby diverge from the discussion over what truly belongs to the realm of sharing. Also, I do not discuss numerous other successful platforms attributed to the SE “movement” but that emerged in other places in the world (for instance, China’s Didi Chuxing, Ofo and Mobike, or Indonesia’s Go-Jek, and others). The procedure, inspired by Boltanski and Chiapello, is to focus on publications by business professionals meant for a general readership to understand how they express and further shape the social imaginaries of the SE. These authors scrutinize general management literature as “a medium offering the most direct access to the representations associated with the spirit of capitalism in a given era” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, 57). They see such publications as vehicles for popularizing normative models of economic activity within a certain Zeitgeist, rather than as a faithful reproduction of actual practices. Concurring with their effort, this chapter analyzes the overlapping concepts and cultural tropes used to proselytize the rise of the SE as operating in exactly this way. An important limitation of this approach is that it reinforces the notion that SE is a product of Western platform capitalism, while sidelining the complex nuances of its global impact, local variants, and interrelations with other varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001), not to mention the embeddedness of sharing in provisioning mechanisms other than market exchange. This mapping exercise to reconstruct the “terrain” of the rhetorical repertoire that provides broad legitimacy to the SE involved three decisions. First, books rather than press publications were chosen as research material. Even though many of the quoted authors also present their views in the business press (such as Forbes or the Financial Times) or at TED Talks, the choice of books is motivated by the desire to follow the line of their argumentation in its fullest form. Authors such as Rachel Botsman became experts on SE precisely thanks to their books, and media appearances followed. Second, I searched for books with the greatest presence in public discourse (using Google Scholar citation count as a proxy). Some publications hardly mention the “sharing economy” at all, but use other overlapping keywords such as “collaborative consumption” or various SE platforms as examples. Others, especially more recent books, include the SE only as a part of their broader narrative on automation (McAffee and Brynjolfsson 2017). Third, I supplemented this search with an analysis of the best-selling business books on Amazon

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The rhetoric of sharing  365 since 2010 (using Amazon’s sales rank and the lists of Amazon’s Best Books in Business by year) to account for a publication’s popularity. This procedure enables an approximation of the importance of the chosen literature in shaping the social imagery of the SE. Table 28.1 provides detailed information about the books selected, their respective citations and sales rankings, along with their authors’ backgrounds.

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

SHARING ECONOMY AS BOUNDARY-BLURRING The popularizing literature on SE can be understood as performing boundary-work. For instance, the opening chapters of What’s Mine Is Yours seek to establish the recent rise in digitally mediated collaborative consumption as a counter-movement to late 20th century Western hyper-consumerism, and the multiple crises it brought, which authors diagnosed as the culture of “throwaway living,” wherein consumers were confined in a “buy now, pay later” cycle and polluting the planet (Botsman and Rogers 2010, 35–102). Against this background, the rise of SE is portrayed as a social movement stemming from increasing consumer consciousness and fluency learned through digital media “sharing” practices: “These digital interactions have helped us experience the concept that cooperation does not need to come at the expense of our individualism, opening us up to innate behaviours that make it fun and second nature to share” (Botsman and Rogers 2010, 28–9). The term “cooperation” here functions to bind several layers of the argument given for SE’s emergence. Indeed, multiple authors link the growth of collaborative platforms with the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, said to combine both decreased consumer trust in big corporate brands and lower purchasing power for individuals (Gansky 2010, 10–32). In this way, such rhetoric enables budding platforms to distance themselves from “incumbent businesses” (Parker et al. 2017), such as the hotel or taxi industries, and herald the arrival of novel economic practices, which in turn leads to advocating for different regulatory frameworks. Several scholars active in investigating literature that legitimates the digital economy observe something similar to what I call boundary-blurring. Van Dijck and Nieborg (2009) argue that Web 2.0, the rhetoric of manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams 2006), tends to erase distinctions between the “collective (non-market, public) and commercial (market, private) modes of production, as well as between producers and consumers” (van Dijck and Nieborg 2009, 856). Dror (2015) argues that the founding manifestos of some of the leading internet companies (such as Google and Facebook) have a similar rhetorical strategy: they blur the possible contradictions between their quest for profit and the goal to “turn the world into a better place.” Careful attention must be paid here to the very notion of sharing, the semantic breadth of which enables it to accomplish many tasks in legitimating the contemporary digital economy. Analyzing its symbolic capacity in media discourse, Nicholas John (2016) makes two important observations: first, sharing is portrayed as a state of nature for humans both at an individual and at a social level, employing references to developmental psychology and anthropological research on hunter-gatherers, the implication being that cooperation and togetherness are instinctive for survival. John (2016, 81) thus concludes that advocates construe the SE as a vehicle helping modern societies to reclaim a paradise lost. Moreover, perhaps the main advantage lies in the capacity of this notion to e­ ncompass

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366

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Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, London: HarperBusiness Gansky, Lisa (2010), The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, New York: Penguin

Sundararajan, Arun (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Parker, Goeffrey O., Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary (2017), Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Evans, David and Richard Schmalensee (2016), Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisited Platforms, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Chase, Robin (2015). Peers Inc.: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism, New York: Public Affairs McAffee, Andrew and Erik Brynjolfsson (2017), Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Stone, Brad (2017), The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World, New York: Little, Brown & Company Gallagher, Leigh (2017), The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions and Created Plenty of Controversy, Boston, MA and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Kramer, Bryan (2015), Shareology: How Sharing Is Powering the Human Economy, New York: Morgan James Publishing Baxter, Robbie K. (2015), The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue, New York: McGraw-Hill Education Mulcahy, Diane (2017), The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want, New York: AMACOM Kelly, Kevin (2016), The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, New York: Viking Ross, Alec (2016), The Industries of the Future, New York: Simon & Schuster

 1.

 3.

0

0

5

7

8

8

13

42

53

107

#12 661

250

Business author, Entrepreneur Entrepreneur and business author Academic

Authors’ professions

Business author

#15 578* Business consultant and academic

#7 750* Business author

#61 888* Business author

#65 260* Business author

#615 087

#71 815* Business author

Academic, Academic, Entrepreneur #84 044 Business consultant, Academic #531 530 Entrepreneur and business author #11 725 Academic, Academic #45 789* Business author

#135 339

#634 167

#316 564

Amazon’s sales rank

306

531

1934

Google citations

Notes:  Google Scholar citation numbers and Amazon’s sales ranks as reported at http://www.salesrankexpress.com (the lower the number, the bigger the sales volume) as of May 22, 2018. The asterisk marks the books that were selected as Amazon’s Best Books in Business in the year that they were published.

14.

13.

12.

11.

10.

 9.

 8.

 7.

 6.

 5.

 4.

 2.

Book

No.

Table 28.1  The popular management books on sharing economy included in the sample

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

The rhetoric of sharing  367 both a communicative and a distributive meaning. While the sharing performed in social media refers to the former, sharing cars, for example, means that allocating certain resources offline prevents the participants from employing these assets elsewhere. The link between these two types of activities, however, remains unclear. The analysis below extends his observations by zooming in on popular management books, and asks about the accomplishments of collapsing together binary oppositions such as the “old” and the “new,” the firm and the crowd, and gift and market economies.

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Blurring the Old and the New A common trope used in SE manifestos is to cast this phenomenon as a bridge between the old and the new. The new is fairly easily identified with the assemblage of technologies that provides the basis for mass collaboration. The authors of Matchmakers (Evans and Schmalensee 2016) call them “turbocharging technologies.” These include powerful chips, the internet, and cloud computing, as well as programming languages that enable the development of platforms from already existing building blocks of code. The authors underline several aspects of platforms’ economies of scale: not only the technical infrastructure that makes it possible to build multiple platforms for mass participation, but also the often overlooked upscaling of online participation through creating extensions to existing networks (for example, in the case of Airbnb, independent price-gauging mechanisms). This narrative exemplifies an understanding of technology as the driver of the SE revolution, while the competing explanation involves portraying it as an enabler of the current uptake of sharing practices (John 2016, 81–90). When looking into the narratives portraying technology as merely an enabler, it is important to distinguish which social practices or dilemmas motivating contemporary burgeoning of the collaborative economy are rendered old, or even eternal. Three points can be made here. First, collaborative behaviors are often cast as natural for humankind. The foreword to The Membership Economy starts with the following statement: “Each of us yearns for a tribe: for the affiliations that will support us, protect us, define us, help us make sense of a complex and overwhelming world” (Blue, in Baxter 2015, 25). The author suggests that modern-day “tribes,” as distinguished by consumption patterns or generational divides, are comparable to ancient ones, the criteria for the likening being that they both satisfy a common need: a sense of belonging. Moreover, narrowing the timeframe, some portray the SE as natural for today’s older generation, but as something that middleaged cohorts must still learn. Botsman and Rogers (2010, 15–16) quote one of Airbnb’s co-founders as saying that the idea behind the platform was easily understandable for his grandfather (who was used to staying on farms), while his parents (representing the “hotel generation”) had trouble grasping it. The juxtaposition implies that (once-)dominant businesses—now portrayed as incumbents—represent just a short phase of development and an aberration rather than the rule. SE thus comes to be legitimized as the default vehicle through which humankind engages in collaborative provisioning. This rhetoric helps to counter the claim that participation in the SE increased due to financial necessity after the 2008 crisis. The authors explicitly rebuff this claim, arguing that bike-sharing or peer-to-peer rentals started to surge earlier (Botsman and Rogers 2010, 21). Second, historicizing also legitimates the institution of the intermediary. Their scale and use of computational tools aside, today’s matchmakers are portrayed as being no

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368  Handbook of the sharing economy different, for instance, to the ancient Chinese meiren, enabling people to find local, eligible marriage candidates (Evans and Schmalensee 2016, 31). This strand of rhetoric supplements abstract algorithmic matchmaking with more easily envisagable real-life characters and their far simpler “data processing” mechanisms, thus making the process of matchmaking seem more familiar and helping to overcome platforms’ liability of newness (Stinchcombe 1965). Third, historic references help to portray the SE as striving to solve eternal dilemmas. When addressing the anxiety of needing to be able to trust an exchange partner in the SE, Sundararajan (2016, 3196)1 draws a parallel between these contemporary, spatially dispersed networks and those of medieval Maghribi traders. He points to two mechanisms that the merchants employed: they established long-term, trusted business partners in remote locations by employing an incentives scheme that discouraged them from stealing; and created communities of shared interest that adopted common businesses practices. This story enables the author to foreshadow a twofold argument, according to which the reputation management embedded in SE platforms is a more elaborate stand-in for the bottom-up trust mechanisms that trading partners have historically formed; and, equally importantly, that these successful trade practices were independent of any legal system or government support. This, in turn, leads him to highlight the supposed capacity of platforms to self-regulate and to ground the claim that the state should not seek to control them (I return to this point below when discussing the blurring of distinctions between gift and market economies). The parallel between medieval merchants and contemporary SE participants also foregrounds the figure of the micro-entrepreneur. In sum, the blurring of boundaries between old socio-economic practices and new technological affordances gives the SE a familiar air; by emphasizing the supposed timelessness of SE solutions, it gives the SE a normality and a closeness to our everyday challenges.

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Blurring the Firm and the Crowd Another common strategy employed in SE manifestos is to foreground the individual participants. Such stories perform several functions: they make the reader familiar with the scope of possible exchange opportunities; they explain the coordination processes in the gig economy and give importance to records of digital reputation; moreover, they familiarize readers with the idea of a non-standard workday, where gigs intertwine with rest (these accounts tend to gloss over any idle waiting periods between errands). These narratives accomplish yet another task: bringing flesh-and-bone individuals to the fore goes hand in hand with the dissolution of the firm. In these stories, platforms function as brands that come to function as signifying complexes in our everyday life (Arvidsson 2006). But how they work to structure lives remains largely obscure. The authors of Platform Revolution address this issue by stating that “platforms invert the firm” (Parker et al. 2017, 14, 27–8), insofar as the creation of value now happens outside companies. As Gansky (2010) puts it, “The future of business is sharing.” Sundararajan (2016, 167) argues that “the ‘crowd’ replaces the corporation at the center of capitalism.” These claims all function as calls for companies to partially cede control 1

  When quoting Sundararajan (2016), I provide Kindle locations.

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Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

The rhetoric of sharing  369 and embrace the idea of harnessing positive network effects. Robin Chase elaborates this further. She emphasizes the interdependence of participants and platform companies, or the “Peers Incorporated,” heralding this as a new economic era of collaborative capitalism. The “Peers” are the platforms’ most valuable asset (a similar argument can be found in Kramer 2015), as they introduce local knowledge, customization, specialized services, multifaceted work, and their personal networks into the digital realm. But they are also able to bring in only relatively small investments and engage in sporadic exchanges on a needs basis. The “Inc.” acts both to supplement the imperfections of the users’ crowd, and to boost their potential by leveraging their ability to attract large investments, by engaging in macro-level efforts to compute scalable digital systems and provide standardization (for example, of contracts) and by fostering global brands (Chase 2015, 278). The narrative of the collaboration between the “Peers” and the “Inc.” suggests a win‒win outcome, especially for the former, while the potential profit for platforms receives much less attention. The platform founders are praised as building today’s public infrastructures, while the monetization mechanisms that benefit them remain obscure. The metaphor of “Peers Inc.” also works toward another goal: it equates the platform founders with the micro-entrepreneurs of the gig economy, thereby elevating the latter and the benefits of participation so as to legitimize the former in their quest for profit, while neglecting the disparity in scale between the two groups. It is worth noting that the structure of the founders’ myths scattered throughout SE literature is similar to that of the stories of successful platform participants. Consider the famous tale of two young San Francisco-based designers who, faced with rising rents, sought opportunities for additional income and created Airbedandbreakfast.com, a low-key temporary lodging service that they first started at their own home just as a conference was approaching and many other young professionals were looking for accommodation in a notoriously expensive city (Gallagher 2017; Stone 2017, 30–65). Platform founders are “one of us”: they face financial and/or practical difficulties and come up with an idea for an SE network, just like regular middle-class individuals discover they can become Airbnb hosts to gain some extra income in increasingly pricy metropoles. Such stories foreground the key protagonist of the SE: the micro-entrepreneur who incarnates the blurring of the firm and the crowd of workers in the post-industrial economy. Claiming that full employment will (soon) fall into oblivion, the SE manifestos announce a new era of micro-entrepreneurship that signals big organizations losing control over the workforce. And yet, such books pay surprisingly little attention to how the platforms control participants. Instead, they encourage them to self-manage, and point up the potential benefits. For instance, the “how-to” guide The Gig Economy (Mulcahy 2017) proposes strategies of personal success, including diversifying the kinds of work one performs, creating one’s own security, and mastering self-management. The book suggests that gig workers should redefine what success for them means: the hint here is that the “American dream” of house and car ownership has expired, and that American society increasingly conceives non-material values such as “freedom” and “achieving personal potential” as most important; and the platform micro-entrepreneurship is portrayed as echoing this turn. Sundararajan’s The Sharing Economy provides us with a fitting illustration. In it, the author argues that the flexibility of contracting can be empowering. He expands his point with a story of his encounter with a valet:

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370  Handbook of the sharing economy

Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

At 6 p.m., I pulled up the Luxe app . . . and requested my car be returned . . . No problem. In under 10 minutes, a valet named Ross was there with my car, along with his foldable scooter, and a ukulele, in my trunk. The scooter is for getting up and down the hills of San Francisco, he says, and the ukulele fills time between jobs. (Sundararajan 2016, 352–7)

The anecdote casts light on several aspects of the imagined micro-entrepreneur. First, he works effortlessly: as quickly and seamlessly as bug-free software. Second, he is not only resourceful, but also creative, engaged in such unconventional hobbies as practicing the ukulele; such that waiting time resulting from insufficient demand can be recast as an opportunity for leisure and self-development. Elsewhere, the author suggests that the micro-entrepreneur can also fill idle time between gigs by simply signing up to more platforms, where the benefits of performing such granular work are presented as mutual: workers save time, while platforms increase efficiency (Sundararajan 2016, 3863–5185). Accordingly, time management in SE is portrayed as guided by individual choices—marked by agency and ingenuity—and not coercion, potentially stemming from both one’s socio-economic positionality and platforms’ deep control over the allocation of exchanges (Rosenblat and Stark 2016). Conveniently, Sundararajan wrote his book at a time when the class action suits of drivers against Uber and Lyft in California were yet to be resolved. Hence he does not account for the court’s rejection  of the  ride-sharing companies’ self-description as technology companies and not taxi businesses. In their verdicts, the judges emphasized how little impact the drivers have on the structure of their participation, rebuffing the understanding of these platforms as (seemingly neutral) marketplaces (Tomassetti 2016). Admittedly, various platforms do adopt different algorithmic models to facilitate matches between their members, and not always ones with such profound information asymmetries. Yet, the manifestos build SE’s legitimacy by foregrounding successful micro-entrepreneurs and their “choices” while rendering the platforms’ pervasive algorithmic management invisible. Third, the combined cues from this and other stories suggest that the microentrepreneur is likely to be an educated middle-class citizen. In that sense, SE manifestos resonate with much of the popular literature on work and technology with a conservative bias, for instance The Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014), which encourages workers not to challenge capital, but to get a better education to gain advantage in the digital economy (Spencer 2017). They gloss over the social impact of platforms, in which relatively overeducated taskers tend to thrive while making it even harder for the less educated ones to survive (Schor 2017). Lastly, the figure of the micro-entrepreneur allows propagators of the SE to frame the use of private resources in value creation as resourcefulness and not exploitation. This, in turn, helps to counter, for example, ride-sharing drivers’ demand to be classified as employees, by emphasizing that they have their own cars. Such a move enables SE promoters either to eschew the debate on protections for platform workers or to move it towards the suggested new types of flexible benefits. This takes us to the last part of my argument: along with the imagery of the micro-entrepreneur, portrayals of the SE as meshing gift and market provides a basis for the argument that platforms have self-regulating capacities. By emphasizing participants’ benefits and obfuscating the platforms’ profits, the SE constructs its legitimacy around a blurring of the boundaries between the firm and

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The rhetoric of sharing  371 the crowd. This is achieved through inserting independence into the identity of microentrepreneurs and simultaneously downplaying the platforms’ control over them.

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Blurring the Gift and the Market Despite the recognition that SE includes organizations as different as time banks, clothes swaps, crafts marketplaces, and short-term rentals, platforms are cast as “largely marketbased” (Sundararajan 2016, 654). At the same time, authors usually recognize that some platforms draw upon gift economies (Mauss 1923/1990) and paint SE as a middle ground between the two. The manifestos reproduce the anthropological distinction between gift and market economies, where the former is associated with “pure generosity” and the latter with “pure calculation” (Yan 2006), which become combined in the notion of reputation capital discussed below. The reference to the gift economy adds to the equation the imagery of “tomorrow’s sharing economy [as that which] will organically weave greater levels of connectedness into our everyday economic activities . . . and create new social contexts to replace the ones . . . we lost through the Industrial Revolution” (Sundararajan 2016, 1060). The market component draws on the trope of market as a civilizing force, or the idea that market “nourishes personal virtues of honest behavior, civility, and cooperation” (Fourcade and Healy 2007, 287). I argue that it operates on two levels. At the micro level, it works through forging the concept of reputation economy. Digital reputation is cast as a currency equal in importance to financial resources, insofar as it lowers the entry barrier into SE systems for those who might not appear too wealthy, but who work hard to maintain a good “social credit rating.” However, scholarship increasingly observes an opposite argument, by claiming that, for example, minority drivers have to put much more effort into maintaining good ratings (van Doorn 2017). As participants serve to ensure a distributed community oversight, reputation systems are the most important factor for guiding their self-management, and hence promise exchanges with trusted partners. As Chase (2015, 256) puts it, participants “change behavior and minimize negative ­contributors . . . who become more conscientious and professional in response to the potential bad ratings.” However, as I argue elsewhere (Mikołajewska-Zając 2018), these narratives imagine a seamless coalescing between acting in one’s best interest (seeking to secure good reviews) and acting in the community’s best interest (by writing honest reviews). Such a view neglects the fact that participants must navigate complex norms of reciprocity, resulting in inflating reviews. Yet, this invisible work of reviewing is unaccounted for: the important task that SE participants are systemically charged with does not come with any formal instructions. The preferred notion of the manifestos involves the elusive quality of “trust in the community” and not heteromation (Ekbia and Nardi 2017), or the strategic inserting of humans within technological systems to allow the latter to operate as intended. At the macro level, aggregated reputation data show that vastly positive ratings are being employed to discourage any external regulation of platforms. Here the argument used at the micro level gets extrapolated: it is in the platforms’ best interest to police bad players, to maintain and increase participation. The interests of platforms are identified with those of society in general: the manifestos argue against state regulation and for “peer regulation, self-regulatory organizations, and delegated regulation through data

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372  Handbook of the sharing economy [which] hold the most promise for a regulatory future that is best aligned with society’s interests” (Sundararajan 2016, 3077). The government, it is argued, may stifle the innovation that platforms develop, and torpedo SE’s efforts to elevate its participants’ incomes. Yet, I came across no discussions about the way platforms distribute profits, despite ever more data showing the rising inequalities caused by, for example, heavy Airbnb presence in cities (Wachsmuth et al. 2018). At the same time, however, SE literature calls for new, more flexible state regulation, for example by introducing the idea of dependent contractors and promoting guaranteed universal income. The upshot is an overt attempt to shift some of the social costs of market failures in the SE towards the state.

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CONCLUSION This chapter argues that boundary-blurring is the main rhetorical device employed in popular SE literature during 2010‒17. The analysis shows that the bridging of common binary oppositions furthers the legitimacy of the SE. Here, I link aforementioned observations with conclusions about the intended audience of these publications and particular challenges to legitimating SE that they raise. First, the books analyzed portray SE as able to develop solutions to humanity’s eternal problems more perfectly and on a larger scale, thanks to recent digital technologies. This legitimating strategy is oriented at the general audience of (possible) participants, familiarizing them with the concept of digitally mediated exchanges and bridling the SE. One can learn about the spectrum of possibilities that platforms offer and become socialized to using them. Second, SE is legitimated as heralding a classless (read: more equal) society by collapsing together the firm and the crowd. SE manifestos forge the identity of the microentrepreneur and teach them relevant interpretations useful for framing the experience of gig work as well as suggesting coping strategies. SE workers can make sense of how their granular experience matters in the bigger picture of platform business models. A more careful reading, however, suggests that these publications are addressed to participants at the professional end of the spectrum rather than, for example, Postmates deliverers: they emphasize creativity and resourcefulness, and render mundane, badly paid, and algorithmically managed taskwork invisible. Furthermore, these books are also directed at entrepreneurs who will seek to build platform businesses themselves, especially given the suggestion that many can succeed, just like the founders of the now-dominant platforms; while bypassing the recognition that these networks succeeded based on a winner-takesmost logic. Last, collaborative platforms are cast as self-regulating vehicles, fostering greater interpersonal trust which translates into denser social ties, which I have rooted in the blurring of the boundaries between gifts and markets. This rhetoric accomplishes at least two goals. It legitimates platforms as being safe to participate in due to the ability of the “hive mind” of their respective communities to eliminate “bad players.” Moreover, it pushes away public regulators: together with the rhetoric of micro-entrepreneurship, the notion of self-regulating capacities leads to insisting on self-government of platform companies. It results in the attempt to construct SE platforms as a new class of

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The rhetoric of sharing  373 ­ usinesses which should be held accountable by different legal standards than “regular” b corporations. Overall, the manifestos forge a vocabulary for use by platforms’ founders, managers, participants, and politicians. They provide readers with a system of meanings in which the interests of (potential) individual participants are aligned with those of companies and the broader society. In this system, all these actors are presented as variously benefitting from SE, both financially and socially, while also contributing to greater ecological sustainability. Essentially, the manifestos aim to generate consent on the business models used by platforms, garnering support through the direct (financial) and more abstract benefits that sharing platforms offer, but paying extremely little attention to how exactly sharing platforms monetize collaboration. The rhetoric of the inevitability of the platform economy (Kelly 2016; McAffee and Brynjolfsson 2017; Ross 2016) is particularly worth noting in this context. Peers Inc. and the like provide a ready toolbox for addressing various critiques voiced by groups, for example, negatively impacted by the SE, and steering the regulation conflicts away from accepting greater responsibilities than those of acting as intermediaries. As we are witnessing a wave of regulation struggles revolving around labor laws and housing rights versus the SE, in the coming years we may be able to see whether these manifestos fulfil their function.

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REFERENCES Acquier, Aurélien, Thibault Daudigeos, and Jonatan Pinkse (2017), “Promises and Paradoxes of the Sharing Economy: An Organizing Framework,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 125, 1‒10. Arvidsson, Adam (2006), Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture, London, UK and New York, USA: Routledge. Baxter, Robbie K. (2015), The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue, New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Boltanski, Luc and Ève Chiapello (2005), The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso. Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers (2010), What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, London: HarperBusiness. Brynjolfsson, Erik and Andrew McAfee (2014), The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, New York, USA and London, UK: W.W. Norton & Company. Chase, Robin (2015), Peers Inc.: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism, New York: Public Affairs. Dror, Yuval (2015), “‘We Are Not Here for the Money’: Founders’ Manifestos,” New Media and Society, 17 (4), 540–55. Ekbia, Hamid and Bonnie Nardi (2017), Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Evans, David and Richard Schmalensee (2016), Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing. Fourcade, Marion and Kieran Healy (2007), “Moral Views of Market Society,” Annual Review of Sociology, 33, 285–311. Gallagher, Leigh (2017), The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions and Created Plenty of Controversy, Boston, MA and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Gansky, Lisa (2010), The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, New York: Penguin. Gieryn, Thomas (1983), “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists,” American Sociological Review, 48 (6), 781–95. Gieryn, Thomas (1999), Cultural Boundaries of Science, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hall, Peter and David Soskice (eds) (2001), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. John, Nicholas (2016), The Age of Sharing, Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press.

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374  Handbook of the sharing economy Kelly, Kevin (2016), The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, New York: Viking. Kramer, Bryan (2015), Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy, New York: Morgan James Publishing. Lamont, Michèle and Virag Molnar (2002), “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology, 28 (1965), 167–95. Lyon, Janet (1999), Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern, Ithaca, NY, USA and London, UK: Cornell University Press. Martin, Chris (2016), “The Sharing Economy: A Pathway to Sustainability or a Nightmarish Form of Neoliberal Capitalism?” Ecological Economics, 121, 149–59. Mauss, Marcel (1923/1990), The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, London: Routledge. McAffee, Andrew and Erik Brynjolfsson (2017), Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Mikołajewska-Zając, Karolina (2018), “Terms of Reference: The Moral Economy of Reputation in a Sharing Economy Platform,” European Journal of Social Theory, 21 (2), 148–68. Mulcahy, Diane (2017), The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want, New York: AMACOM. Parker, Goeffrey O., Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet P. Choudary (2017), Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Richardson, Lizzie (2015), “Performing the Sharing Economy,” Geoforum, 67, 121–9. Rosenblat, Alex and Luke Stark (2016), “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers,” International Journal of Communication, 10, 3758–84. Ross, Alec (2016), The Industries of the Future, New York: Simon & Schuster. Schor, Juliet (2014), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” http://www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-thesh​aring-economy. Schor, Juliet (2017), “Precarity and Dependence in the ‘Sharing’ Economy,” lecture delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, CA. Slee, Tom (2015), What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, London, UK and New York, USA: OR Books. Spencer, David (2017), “Work In and Beyond the Second Machine Age: The Politics of Production and Digital Technologies,” Work, Employment and Society, 31 (1), 142–52. Srnicek, Nick (2016), Platform Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Stinchcombe, Arthur (1965), “Social structure and organizations,” in Handbook of Organizations, ed. J. March, Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 142–93. Stone, Brad (2017), The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World, New York: Little, Brown & Company. Suchman, Mark (1995), “Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches,” Academy of Management Review, 20 (3), 571–610. Suddaby, Roy and Royston Greenwood (2005), “Rhetorical Strategies of Legitimacy,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 50, 35–67. Sundararajan, Arun (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tapscott, Don and Anthony Williams (2006), Wikinomics: How Mass Communication Changes Everything, New York: Portfolio. Tomassetti, Julia (2016), “Does Uber Redefine the Firm? The Postindustrial Corporation and Advanced Information Technology,” Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal, 34, 1‒78. van Dijck, José and David Nieborg (2009), “Wikinomics and Its Discontents: A Critical Analysis of Web 2.0 Business Manifestos,” New Media and Society, 11 (5), 855–74. van Doorn, Niels (2017), “Platform Labor: On the Gendered and Racialized Exploitation of Low-Income Service Work in the ‘On-Demand’ Economy,” Information, Communication and Society, 20 (6), 898‒914. Wachsmuth, David, David Chaney, Danielle Kerrigan, et al. (2018), “The High Cost of Short-Term Rentals in New York City,” https://mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsroom/channels/attach/airbnb-report.pdf. Yan, Yunxiang (2006), “The Gift and Gift Economy,” in A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, ed. J. Carrier, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 246–61.

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29.  Reputation: the fictitious commodity of the sharing economy? Alessandro Gandini

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INTRODUCTION This chapter is concerned with questioning the role of reputation in the sharing economy. Many among the most relevant examples of the sharing economy entail the presence of a formal or informal reputation system; this aims to provide users (usually consumers) with a proxy of the trustworthiness of other users (service providers, or laborers) who have engaged in an economic transaction or exchange. Reputation systems most commonly account for the feedback and reviews produced by each counterpart on a digital platform, and translate them into numerical scores, stars, rankings and/or ratings. These allow individuals involved in sharing economy contexts to make predictive assessments of the behavior of others, using reputation as the baseline for trust-building. This process is paramount to the success of the sharing economy as a form of economic exchange in which actors are “quasi-strangers” to one another (Gandini 2016), as it offers otherwise unavailable information that is vital to the enactment of the exchange. For the most part, research has focused on the relationship between reputation and trust, looking at the implications that arise when reputational logics are enforced in a given context and questioning the way “online reputation systems” are designed (Masum and Tovey 2012). However, it may be argued that the role of reputation in the sharing economy actually extends beyond this trust-building capacity. In this chapter I observe and discuss this broader role, engaging in a theoretical argumentation that builds upon the framework of analysis of the relationship between the economy, society, and the market offered by sociologist Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (1944/2001). Published in the immediate aftermath of World War II, The Great Transformation was hugely influential for the affirmation of economic sociology as a discipline, as it presented an account of the rise of modern market economy after the industrial revolution. A key aspect in Polanyi’s framework is the idea that, in the passage from a pre-modern to a modern society, a “disembedding” between the economy and the societal institutions in which it was inscribed took place. This brought to the rise of a market-dominated society in which, Polanyi argues, “[i]nstead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system” (Polanyi 1944/2001, 60). This constituted a reification of the market and the affirmation of a vision by which markets inhabited by “perfectly rational” actors (also defined as Homo oeconomicus) “dominate all other principles of social organizations” (Krippner 2001, 781). The rise of the sharing economy in the aftermath of the 2007‒08 economic crash has revived an interest in Polanyi’s framework and legacy (e.g., Eckhardt and Bardhi 2016; Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). Particularly, this has entailed the question of whether the sharing economy is evidence of a process of “reembeddedness” of the economic into the social (Arvidsson 2018; Pais and Provasi 2015), 375

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376  Handbook of the sharing economy that marks the start of a new phase in the relationship between the economy, society, and the market in the history of capitalism. Following in the footsteps of this Polanyian revival, this chapter brings forward the suggestion that reputation should be seen as a new kind of “fictitious commodity” (Polanyi 1944/2001) peculiar to the sharing economy. The notion of fictitious commodity was coined by Polanyi to describe how labor, land and money are treated as a commodity in a self-efficient market economy, without actually being one. The process of fictitious commodification, in Polanyi’s view, represents a vital organizing principle of modern market economies and a key component in the way social relations are anchored to value production processes (Beckert 2007). Elaborating on Jessop (2007), who suggested that knowledge should be considered the fictitious commodity of information-based capitalism, it is the argument of this chapter that, in the sharing economy, reputation is subject to forms of fictitious commodification that represent the social precondition for the enactment of efficient “sharing” exchanges. This fictitious commodification of reputation in the sharing economy entails two chief aspects. First, reputation in the sharing economy is a “symbolic token” (Jessop 2007), that is, a “medium to objectify social relations . . . and transform them into an embodiment of exchange value” (Arvidsson et al. 2017, 60‒61). In so doing, it operates as a kind of “social currency”—in the form of feedback, rankings, ratings, reviews or a score—the possession of which enables (or forbids) access to the “sharing” of goods and services. Second, reputation is subject to forms of “enclosure” by the digital platforms that constitute the most popular sharing economy examples. In fact, the “tokens” that constitute one’s reputation in a given context cannot be taken elsewhere other than where these are created. This is aimed to ensure that sharing economy platforms operate as “pseudo-institutional” actors that have sole oversight on the exchanges taking place thanks to their intermediation. Considering the sharing economy as epitomous of an ongoing process of re-­ embeddedness of the economic into the social (Arvidsson 2018; Pais and Provasi 2015), with this chapter I intend to suggest that the fictitious commodification of reputation as here described represents a key component to this re-embeddedness, as it offers the means by which economic exchanges can be grounded on the “new social” made of digitally mediated social relations. Reputation, in other words, is argued to be the essential organizing principle of the peculiar social relations that underpin “sharing” exchanges. In the remainder of the chapter, I first discuss the existing notions of reputation within the body of research on the sharing economy. Then I articulate and unpack the process of fictitious commodification of reputation here introduced and, in the conclusive remarks, I discuss the wider implications of this analysis.

REPUTATION IN THE SHARING ECONOMY A rich debate, participated by a cross-disciplinary literature in sociology, computer science and consumer research, has unfolded around the rise of the sharing economy (see Arcidiacono et al. 2018 for a synthesis). Various terms have been used to describe this emergent phenomenon, including “collaborative consumption” (Botsman and Rogers 2011) and “access-based economy” (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). In this chapter the sharing economy is observed from the standpoint of the definition given by Pais and

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Reputation: the fictitious commodity of the sharing economy?  377 Provasi (2015), as a set of practices that include: rental schemes (for example, Zipcar), asset rental (for example, Airbnb), service brokerage (for example, “gig work” platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo), non-monetary sharing exchanges (for example, timebanks), peer production (for example, open source and free software communities) and financial transactions (for example, crowdfunding practices). Accordingly, sharing economy exchanges are here conceived of as: (1) transactions or exchanges that take place by means of (or are enabled in some form by) digital and networked technologies; and (2) forms of production and consumption that differ in some respect from what is usually described as a market economy (Pais and Provasi 2015, 347). The extent to which the sharing economy can be considered akin to, or diverging from, a traditional market economy is a point of contention in current research (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012, 2015). Following again Pais and Provasi (2015, 370‒72), I consider the sharing economy as a hybrid form of market exchange whereby “pure” market exchanges coexist with more genuinely collaborative endeavors. As a result, I contend that the sharing economy should be seen as a marketoriented evolution (or, perhaps more appropriately, a “subsumption,” to use Marxist jargon) of the “peer production” model, envisaged by scholars such as Benkler (2006) and Bauwens (2005) as a non-hierarchical and decentralized or distributed mode of production founded upon large-scale collaboration by individual users, aided by internet-based technologies (Benkler 2006; Morell et al. 2016; see also Arcidiacono et al. 2018). The popular debate on the sharing economy sees contrasting views between those who consider this model as the harbinger of a fairer and more equal society (Botsman and Rogers 2011; Sundararajan 2016; Chase 2015), and others who insist that it reproduces existing forms of inequality, labor exploitation and outsourcing (Scholz 2017; Schor 2016; Slee 2017; Schor and Attwood-Charles 2017). The role of reputation in this context has been an ever-present and to some degree equally underobserved issue. As noted, existing research has focused considerably on the functioning of reputation systems as the primary source for the building of trust among digitally connected individuals. This finds roots in the early literature on e-markets in computer science (Dellarocas 2003; Resnick et al. 2000) that has looked at the role of online reputation systems in intermediating the seller‒buyer exchange on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon (see Bolton et al. 2004). Soon thereafter, research in sociology and critical management began to scrutinize the social and economic implications deriving from the emergence of digital infrastructures that allowed users to produce feedback and ratings about others, focusing in particular on value creation processes and considering reputation as a kind of use value (see Masum and Zhang 2004; Arvidsson and Peitersen 2013). With the affirmation of social media, this expanded into a broader debate whereby the vision of an incoming “reputation society” (Masum and Tovey 2012) was accompanied by a critique to the growing relevance of online metrics, rankings and ratings, and its potential distortions and biases (Hearn 2010; Beer 2016). Reputational logics are reported to be relevant in recruiting processes (Gandini and Pais 2018), as well as in marketing practice, as witnessed by the rise of “influencers” (Duffy 2017; Abidin 2016). Nevertheless, the popular discourse around reputation largely maintained a positively oriented attitude towards its expansion as a societal organizer. In an article written for the magazine Wired, collaborative consumption enthusiast Rachel Botsman (2012) famously argued: Imagine a world where banks take into account your online reputation alongside traditional credit ratings to determine your loan; where headhunters hire you based on the expertise you’ve

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demonstrated on online forums such as Quora; where your status from renting a house through Airbnb helps you become a trusted car renter on WhipCar; where your feedback on eBay can be used to get a head-start selling on Etsy; where traditional business cards are replaced by profiles of your digital trustworthiness, updated in real-time. Where reputation data becomes the window into how we behave, what motivates us, how our peers view us and ultimately whether we can or can’t be trusted.

Reputation, Botsman sustains, is the ideal “object” through which to mediate interaction in virtually all contexts of social life, and should consequently be used to regulate the allocation of resources, outcomes and externalities in a variety of important domains. Coated with optimism, this vision in fact overlooks some of the huge issues regarding privacy, surveillance and bias that such an all-encompassing notion of reputation entails, that are in no small part owed to the opaque and unaccountable processes of algorithmic construction that lie behind “online reputation systems” (Pasquale 2015). Yet reputational logics and dynamics arguably have affirmed as key to the digital economy more broadly, and to the sharing economy in particular. Recent research has shown how individual reputation is instrumental in the motivation towards participating in sharing economy practices (Hamari et al. 2016), in fostering perceptions of trustworthiness among users of sharing economy platforms (Ert et al. 2016), as well as to induce self-regulatory behavior (Cohen and Sundararajan 2015). Some concerning examples have also emerged: Rosenblat and Stark (2016), for instance, have shown how Uber drivers are subject to algorithmically driven forms of managerialization of their work, and that a steady access to “gigs” is dependent upon the possession of a high reputation score on the platform. As is well known, an Uber driver with a reputation score inferior to 4.6 is “deactivated”; that is, no longer allowed to work (see also Gandini 2018; Ravenelle 2017). In other words, there seems to be a necessity to keep investigating the role and significance of reputational logics, for users and service providers alike, as the sharing economy ripens as a socio-economic model. Particularly, it seems important to extend our focus beyond the important but somehow simple idea that reputation is only the conduit for the building of trust among strangers engaging in a social and economic exchange (Gandini 2016). The framework of analysis offered by Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944/2001) provides us with a set of notions and concepts that are useful for the appraisal of reputation in the sharing economy in a broader perspective.

A FICTITIOUS COMMODITY? As noted, the rise of the sharing economy has been accompanied by a question around whether this is evidence, à la Polanyi, of a broader process of re-embeddedness of the economic into the social, and marks the arrival of a new phase in the evolution of capitalism. If the affirmation of a market economy in the aftermath of the industrial revolution was characterized by a disembedding of the economic from the social, then the sharing economy—the argument goes—may constitute evidence of a counter-movement, and the start of a process of re-embeddedness (Pais and Provasi 2015). Arvidsson argues that the sharing economy represents a peculiar kind of re-­ embeddedness of the economy “within a new social that, in turn, has been massively empowered by digital mediation” (Arvidsson 2018, 290). The peculiar feature of this “new

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Reputation: the fictitious commodity of the sharing economy?  379 social,” Arvidsson continues, is that it “contains its market-oriented logic of value within a social logic of virtue” (ibid., 290) that is characterized by “the coexistence of instrumental action oriented to exchange and the market, and virtuous action oriented to relationship and community” (ibid., 291). This renders the sharing economy for Arvidsson a context in which, using Marxist jargon, a new relationship between exchange and use value seems to emerge whereby use value ascends to a central role in the determination of economic value and the processes of its creation. However, if we consider the sharing economy as a socio-economic model rooted in a “new social” made of digital and non-digital social exchanges, whereby use value takes a prominence over exchange value, then the argued process of re-embeddedness of the economic into the social necessitates, in a Polanyian sense, a particular fictitious commodity as the social precondition for exchanges to happen. For Polanyi, a market economy could exist only in a market society (Polanyi 1944/2001, 57) whereby the fictitious commodification of non-commodities such as labor, land and money takes place as a social precondition to its existence. Building on Arvidsson (2018), I argue that the sharing economy—and the argued re-embeddedness process—can only exist in a “social” whereby a fictitious commodification of a non-commodity that bridges digital and nondigital exchanges, and enables the monetization of use-value as a means of exchange, takes place as a precondition to its existence. The non-commodity that gets “fictitiously commodified” in the sharing economy, I contend, is reputation. As Jessop (2007) explains, a fictitious commodity in Polanyi’s framework is a commodity that is not produced to be sold or consumed on a market. It exists in the form of use value within a socially embedded economy, and then acquires exchange value as it enters the market. The role of a fictitious commodity is therefore to enable the forms of organization of the market economy in which it inscribes (Jessop 2007); or, to again use Marxist jargon, to be a conduit to the subsumption of forms of socially embedded economy to capitalist accumulation. This is what, in Polanyi’s view, labor, land and money do, insofar as human activity (labor), natural resources (land) and money are transformed into a means of exchange. In the sharing economy, reputation plays a similar role. It is a non-commodity, as it is not produced to be sold or consumed on a market; it is a measure of use value in a socially embedded economy (Arvidsson and Peitersen 2013); yet it gets fictitiously commodified in the form of feedback, ranking, reviews and metrics, with the aim of ensuring that the social relations that underpin these economic exchanges are transformed from use value into exchange value. The fictitious commodification of reputation occurs in two chief ways. First, it represents a “symbolic token” that is instrumental to the exchange of goods and services. Second, it is subject to forms of “enclosure” by digital platforms, as the “token” created within these contexts cannot be used or “spent” elsewhere other than where it gets created. As a symbolic token, reputation functions as a kind of “social currency” for the individuals—users and service providers alike—involved in the “sharing” exchange. In many sharing economy contexts, a digital platform produces a user’s reputation in the form of a proxy (that is, stars) or a numerically quantifiable unit, based on the feedback, reviews and ratings given by others. This proxy or numerical score works as a means of equivalence that embodies a figure of the exchange itself; this entails the important aspect of trustworthiness among actors who are strangers to each other, but also transcends it. In broader terms, it encapsulates a “cultural conception of value” (Gandini 2016) that

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380  Handbook of the sharing economy provides other users with an immediately intelligible operationalization of use value into a means of exchange. In so doing, reputation allows the access to (or the exclusion of) individuals from the “sharing” exchange. The possession of a reputation represents an entry ticket for individuals to access resources and be part of the market. Without ratings, and particularly without good ratings, one is effectively unable to engage in any exchange. This entails also a symbolic value, as noted by Bardhi and Eckhardt (2012). Take Airbnb, for example: on Airbnb, nearly 95 percent of listings are rated 4.5 or 5 stars (Zervas et al. 2017). As Fradkin et al. (2015) also noted, those who submit reviews on Airbnb are mainly those who had better experiences, and negative reviews tend to be under-reported. This suggests that reputation does not merely represent an indicator of the trustworthiness of a user (or service provider). Reputation is also a symbolic representation of the intensity with which a user engages in “sharing” as a form of exchange. As a reputation score can only be constructed by regular and continuous activity, failure to maintain this intensity impedes the maintenance of a tokenizable reputation. As a consequence, this role of reputation as a symbolic token means that users who access a sharing economy platform with no reputation to spend (or with a reputation to construct) are subject to an inherent form of inequality. As Wan (2015) put it, it is a case of “Matthew effect,” by which “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” A second component in the fictitious commodification of reputation is that it is subject to forms of enclosure by digital platforms. These delimit and fence the construction of reputation in proprietary and exclusive ways. Each platform has its own reputation system in place, made of algorithmic elaborations usually treated as trade secrets and kept behind “black boxes” in order to preserve a company’s market position (Pasquale 2015). Each reputation system produces a set of measures—feedback, rankings, ratings and scores— that are designed not to be taken anywhere else. There is no possibility of portability of a user’s reputation, for instance, from Uber to another ride-hailing platform. This inevitably furthers the inequality aspect, since whoever wants to use a different platform will have to accumulate sufficient symbolic token value in that given domain in order to successfully engage in exchanges. This enclosure dynamic is key to the functioning of current sharing economy platforms. In operating this enclosure, platforms organize the social relations underpinning the exchange and subsume them under one controlling and regulating entity (Gandini 2018). Take online crowdsourcing on platforms such as Deliveroo or TaskRabbit, for instance, where consumers/clients can tap into a large pool of service providers/labourers for the execution of a task. While on the one hand this exemplifies a dynamic of, technically, “peer exchange” founded upon the access to common resources, this is actually firmly positioned within the boundaries of a market exchange regulated by an overseeing authority: the platform (Gandini 2018). These platforms, in other words, preside over the efficiency of the economic exchange and guarantee economic monetization by all parties (consumers, service providers and the same platform, that keeps a fee for the intermediation) thus behaving as a “pseudo-institutional” entity that imposes its authority over users and has unlimited power on the “sharing” exchanges taking place within it, as it enforces a set of specified (and largely opaque and unaccountable) rules and technicalities. In other words, just as the fictitious commodification of labor, land and money represented the social precondition of the emergence of the modern market economy and its

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Reputation: the fictitious commodity of the sharing economy?  381 vital organizing principle, so the fictitious commodification of reputation represents the essential organizing principle of the sharing economy and the social precondition to its existence as a form of hybrid exchange whereby market and non-market features coexist. As a symbolic token and the subject of “enclosure” processes, the fictitious commodification of reputation acts as a bridge between the “pure” market exchange that digital platforms mediate, and the “new social” made of digital and non-digital interaction that underpins it, offering a measure to translate use value into exchange value that is accepted by all parties involved.

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CONCLUSION This chapter has suggested that, in the context of the sharing economy, reputation does more than the “simple” function of facilitating the building of trust among users who are strangers to each other. Acting as a fictitious commodity, reputation ultimately represents the key enabler of the process of re-embeddedness of the economic into the social that has been argued to characterize the sharing economy, intended here as a form of exchange that entails both market and non-market features. This adheres to a Polanyian reading of markets as entities that are not fixed but variable, and “more or less present” all the time (Block 1990; Krippner 2001, 784) as social institutions imbued with politics, culture and ideology (Beckert 2007, 15; Krippner 2001). Despite the criticism of the notion of embeddedness (Dale 2010; Hodgson 2017) and of the ambiguity in the definition of markets and the cultural constraints around them (Hodgson 2017; Zelizer 1988) that Polanyi’s work has attracted, this chapter shows the lasting relevance of the Polanyian framework as a heuristic and a theoretical construct, and the usefulness of the analytical categories this offers to the study of the evolving relationship between society and the economy. It must be noted that, in Polanyi’s framework, the notion of re-embeddedness is accompanied by that of the “double movement” (Polanyi 1944/2001), which describes how society swings back and forth between a tension towards market self-efficiency and one towards social protectionism as a counter-movement to self-efficient markets (Beckert 2007). Usually, the notion of double movement as a Polanyian concept entails a newly central role of the state, as a response to the reification of the market that accompanies the affirmation of a market society. However, the process of re-embeddedness here argued seems instead to be rooted precisely in the emergence of this “new social,” whereby digital and non-digital social interaction coexist and platforms surge to the role of pseudoinstitutional actors overseeing economic exchanges. As the transnational dimension of the sharing economy hinders the possibility of state intervention, platforms actually come to embody the role of the central authority that enforces newly protectionist regulations, insofar as platforms “recentralize” the decentralized and dispersed organization of peer-to-peer practices into a single domain. This partly confirms the view that sharing economies ultimately consist of peer-to-peer economies subsumed by a market logic, and represents an element of potential interest for further research in this area. The fictitious commodification of reputation and its role akin to that of labor, land and money in the Polanyian framework represent the baseline of this particular dynamic. As noted by Beckert (2007), Polanyi was clear in claiming that socially embedded market exchanges are “an indispensable precondition for the emergence and operation of market

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382  Handbook of the sharing economy economies” (Beckert 2007, 11). For markets to be efficient, however, market actors need “stable worlds” and “calculability” (Beckert, ibid.). In the sharing economy, this stability and calculability of the socially embedded exchanges of “sharing” is guaranteed by this broader role of reputation, despite all its shortcomings, biases and issues. As the processes of valuation are “social in character” (Beckert 2007, 12), through reputation “the social uncertainty inherent to the product exchanged (or shared) on a market is reduced” (Beckert, ibid.), and therefore individuals can develop confidence in the exchange they are engaging in. Furthermore, the fictitious commodification of reputation ultimately reinforces its trust-building role, as it represents a means to reduce uncertainty and contribute to the formation of robust expectations about the action of others. Nevertheless, as also argued by Beckert (2007) with reference to traditional fictitious commodities, in Polanyi’s view the attempt to establish a system of self-regulating markets based on the commodification of labor, land and money produces “dehumanizing social conditions that Polanyi held responsible for the social and political instabilities he witnessed in his lifetime” (Beckert 2007, 10). This is a huge concern and risk that also applies to the argued fictitious commodification of reputation. An example of this potentially critical development is given by the Social Credit System project, currently being experimented with by the Chinese government in some provinces as a large-scale, state-driven reputation system that makes use of digital technology to develop a rating system with rewards and penalties that applies to an entire society. As part of this project, each Chinese citizen is rated with a score on the basis of their (digital and non-digital) behavior, such as driving in an appropriate manner, paying their bills on time, purchasing healthy food, up to the monitoring of their digital activity and friendships. Each of these aspects contributes to a publicly available “social credit” score that can potentially impact a citizen’s capacity to get a loan, travel, access healthcare, or vote (Meissner 2017). This is epitomous of the way a state (an actual state, in this case) can leverage upon “sharing” exchanges and use reputational logics as a valuation principle and a baseline to allocate resources in an innovative, but also severely problematic way. The possibility to rate all citizens of a state on the basis of their actions across the digital‒non-digital spectrum, and use these ratings as a baseline for decisions about their social rights, is the utmost evidence of the fictitious commodification of reputation in the “new social” of the digital society, and brings with it a whole set of new questions. In fact, if only a few years ago Botsman (2012) enthusiastically promoted a scenario by which everyone had a reputation to which their social life is attached, and outcomes would depend upon it, it is noteworthy that today she is looking at the Social Credit experiment with criticism, describing it as “Orwell’s 1984 meets Pavlov’s dogs” and a potentially “nightmarish” development (Botsman 2018). The Social Credit System project has the potential to engender panopticon-like forms of surveillance and monitoring that can be enforced upon individuals on the basis of undisputable criteria to which they mandatorily have to comply. The dystopian world seen in the episode “Nosedive” of the TV series Black Mirror, where social metrics condition every aspect of social life, looks set to become reality.1

1  “Nosedive,” Black Mirror, Season 3, Episode 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/ (accessed 28 May 2018).

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REFERENCES Abidin, C. (2016), “Visibility Labour: Engaging with Influencers’ Fashion Brands and #OOTD Advertorial Campaigns on Instagram,” Media International Australia, 161 (1), 86‒100. Arcidiacono, D., A. Gandini, and I. Pais (2018), Unboxing the Sharing Economy, Sociological Review Monograph Series, London: SAGE. Arvidsson, A. (2018), “Value and Virtue in the Sharing Economy,” Sociological Review, 66 (2), 289‒301. Arvidsson, A., A. Caliandro, A. Cossu, et al. (2017), “Commons Based Peer Production in the Information Economy,” report, https://www.academia.edu/29210209/Commons_Based_Peer_Production_in_the_Informa​ tion_Economy (accessed 20 May 2018). Arvidsson, A. and N. Peitersen (2013), The Ethical Economy: Rebuilding Value after the Crisis, New York: Columbia University Press. Bardhi, F. and G.M. Eckhardt (2012), “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (4), 881‒98. Bardhi, F. and G.M. Eckhardt (2015), “The Sharing Economy Isn’t About Sharing At All,” Harvard Business Review, 39 (4), 881‒98. Bauwens, M. (2005), “The Political Economy of Peer Production,” CTheory, 12-1, https://journals.uvic.ca/ index.php/ctheory/article/view/14464/5306> (accessed May 6, 2019). Beckert, J. (2007), “The Great Transformation of Embeddedness: Karl Polanyi and the New Economic Sociology,” Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, No. 07/1, https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_1233117/ component/file_1233115/content. Beer, D. (2016), Metric Power, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Benkler, Y. (2006), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Block, F.L. (1990), Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bolton, G.E., E. Katok, and A. Ockenfels (2004), “How Effective are Electronic Reputation Mechanisms? An Experimental Investigation,” Management Science, 50 (11), 1587‒602. Botsman, R. (2012), “Welcome to the New Reputation Economy,” Wired UK, http://www.wired.co.uk/article/ welcome-to-the-new-reputation-economy (accessed 26 May 2018). Botsman, R. (2018), “Big Data Meets Big Brother as China Moves to Rate its Citizens,” Wired, https://www. wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion (accessed 24 September 2018). Botsman, R. and R. Rogers (2011), What’s Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live, New York: Harper Collins. Chase, R. (2015), “Everything That Can Become a Platform Will Become a Platform,” Medium, https://wtfeco​ nomy.com/everything-that-can-become-a-platform-will-become-a-platform-216bcfb89855 (accessed 26 May 2018). Cohen, M. and A. Sundararajan (2015), “Self-Regulation and Innovation in the Peer-to-Peer Sharing Economy,” University of Chicago Law Review Dialogue, 82, 116‒33. Dale, G. (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, Cambridge: Polity. Dellarocas, C. (2003), “The Digitization of Word of Mouth: Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms,” Management Science, 49 (10), 1407‒24. Duffy, B.E. (2017), (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eckhardt, G.M. and F. Bardhi (2016), “The Relationship between Access Practices and Economic Systems,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 210‒25. Ert, E., A. Fleischer, and N. Magen (2016), “Trust and Reputation in the Sharing Economy: The Role of Personal Photos in Airbnb,” Tourism Management, 55, 62‒73. Fradkin, A., E. Grewal, D. Holtz, and M. Pearson (2015), “Bias and Reciprocity in Online Reviews: Evidence from Field Experiments on Airbnb,” in Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, ACM. Gandini, A. (2016), The Reputation Economy: Understanding Knowledge Work in Digital Society, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gandini, A. (2018), “Labour Process Theory and the Gig Economy,” Human Relations, DOI: 0018726718790002. Gandini, A. and I. Pais (2018), “Social Recruiting: Control and Surveillance in a Digitised Job Market,” in Humans and Machines at Work, ed. P. Moore, M. Upchurch, and X. Whittaker, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 125‒49. Hamari, J., M. Sjöklint, and A. Ukkonen (2016), “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67 (9), 2047‒59. Hearn, A. (2010), “Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, Online Ranking and Rating, and the Digital ‘Reputation’ Economy,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organisation, 10 (3‒4), 421‒38.

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384  Handbook of the sharing economy Hodgson, G.M. (2017), “Karl Polanyi on Economy and Society: A Critical Analysis of Core Concepts,” Review of Social Economy, 75 (1), 1‒25. Jessop, B. (2007), “Knowledge as a Fictitious Commodity: Insights and Limits of a Polanyian Perspective,” in Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-First Century, ed. A. Bgra and K. Agartan, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 115‒33. Krippner, G. (2001), “The Elusive Market: Embeddedness and the Paradigm of Economic Sociology,” Theory and Society, 30, 775–810. Masum, H. and M. Tovey (2012), The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions are Reshaping the Offline World, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Masum, H. and Y.C. Zhang (2004), “Manifesto for the Reputation Society,” First Monday, 9 (7), https://journals. uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1158/1078. Meissner, M. (2017), “China’s Social Credit System,” https://www.merics.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/China​ %20Monitor_39_SOCS_EN.pdf (accessed 24 September 2018). Morell, M.F., J.L. Salcedo, and M. Berlinguer (2016), “Debate about the Concept of Value in Commons-Based Peer Production,” in International Conference on Internet Science, Cham: Springer, 27‒41. Pais, I. and G. Provasi (2015), “Sharing Economy: A Step Towards the Re-embeddedness of the Economy?” Stato e mercato, 35 (3), 347‒78. Pasquale, F. (2015), The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Polanyi, K. (1944/2001), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston, MA: Beacon. Ravenelle, A.J. (2017), “Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, not Sharing,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 10 (2), 281‒95. Resnick, P., K. Kuwabara, R. Zeckhauser, and E. Friedman (2000), “Reputation Systems,” Communications of the ACM, 43 (12), 45‒8. Rosenblat, A. and L. Stark (2016), “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers,” International Journal of Communication, 10, 3758‒84. Scholz, T. (2017), Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy, Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons. Schor, J. (2016), “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 4 (3), 7‒22. Schor, J.B. and W. Attwood-Charles (2017), “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Labor, Inequality, and Social Connection on For-Profit Platforms,” Sociology Compass, 11 (8), https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12493. Slee, T. (2017), What’s Yours is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, New York: OR Books. Sundararajan, A. (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wan, Y. (2015), “The Matthew Effect in Social Commerce,” Electronic Markets, 25 (4), 313‒24. Zelizer, V.A. (1988), “Beyond the Polemics on the Market: Establishing a Theoretical and Empirical Agenda,” Sociological Forum, 3‒4, 614‒34. Zervas, G., D. Proserpio, and J.W. Byers (2017), “The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry,” Journal of Marketing Research, 54 (5), 687‒705.

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Index abundance logic 183, 184, 188, 189, 190 access economy 35–6, 178, 184, 189, 190 access-based consumption 62–71, 269 access-based workplaces, see collaborative spaces (study) accommodation sharing 270, 322–3, 324 accounting practices 6, 348–59 acculturation 132 Ackerman, F. 41 Acquier, A. 178, 179, 183, 184, 185, 190 adaptive capacities 256 added value 46, 130 addictive technologies 43 Adler, P. 21 adopter category, crowdfunders as an 166–9, 172 adoption of innovation 158, 165, 166, 170 Adorno, T. 44 affiliation 155–6, 157, 367 Africa 33, 69 agencement 330, 332, 344, 345 agencing 332–3, 344 agency 332, 333, 345, 370 aggregate extended self 31 aggregated ratings 317 Agrawal, A. 154 Air Umbrella 167–9, 170 Airbnb 1, 3, 5, 6, 39, 43, 68, 138, 139, 152, 177, 268, 295, 377 backlash against 363 collaborative consumer study 5, 334–45 customer (dis)satisfaction 306–7, 311 deficient mode of caring 45 design for sharing 107, 108 disaster response 260, 261 eWOM and goodwill 317 founders 193 institutional logics (study) data and method 196–7 discussions and conclusions 205 hybridized performances 197–205 plural logics 193, 194–6 and institutional work 270 misappropriation of P2P concept 245 owner–renter considerations 83, 85, 86 peer evaluation 145 re-individualization 44 reputation 294, 380

restrictions on rentals 271 social dilemmas 279, 280–81 triadic relationships and customer evaluation 303 trust 108, 147, 340, 341 Akasha 295 Akrich, M. 334, 344 Albinsson, P.A. 39, 129 Alford, R. 180 algorithmic governance/management 13, 46, 224, 372, 378 algorithms 32, 33, 105, 296, 352 alienation 93, 205 AltCity 68 altruism 65, 66, 124, 156, 157, 212, 242, 308, 317 always-already shared language 46 Amazon 5, 10, 34, 43, 293, 377 ambivalence 41 analogue sharing phenomenon 35 analogue social world 36 Anderson, P. 14 anthropology 27, 28–9, 31, 62, 66, 76, 124, 208, 209, 365, 371 anti-capitalist commons 12 anti-consumption 63 antique auctions, and object value 77 Anthropocene 18 app economy 12, 33, 68 Appallicious 262 appraisers, object value 81 appropriation (capitalist) 16, 18, 22 Arab countries/millennials 2 digitally facilitated transportation 69–70 emergence of digitized sharing activities 67–8 future research and concluding comments 70–71 Islam and sharing of wealth 65–6 oil, sharing and consumer culture 66–7 sharing economies 64–5 Aragon 223, 224 Arcidiacono, D. 147 Argo, J.J. 77 Aristotle 40 Arnould, E.J. 122 Arrighi, G. 11 Arsel, Z. 129, 208

385

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ArtistShare 164 Arvidsson, A. 3, 55, 378, 379 Asian Tigers 21 association, and object value 77, 81 associative network theory 76, 77, 78, 82 assortative mixing 285–6 asymmetries 33, 35, 280, 332 attitude(s) 35, 45, 68, 71, 77, 129, 132, 167, 170, 171, 173, 198, 213, 305, 316, 318, 332, 377 attractive others, and object value 77, 83 “audience labor” 18 austerity 240, 248, 250 authenticity 6, 67, 348, 349–50, 354, 359 Autolib 307 automation 20, 22 autonomist Marxism 19, 20 averageness mass culture 42 Avis 107 Avram, G. 5, 6 awareness–consideration–evaluation sequence 43 awkwardness, overcoming 112, 115, 117 Axelrod, R. 284 Bag Borrow 68 Baker, S.M. 255 balanced reciprocity 139 Balaram, B. 245 Ballantine, P.W. 138, 208 barbarization 224 Barbrook, R. 208 Bardhi, F. 13, 63, 84, 93, 136, 242, 320, 330, 331, 380 bargaining 204 “barterer as a friend” 132 bartering 2, 29, 62, 122 Italy (study) discussion 132–3 literature review 123–5 setting and data collection 125–6 Zerorelativo.it 126–32 Bartling, H. 5 Bataille, G. 41 “battle of logics” 181 Baudrillard, J. 41 Bauwens, M. 377 Baz Radwan, M. 2 Beckert, J. 381, 382 Bedouin tribes/Bedouin life 2, 67 behaviour bartering, policy and pro-social 133 see also collaborative behaviours; consumer behaviour; user behaviour Being and Time (Heidegger) 38 being-in-the-world 39, 45, 46

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being-there 38, 39, 42, 43, 45 being-with 38, 39, 40, 43, 45 beliefs 53, 55, 86–7 Belk, R.W. 13, 27, 31, 34, 42, 45, 63, 106, 107, 124, 208, 209, 214, 242, 330 belonging(ness) 155–6, 157, 350, 353, 354, 359, 367 Benkler, Y. 13, 106, 208, 377 Benoit, S. 148, 329 Berg Johansen, C. 180, 181 Berlin 267, 268, 269, 271, 272, 341 Bertella, G. 54 Besharov, M.L. 149 “beside” activities 95, 96, 101 Bialski, P. 28, 307, 311 Big Society 142 Bike 4 All 70 bike loan schemes 110 bike rentals 70 bike sharing 70, 230–31, 233, 238–9, 240, 282, 367 Bikeplus 270 biocapitalism 12 biopower 6, 348, 350, 352, 357, 358, 359 Bird Rides 220, 235–6 Birrell, J. 15 Bitcoin 295, 296, 297–8 Bitnation 223 BlaBlaCar 138, 145, 279, 303, 307 Black Death (1348) 24 Black Mirror (TV series) 5 Blanchot, M. 46 blockchain technology 1, 108, 218–19, 220, 221, 222, 224 and trust 4, 220, 290, 291, 294–8, 299 blockchain-based organizations 223–4 Bloom, P. 77 Boellstorff, T. 28 Bollier, D. 221, 222 Boltanksi, L. 362, 364 Bolton, G.E. 285 bonds/bonding 38, 43, 52, 102, 140, 155, 179, 194, 319 Bonneuil, C. 18 Booking.com 203, 293 Botsman, R. 63, 178, 344, 367, 377–8, 382 boundary permeability 17, 32, 35 boundary-blurring 6, 28, 92, 107, 173, 330, 365–72 boundary-work 362, 365 bounded rationality 279, 284 Bourdieu, P. 41 Bradley, K. 108 brands/branding 19, 22, 23, 103, 335, 341, 368 Braudel, F. 11, 12

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bridging social capital 140 Briggs, J. 106 Brown, B. 108 Bundesverband Car Sharing 268 business models 114–15 business-to-business bartering 123 Buterin, V. 218, 219 Butler, J. 350 Cahn, E.S. 144 Cajun Navy 260 calculable selves 351–2 calculating selves 352–4 Callon, M. 332, 333 Calo, R. 332 Cameron, D. 142 capital(ist) accumulation 3, 10, 11, 12, 19, 22, 23, 24 capital-poor actors 20, 23 capitalism altruism and charity as part of 308 Braudelian perspective 11 and the commons 18–23 consumers as pawns in renewal of 55 equated with markets 10 as the great exchange 12 logics of 11, 180 organizational sharing practices 13–14 the sharing economy as a new form 49 simple definition 11 social movements and reaction to 52 timebanking as a resistance to global 140–41 transition towards 17 see also biocapitalism; crowd-based capitalism; digital capitalism; informational capitalism; laissez-faire capitalism; late capitalism; platform capitalism capitalist valorization 23–4 car adoption 109 car ownership 232, 369 car sharing 6, 83, 109, 233, 270, 282, 332, 351; see also Autolib; Avis; Drivy; Zipcar carbon footprint, reduced 4, 156 Careem 69–70, 71 caring 44–5 Carplus 270 Carter, C. 351 categorization 181, 351, 352, 356 celebrity possessions, and history value 77 centralization of power 15 Certeau, M. de 42 chain hotels, and good will 322, 323 chain restaurants, and goodwill 323 chain-generalized exchange systems 137

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chargers (Bird Ride) 236 charity 70, 308 Charter of the Forest (1215) 15 Chase, R. 369, 371 Chauffeur-Privé 248 Chesky, B. 193, 343 Chiapello, E. 362, 364 Chicago 234, 238–9, 240 children, changing social value of 41 China 4–5, 21, 68, 382 Christchurch 261 Christensen, A.-M. 344 Chun, W. 42, 43 CitiBike 240 cities Arab countries 67, 68, 69 early market society 16 operationalization of sustainability 273–4 role in peer-to-peer markets 221 see also urban mobility citizens, social credit system 4–5 city governments, institutional work 266, 270–73, 275 City Sprint 243 civility, and rapport 319 class identity 16 club goods 283, 286 co- (prefix) 92 co-activities, collaborative workspaces 95–8 co-located activity 109–10 co-operative movement 44 co-operative organizations, meritocracy in 224 co-ownership 107, 108, 163, 209 co-production 54, 107, 115, 313, 357 Cochoy, F. 330, 331, 343 code, in blockchain technology 221 codes of conduct 272, 306, 307, 308, 322 coexisting logics 93, 124, 181, 185, 188, 194, 196, 205 cognitive associations, creating 271, 272, 273 cognitive capitalism 19 Cohen, B. 221 Cohn, N. 15 CoHome 92 cohoming 2, 3, 91, 92–3, 103 activities 95, 96 relationship and exchange dynamics 98–101 collaborative behaviours 3, 41, 367 collaborative communities 14, 20 collaborative consumer (study) 5, 329–45 analysis 334–43 conclusion 344–5 discussion 343–4 literature review 331–4 method 334

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388  Handbook of the sharing economy collaborative consumption 49, 53, 122, 124, 282, 303 activities 255 conceptualizations 63 and consumer evaluation 303–4 market value 62 triadic relationship 329 collaborative governance 262 collaborative spaces (study) 2–3, 93–4 conclusion 102–3 findings 95–102 method 94–5 collaborative workplaces 91, 92–3 collectable experiences 85 collective action 49, 52, 56, 57, 330 collective action frames 51–2, 54 collective action reservoirs 55 collective identities 16, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57 collective models of sharing 108–9, 117, 282 collective ownership 109 collective resistance 4, 49, 53–6, 57, 141 collectivist cultures 69, 71 Colombo, M.G. 157 Colony 223 command-and-control, disaster management 261 commensuration, reviews as 351–2 commerce, logic of 3, 195 tension between logic of hospitality and 195–6 commercial revolution (European) 10, 14, 17 commercialization 13, 32, 49, 50, 100, 152, 158, 160, 269 commoditization 21–2, 43, 93, 148, 311 commodity production 21–2 common goods 11, 282 common pool problems 278, 282–3, 286 commoning 11, 12, 13, 19, 21 commons-based markets 10, 17, 137 commons-based peer production 13, 222 commons-based systems of governance 221 the commons Braudelian perspective 12 capitalism and 10, 18–23 in early market society 14–18 logic of value 11–12 sharing within 13 simple definition 11 communal 40 communal movements 3–4 communal sharing 44, 46, 56, 138, 146 communards 128–9 communication crowdfunding and 166 and customer satisfaction 313

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in disaster response 259–60 institutional work 271, 273 in sharing 39–40 Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! 215 communism of capital 20 communitarianism 18, 20, 140, 141 community(ies) absence of, in pseudo-sharing 13 boundaries, moralities and 56 discourse and accounting in 348–59 egalitarian 44, 66 governance of 222 origin of term 44 private life and authenticity 349–50 regulation of the commons 11 resilience 256, 257, 259 sharing and fostering of 63, 67 of sustainability 54 user reviews, see reviews see also sense of community; virtual gated communities community centers 103 community-based economy 13, 179, 185, 189, 190, 266 community-based trust 291–2 competing logics 181, 185, 188, 203 competition 10, 23, 36, 93, 216, 225 competitive market economies 41 Conaty, P. 222 concern 45 conditional cooperation 284 condividuals/condividuality 38, 44, 46 confirmation, innovation-decision process 170, 171 conflict(s) 46, 145–8, 234–5, 363 conspicuous consumption 15, 44, 67, 156 Constantiou, I. 242 constellation of logics 181 consumer behaviour, object history value and 75 consumer capitalism 23 consumer culture 66–7, 113, 332 consumer research 63, 123–4, 255 consumerism 67 consumption academic interest in exceptional forms of 62 Arab nomadic tribes 65 as bridging the private and the public 52 productive inner life of 42 see also collaborative consumption; conspicuous consumption; inconspicuous consumption; mindful consumption; sustainable consumption contagion, and renter considerations 83

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Index  389 contamination cues 78, 83 contiguity 38, 43, 46 contribution, in ONVs 222 control 4, 21, 23, 172, 299, 352, 353, 354, 355 Cook, K. 13 cooperation 51, 52, 212, 213, 287 altruism and 156 and capitalist accumulation 19 digital technology and 23, 365 productive 19, 21 shared mobility 234–5, 238 sharing relations 30 in social dilemmas 278, 284–6 coordination, in disaster response 257 coordination problems, timebanking 143 corporate capital 23 corporate knowledge commons 20 corporate social responsibility 69 corporations 20, 24, 55 Couchsurfing 13, 28, 107–8, 209, 279, 280, 283, 306, 307 counter-movements, neoliberalism and its 50–51 coworking 2, 91, 103 activities 95, 96, 97 relationship and exchange dynamics 101–2 spaces 68, 91, 92 creative culture, the everyday as 42 creativity 20, 22, 91, 260, 372 critical incident analysis 309–11 crowd-based capitalism 2, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35–6 crowdfunders 163, 165–6 as an adopter category 166–9, 172 attitudes 171, 173 behaviour mechanisms 172 characteristics 169, 172–3 innovation-decision process 167, 170–72, 173 motivation 154–7 crowdfunding 152–60, 163–73 advice, feedback and expertise from 158, 159 Arab countries 66, 67 and entrepreneurship 157–9, 160 failure 158, 169 fairness 155–6 information 157, 167 parties involved, see crowdfunders; founders phenomenon of 164–6 product development 163 project default 154 success of 159–60 crowdsourcing 68, 156, 159, 209, 260, 261, 263, 380 crusades 15 cryptocurrencies 291, 295, 296 cultural capital 92

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cultural cognitive institutional work 269, 270, 271, 272–3 cultural conception of value 379–80 cultural meanings 76, 364 cultural practices 2 cultural sensitivity 70, 71 culture, globalization of 22 customer goodwill, and diagnostic eWOM (study) 4, 316–25 conceptual framework 319–20 conclusions 325 discussion and implications 324–5 electronic word of mouth 317–28 industry vignettes 320–24 customer satisfaction 304–5 in collaborative exchanges (study) discussion and conclusions 311–13 method and findings 305–11 customers crowdfunders’ self-perception as 173 as value creators 257 Dalli, D. 2 damage mapping 261–2 DAOStack 223, 224 dasein (being-there) 38, 39, 42, 43, 45 data accumulation 33, 34 data commons 3, 22 data protection 294, 296 data sharing 240, 246, 343 De Angelis, M. 12, 13, 19 De Moor, T. 14, 16, 17 De Stefano, S. 244 de-socialization 13 death, as limit to exchange 41 decentralization of control 4, 299, 355 decentralized autonomous organizations 218–26 blockchain, smart contracts and 218–19 examples of blockchain-based 223–4 the precedence of existing 221–2 and the sharing economy 219–21 decentralized autonomous society (DAS) 226 decisions (crowdfunder) 167, 170–72, 173 deficient mode of caring 45 Deliveroo 22–3, 68, 243, 246, 250, 303, 377, 380 Dell 159 della Porta, D. 50 demand(s) crowdfunding as a forecast of 157–8 freeware and making of 33 made through internet platforms 32 sharing initiated by 30 in timebanking 146, 147

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390  Handbook of the sharing economy democracy 50, 56, 274 democratic theories 44 democratization 153, 155, 339 dependent contractors 244, 372 dependent/non-dependent labor status 244 deregulation 22, 27, 55 Derrida, J. 41 design principles, common pool resources 286 “design for trust” initiative 340 diagnosticity 316 Dictator Games 283 Diekmann, A. 285 Diggers 16, 44 Digihive 68 digital capitalism 3, 24 digital commons 24 digital networks 53, 105, 107, 118 digital platforms 105; see also labor platforms; sharing economy platforms digital technology 3, 21, 23, 31, 105, 292 Dijck, J. van 362, 365 diplomatic gift-giving 29 DiSalvo, C. 109 disappointment, dissatisfaction as 312 disaster response organizations 257 disasters four-phase model of management 256 literature review 255–6 predicted increase in 254 sharing platforms 255 conclusions 262–3 facilitating value for consumers in 257–62 utilization during 4, 254 social networks and response to 255 disconfirmation paradigm 304, 305, 307, 309, 311, 312 discourse(s) 27, 93, 226, 296–8, 348–59 discrimination 224 disengagement, innovation-decision process 171–2 disposal 126–7, 212 disruptions, resistance to neoliberal 51 dissatisfaction (customer) 304, 305, 307, 308, 309–11, 312–13 distance 109 distributive justice 139 Dittmer, K. 148 diversity (resource) 256 dividuality 44 dividuum 44 Divvy 234, 238, 240 Dobsha, S 208 dockless bike share 220, 230–31, 233, 238–9, 240

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donation-based crowdfunding 153, 165 double coincidence of wants 122, 123, 130 double movement 50, 381 double role, of timebank members 144, 146 Dowling, R. 233 Dreyfus, H.L. 39 Drivy 269, 307 Dror, Y. 362, 365 dubbing/dubbed sharing 28, 35–6 Dubuisson-Quellier, S. 55 DuPont, Q. 224 Eatwith 100 eBay 5, 34, 279, 280, 293, 294, 377 Eckhardt, G.M. 13, 63, 84, 93, 136, 242, 320, 330, 331, 380 “ecommony” 46 Ecomodo 110, 111–12, 115, 116, 117 economic dependence 244 economic exchange, see market exchange economic incentives 317 economic motivation, crowdfunding 154–5 economic opportunity, versus social justice 247–8 economic utility 80 economics of the sharing economy 105–18 economies of scale 367 economizing, bartering as 127 educated ZR members 128 educational institutional work 270, 271, 273 egalitarianism 17, 44, 66, 139, 144–5 Egypt 69, 70 electronic access 35–6 electronic word of mouth (eWOM), see customer goodwill emancipatory potential 4, 49 emotion, reviews and 356 emotional gratification 212 employee-like persons 244 enabler, technology as an 367 enclosure, reputation as 376, 380, 381 enclosures (commons) 12, 16, 18 Engels, F. 14 England 14, 17, 35 English Revolution 15–16 enrichment 12, 23 enrolment 333 Enspiral 222 entrepreneurs reward-based crowdfunding 156–7 timebanks created by 143 entrepreneurs of the self 356, 357, 359 entrepreneurship crowdfunding and 157–9, 160 discourses of 353

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Index  391 sharing platforms and extension of political impact 55 equality 4, 141, 147, 377 equality matching 138–9 equity 155, 270 equity-based crowdfunding 153, 165 equivalence 123, 130, 379 Eriksson, T. 4 essence contagion 83 Estonia 246 Ethereum 218–19, 224 ethical economy 141 ethically minded users 130 ethnography 2, 28, 29, 91, 94 Etsy 91 Europe 10, 14–15, 17, 20, 68 European Commission (EC) 244, 248, 250 European Court of Justice (ECJ) 244, 245 European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) 248–9 European Union (EU) 91, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250, 294, 296 everyday/everyday life Arab nomadic tribes 65 contradictory relationship between the media and 46 financialization of 24 longue durée 12, 22 resistance in the 53–7 sharing in the 42–3 evolutionary game theory 286 excellence 22 exchange in collaborative networks 210–11 difference between sharing and 63 as a “mask for domination” 44 sharing as a limit of 40–42, 45–6 see also market exchange; social exchange exchange value 20, 40, 41, 42, 125, 129, 130, 211, 381 excludability 282–3 exclusivity 156, 157 existential phenomenology 38 experiential curriculum vitae (CV) 85 experiential value 84, 87 exploitation 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23 extended selves 31, 32, 34 extra attention, and rapport 319 face-to-face sharing 32 Facebook 32, 209, 259, 260, 261, 262, 283, 293, 330, 365 factories/factory system 19–20, 21, 22, 23 fair play 36 FairBnB/FairCoin/FairCoop/FairMarket 108

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familiarity, and rapport 319 faux particuliers 246 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 261 feedback from crowdfunding 158, 159 see also reviews feudalism 14, 15, 17, 24 fictitious commodity, reputation as a 376, 378–81 field-level logics 181, 194 of the sharing economy (study) conclusions 188–90 research design 182–3 results and discussion 184–8 Figueiredo, B. 85, 215 financial rent 23 financialization 21, 24 finite self 36 finite tangibles 109 the firm and the crowd, blurring of 368–71 First European Revolution 16, 23 fiscal impact, gig economy 245–6 Fischer, E. 3 Fiske, A.P. 138, 139 Fitzmaurice, C. 255 flat sharing 31 flexibility 19, 20, 246–7, 250 fluidity, of everyday sharing 41 Fogg, B.J. 344 Fon 209 food preparation industry, and good will 323–4 food sharing 53, 54, 62, 66, 67, 270 Foodsharing 209 for-profits 4, 43, 107, 185, 242, 267, 268, 269, 270 Ford GoBike 234 Fordist settlement 50 forgiveness (customer) 316, 317, 318, 325 formality 98 Fortezza, F. 2 Foucault, M. 348, 350, 352, 358 founders (crowdfunding) 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172 Fournier, S. 304, 313 fourth industrial revolution 21, 22 Fradkin, A. 380 Fragment on Machinery 19 France 92, 245, 247, 249, 250 Franciscan economic thought 17 free access 35 free association 15, 16, 17 free riders 30, 143, 144, 146, 282, 285, 308 Freecycle 138, 255, 308 freecycling 282, 283

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freedom 17, 40, 41, 45, 46, 106, 246, 369 freeware 33–4 Fremstad, A. 282 Frenken, K. 136, 278 Fressoz, J.-B. 18 Friedland, R. 180 friendship(s) 3, 4, 98, 101, 102, 103, 354, 382 Fuentes, C. 333 Fumagalli, A. 12, 23 functional elements, and (dis)satisfaction 308, 309, 311, 312 functional value 75, 147, 148 fürsorge 45 game theory 278, 279, 280, 281–2, 283, 286 gamification 43 Gandini, A. 4 Gansky, L. 368 Gardner, H. 4 gatekeepers 165, 167 Gebbia, J. 193, 335, 340 Geissinger, A. 3 gender segregation 69 general intellect 14, 19, 20 generalized exchange 137, 138, 143, 211, 283–4, 286, 287 generalized reciprocity 139, 144, 149, 211, 212, 214, 286, 291 generosity 69 gentry (English) 17 Germanic tribes 14 Germany 64, 244, 247, 249; see also Berlin Getaround 205, 232 Gieryn, T. 362 Giesler, M. 208 gift(s) blurring of the market and the 371–2 object value of 77 social ambivalence of 41 see also pure gifts gift-exchange 28, 29–31 gift-giving 41 gifting 130–31 The Gift (Mauss) 211 gig economy 2, 23, 91, 92, 369 EPSR and a better deal for workers 249–50 as an EU issue 247 social protection 249 see also labor platforms global logic 183, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190 global (networked) futures 117–18 global positioning system (GPS) 233, 260 global sharing economy 112, 223 Global South 18 global supply chains 21, 22

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globalization of culture 22 Glushkova, K. 112, 113, 114, 115 Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 165 Golem 223 “Good Gigs: A Fairer Future for the UK’s Gig Economy” 243, 247 good society 4 good work 243, 247 “Good Work, the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices” 243 goods, bartering to obtain 127 Google 32, 293, 330, 365 Gorenflo, N. 208 Gothenburg 272, 273, 274 governance of the commons 287 of decentralized organizations 221–2, 223–4, 225 of delivered services 222 in the disaster field 262 rating systems as instruments of 5 of sharing systems 55, 332 see also algorithmic governance/ management; city governments; local governance Grab 32 Graul, A. 4 Grayson, K. 77, 99 great exchange 12 great transformation(s) 12, 18, 22, 50, 224, 225 The Great Transformation (Polanyi) 375, 378 Greece 2, 139–43 greedy ZR members 128 Greek philosophy 39, 40 Grief, A. 14, 17 Grinevich, V. 181 Grönroos, C. 256–7 grounded theory 139 group exchanges 148 group formation 32, 156 group generalized exchange 138 group solidarity 214, 286 growth-oriented globalization 224 Grubhub Seamless 1 Gruen, A. 2 Grundrisse 19 guest performances, Airbnb and shaping of 201–3 GuestToGuest 270 “guild or yeoman industrialization” 20 guilds (urban) 16–17, 18 Guion, D.T. 256, 257 Habibi, M.R. 124, 304 habit-forming technologies 43

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Index  393 habits (everyday) 42 hackerspaces 103 Haenfler, R. 55 Hagberg, J. 333 Hamari, J. 255 Hammond, A. 67 hand-held devices 31 hard power 249, 250 Hardin, G. 11 Hardt, M. 19 Hasle, P. 344 Hasselbladh, H. 143 Hawley, A.J. 5 Hawlitschek, F. 115, 220 Heckscher, C. 21 Heetch 248 Heidegger, M. 38, 39, 42, 43, 45 Heinzerling, L. 41 Hellwig, K. 311 helping games 283 Hennig-Thurau, T. 317 Hermes 243 Herzberg, F. 304, 309, 311 hierarchization 44 high-profile “sharing economy” practices 136 high-velocity disasters 256 Hill, R.P. 255 Hill, S. 244 historical sociology approach 3–4, 10–24 historicizing 367–8 history-laden objects, and value 76, 78–9, 81 Hobbes, T. 43 home sharing 31, 131, 351; see also Airbnb; GuestToGuest; HomeAway; HomeExchange; Love Home Swap; VRBO Home Sharing Clubs 343 HomeAway 152, 268 HomeExchange 270 horizontalism 141, 147, 259 hospitality Arab prioritization of 66, 67 in cohoming 98–101, 103 customer goodwill study 322–3 logic of 3, 194–5 tension between logic of commerce and 195–6 networks, see Couchsurfing semblance of with commercial parameters 197–205 two-personal dilemmas 280–81 see also home sharing host performances, Airbnb and shaping of 201–3 host–guest interaction (Airbnb) 197–201, 204

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householding 53 humans, attaching an exchange value to 41 hunter-gatherer groups 30 hurricane disaster response 254, 260 Husserl, E. 38, 39 hybrid economies 2, 40 hybrid logics 2, 28, 124–5, 130, 132, 181, 188, 377 hybridized performances (Airbnb) 197–205 Hyde, L. 208 hygiene factors, and (dis)satisfaction 305, 309–11, 312 iconic connection 78, 79, 84 IdeaStorm (Dell) 159 identification algorithms and 32 commercialized sharing and lack of 13 see also self-identification identity(ies) 67, 77, 220, 338–9, 356, 357; see also class identity; collective identities identity creation 269, 270, 271, 272 identity value 129, 130 ideology, and resistance 53–4, 55–6 idiosyncratic offerings 82, 86, 88 “if-then” conditions, smart contracts 219 image construction 269, 271, 272, 357 imitating and transferring 271, 272–3 implementation of innovation 170 impossible exchange 41, 42 improvization 260 In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman) 22 inauthenticity 42 incentivized sharing 82 incentivizing exchanges 144 inconspicuous consumption 43 independent contractors 46, 236, 243, 244 indexical history cues, and object value 78–9, 81, 84 indexical value 85 Indiegogo 153, 159 indignation, dissatisfaction as 312, 313 indirect reciprocity 137–8 individual subjectivity 39, 42 individualism 4, 17, 44, 50, 365 individuality 38, 39, 44, 46 individualization 49 individually performed everyday resistance 55, 57 industrial districts 20–21 industrial revolution 10, 20 industrious development 15, 24 inequality(ies) 4, 32, 33–4, 35, 224, 285, 377, 380

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394  Handbook of the sharing economy infinite intangibles 109 inflated ratings 4, 316, 319, 322, 323, 324, 339, 371 informality 41, 102 information and communication technologies (ICT) 21, 209, 269 information flows 257 information sharing 210, 255, 259, 285 informational capitalism 19, 21, 376 informational dilemma 285 innovation-decision process (crowdfunders) 167, 170–72, 172, 173 innovation(s) 19, 20, 91, 260, 364 crowdfunding and 153, 155, 156–7, 158, 160, 163–73 innovators 167, 169 inscribing action 333 Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP) 245 institution-based trust 292 institutional bricolage of logics 181, 188 institutional logics 3, 149, 180–81, 193–4 defined 139–40 early market society 14–18 see also field-level logics; hybrid logics; plural logics institutional order 180 institutional theory(ies) 3, 137, 180 institutional work (study) 266–75 of city governments 266, 270–73, 275 data collection and analysis 267–8 of sharing economy organizations 266, 268–70, 275 and sustainability 273–4 institutions emergence of new 15 promoting cooperation 284–6 intangible assets 23 intangible object histories, tangibilization 85 intangibles, sharing 109 intellectual capital 20 intentional communities 44 intentionality, in routines 53 inter-institutional system 180–81 interdependencies 56, 278, 369 intermediaries (platform) 178–9, 292 internet 32, 35, 63 Internet of Things 219 interperson sharing 110, 117 interpersonal trust 13, 293, 372 intimacy 22, 40, 43, 98, 101, 102, 318, 319, 322–3 investment game 281–2 investors, crowdfunders’ self-perception as 173 Islam 65–6, 70

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isomorphism 270, 271 Italian autonomist Marxists 19, 20 Italy 2, 17, 122–33 Jarrahi, M.H. 330, 331 Jeacle, I. 351 Jegou, F. 105 Jenkins, T. 109 Jessop, B. 376, 379 John, N. 27, 365 Johnson, S. 261 Juncker, J.C. 248 Kallinikos, J. 143 Katrini, E. 107 keeping things 30 Kendra, J. 260 Kent, J. 233 Kickstarter 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 165, 166, 167, 170 KidiTroc 308 Kitchin Table 92 knowledge 376 adoption of innovation 170 crowdfunders’ innovation-decision process 171 pricing of 40–41 tacit 13–14, 19 and value of shared objects 86–7 knowledge economy 20 knowledge-intensive organizations 14 Kollock, O. 284 Kopytoff, I. 76 Laamanen, M. 4, 54 labor law 5, 243, 244, 248, 249, 323, 373 labor platforms 22–3, 242–8 LAFloodBud.org 262 laissez-faire capitalism 246 Lampinen, A. 108 Land, C. 357 land, declining value of 15 land-grabbing 18 land-sharing crowdfunding 66 Landier, A. 245 Larimer, D. 219 late capitalism 3 latency, and mobilization 54–5 Lawrence, T.B. 268, 271, 274, 275 Lazooz 295 Le Bon, G. 172 Lebanon 64, 68, 69, 70, 71 Lefebvre, H. 40, 53 legal development 16 legal forms 223

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Index  395 legislation 15, 16, 20, 31, 41, 69, 158, 221, 225, 243, 246, 247, 248, 249, 322, 343; see also labor law; regulation; Roman law legitimacy 268, 274, 363–4, 370–71 legitimation 6, 10, 93, 274, 362, 364, 365, 367, 372 lending game 283–4 lending-based crowdfunding 165 Lenfestey, M. 111, 114, 115 Lessig, L. 208, 221 letting go of things 30 Levellers 16 lex mercatoria 16 liberal market society 14 liberal social theories 40 library models 117, 138, 255, 273 Library of Things 110 Lichterman, P. 54 life-stages, and giving 30 lifestyle movements, resistance to neoliberalization 4, 49–57 lifestyles 52, 124 lifeworld 46, 47 Light, A. 106, 107, 108, 117 Linebaugh, P. 12 linking value 129, 130 Linux 34 listings 203–4 litigation 268, 270, 271 Livingstone, N. 308 lobbying 268, 270, 271, 272 Local Exchange and Trading systems (LETS) 32, 139, 259 local governance, urban mobility 230–40 local logic 183, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190 localities, and collective resistance 53 lock-to technology 238, 239 logistics 22, 23 London 246, 267, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274 longue durée 12, 22 LOONCUP 170 Loop Scooters 70 Love Home Swap 270 Lusch, R.F. 257 Lyft 43, 152, 230, 232, 237, 321, 370 Ma, Y. 262 McCarthy, J.D. 55 McFall, L. 345 machine-breaking movement 18 Machlup, F. 20 McNamee, S.J. 224 Maddicott, J.R. 17 “madness of the crowd” 172 Maghribi traders 368

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Magna Carta 15, 16, 17 magnitude of object history 76–7 Mahara 68 mainframe computers 31, 32, 33 Mair, J. 181 Makerhood 110, 112–14, 115, 116, 117 Makers’ Clubs 113, 115 making do 42, 43 Malinowski, B. 28, 29, 211 Malmö 267, 268, 270, 272, 273, 274 man 42, 43 managerial literature 22, 362–73 manifestos, see rhetoric of sharing manisti civili 17 Manyena, S.B. 256 Manzini, E. 105 Marçal, K. 105 market(s) blurring of the gift and 371–2 capitalism equated with 10 deregulation 22, 27, 55 non-capitalist perspective 12 reification of 375 relations 17 market exchange 124–5 capitalist 18 inherent opposition between sharing and 10 social embeddedness 381–2 vs social exchange, see collaborative spaces (study) market logic/order 136 dominance of 50–51 and non-market logic bridging 185–8 coexistence, see hybrid logics tension between 177 of timebanking 141, 142–3, 147, 148, 149 market research, crowdfunding as 157–8 market society, the commons in early 14–18 market studies approach 63, 332, 343, 345 marketization 2, 6, 10, 17, 50 Marshall, A. 20 Marsool 68 Martin, C.J. 54, 118 Martin, I.M. 256, 262 Marx, K. 10, 14, 17, 19, 21 Marxism 19, 20, 52, 138, 379 “mask for domination”, exchange as a 44 mass subjectivity 42 matchmaking 203 materialism 4, 106 materiality 109–10, 213, 226 Matthew effect 380 Mauss, M. 27, 28, 29, 211 meal-share services, and good will 323–4

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396  Handbook of the sharing economy meaning(s) and collective resistance 53–4 commoning and symbolic 11 cultural 76, 364 manipulation of 55 object value 76–7, 81, 83 sentimental value 79 sharing and possibility of 39–40 systematic creation of 85 meaning systems, development of new 270, 271, 273 meaningful usage, and object value 85, 86, 87, 88 media, contradictory relationship between the everyday and 46 Meelen, T. 136 Melanesian Kula exchange 28, 29, 34 Mellet, K. 339 Melucci, A. 55 membership, open value networks 222 The Membership Economy (Baxter) 367 memories, and history value 78 memory cues 84 memory-worthy experiences 84 Men’s Sheds 110 meritocracy 224, 225 Merleau-Ponty, M. 38 meta-level logics 180–81 Mick, D.G. 304, 313 Mickunas, A. 39 micro-entrepreneurs/entrepreneurship 249, 363, 369, 370, 371, 372 micro-payments 105 Mikołajewska-Zając, K. 6 Mileti, D.S. 256 mimicry 270, 271 Mimoun, L. 2 mindful consumption 123, 124 Miskelly, C. 107, 108, 117 mit-sein (being-with everyday experience) 40 mithaft (with-bound) 43 mitigation phase (disaster) 257–9 mitwelt (with-world) 38 mobile phones 33 mobilization, meaning and 54 modesty rules 69 Möhlmann, M. 4, 305 monetary reward, meaningful usage 87 monetary speculation 141 monetized exchanges cohoming 98 and (dis)satisfaction 307, 309, 311, 312, 313 see also non-monetized exchanges monopolistic rent-seeking 3, 24 Monti di Pieta 17

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monti frummentari 17 Moor, L. 345 Moore, R. 16 moral boundaries 41 moral economy(ies) 1, 2, 18 moral market criticism 41, 42 moral obligations 54, 66, 70 Morales, J. 6 Morocco 69, 70 motivation access economy 184 collective resistance 54 for getting rid of things 212 and participation 153–7, 378 to create eWOM 317 utilitarian 93, 212, 214, 331 motivational solutions, social dilemmas 284 Mukherjee, A. 156, 158 multiple logics 149, 181, 194 multiple objects, and history value 77, 82 Muñoz, P. 221 munus 44 mutual reciprocity 137 mutual support 34, 117 mutuality 30, 34, 343 N-person social dilemmas 282–4, 285–6 Nancy, J.-L. 39, 43, 44 narratives, of possessions 78 Nash equilibrium, N-person social dilemmas 283 “necessarily together” activities 95, 96, 97, 101–2, 103 needs, disaster response 260 negative contagion 83 negative reciprocity 13, 331 negotiation of offerings, owner–renter considerations 85–7 Negri, A. 19, 20 neighbourhood platforms 36, 254, 260, 283 neighbourhood sharing 66, 109–19 neo-institutional theories 137 neoliberalism 10, 50–51, 56, 57, 106, 141, 142, 224, 247, 353, 357 “neoliberalism on steroids” 4, 50, 226 nested structures 140, 223, 225 network generalized exchanges 138 networks/networking 102, 261 institutional work and creation of normative 270, 271, 272 see also digital networks; service ecosystems; social networks New Zealand 64, 260, 261 Newman, G.E. 77 Nextdoor.com 254, 260

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Nieborg, D. 362, 365 Nigam, A. 181 9keys 270 nomadic tribes (Arab) 65 non-egalitarian pricing systems 145 non-excludability 282 non-exclusivity 250 non-individual singularity 44 non-interest crowd-lending 66 non-market logic/order 102, 136, 180 as embedded in social relations 331 and market logic, see market logic/order non-monetized exchanges 308, 311, 312, 313; see also bartering; swapping; timebanking non-ownership and access 63, 71 non-professionalism 147, 245 non-profits 4, 156, 266, 267, 269, 274, 308 non-reciprocal pool of resources 138 non-salaried independent workers 244 noppes.nl 32 normative institutional work 269–70, 271, 272 norms 53, 147, 194, 271, 272, 329, 355 Norris, F.H. 256, 263 nostalgia 5, 67, 79 not-for profit exchange 136 object history value defined 76 influence on preferences and behaviour 75 properties 76–9 in the sharing economy 80–87 versus possession attachment 79–80 versus sentimental value 79 object valuation 216 objectification processes, timebanking 143–5, 146 Ocasio, W. 139, 181 Oculus Rift 166, 170 oil reserves (Arab) 66 the old and the new, blurring of 367–8 Oliver, R.L. 304 OLX 68, 70 “on tap” manufacturing 22 one-for-one pricing system 147 one-to-one gifting 131 one-to-one-to-many gifting 131 online facilitated sharing, hybrid nature of 208–16 open access 11, 222 open value networks (OVNs) 222 OpenBazaar 1, 295 openness to experience, and likelihood of renting 83–4 opportunism 278, 279, 280, 281 opportunities 30, 133

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oracles 219 Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) 237 organizational fields, delimiting/defining 268–9, 271, 272 organizational level logics 194 organized resistance 54–5 Ostrom, E. 11, 106, 221, 286, 287 other-regarding preferences 285 Ouishare 93, 269 outsourcing of production 21, 22 ownership 4, 63, 107, 108, 109, 138, 163, 209, 232, 240, 269, 369 owner–renter considerations, and object history value 81, 82–7 Ozanne, J.L. 147, 259, 262 Ozanne, L.K. 4, 138, 147, 208, 259, 262 Pais, I. 376, 377 Pakistan 70 Papaoikonomou, E. 2, 3 paradoxes of the sharing economy 1–2, 3, 4, 6, 93, 178–80 Pargman, D. 108 Parigi, P. 13 Parsons, A. 4 participation 52, 154, 222, 330, 367, 378 pastime, bartering as a 127 path dependence 33 Paypal 32, 113, 114 peasant struggles 15 Pebble watch project 154 peer evaluation, timebanking 145, 147 peer-to-peer (P2P) crowdfunding 165 economy 28 exchange 4, 32, 34, 136, 209 gig economy and misappropriation of concept 245 markets 279 rental 75, 80, 81, 367 sharing 63, 222 Peerby 283, 284 peers 31 “Peers Inc.” metaphor 369, 373 people-to-people interactions 123–4 perceived competence, and goodwill 318–19, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324 Perera, B. Yasanthi 39, 129 perfomativity 344 performance measures, reviews as 352–4 performativity 333, 351 permission asking (cohoming) 99, 100 “permissioned” blockchains 296 personal computers (PCs) 31

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398  Handbook of the sharing economy personal property, sharing of 4 personhood 31, 353 persuasion, innovation-decision process 170, 171 persuasive technology 344 Peters, T. 22 petty commodity exchange 17 petty producers 17, 20 phenomenology, and sharing 38, 39–40, 42, 45, 46 philosophy/philosophers 39, 40 Phipps, M. 256 physical contamination 83 physical indexical cues 78 pirating 31 Pitt, C. 4 planetary concerns, see sustainability Plangger, K. 4 platform capitalism 177, 224, 225, 364 platform cooperativism 46, 107, 209, 222, 224 platform economy 23, 178–9, 185, 189, 190; see also sharing economy platforms platform governance 221–2 platform monopolization 24, 107 Platform Revolution (Parker et al.) 368 Plato 40, 41 pleasure of giving 308, 312 plural logics 194 Airbnb 193, 194–6 latent tensions within 194, 195–6 in timebanking 139–42, 145, 148, 149 plurality, in sharing 43 Polanyi, K. 3, 12, 18, 27, 29, 50, 124, 375, 376, 378, 379, 381, 382 policing 339 Policy Tool Chest (Airbnb) 343 policy-making, disaster management 256, 257, 259, 260, 262 politeness characteristic (cohoming) 99 political change 53 political concept, sharing as a 43–4 political consumerism 55 political logic, of timebanking 140–42, 147, 148 pooling 2, 29, 146 pop-up experiments 93 population (user) 352 positive bias, in reviews 354, 355 positive contagion 83 possession attachment 79–80 possession meaning 76 post capitalism 19 post-Fordism 20, 46, 50 post-growth economy 137, 140 post-traditional commons 12

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poverty (in-work) 246 power 15, 31, 36, 156, 332, 353 power relations 32, 348, 359 power-sharing 44 pre-Islamic era 65 precarity 50, 243, 246 preferences, object history value and 75, 80 preparedness phase (disaster) 258, 259–60 pricelessness 40, 41, 42, 132 pricing of knowledge 40–41 moral criticism of 41 ride-sharing 237 timebanking 139, 144–5, 147 primitive accumulation 16, 18 Prisoner’s Dilemma 278, 279–80, 284 privacy 5, 69, 113, 115, 195, 204, 225, 378 private life personal profiles and authenticity 349–50 reviews and valuation of 355–7 private property 40 pro-common-based economy 137, 141 product value 77 productive cooperation 19, 21 profanation 41 professional/non-professionals 245 profit 13, 14, 93 profit logic 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190 prosperity, neoliberalism and 50 Provasi, G. 376, 377 providers 31, 34 pseudo-institutional actors 380, 381 pseudo-sharing 13, 46, 63, 122, 124 psychological contracts (customer–provider) 318–19 psychological utility 80 public discourse, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies 296–8 public footpath system 35 public good problems 278, 282, 285–6 public policy 5, 231, 234; see also policymaking public spaces, urban mobility and 233 public transit, ride sharing as 237–8 Pulitzer, J. 164 pure exchange 124, 286, 287, 377 pure gifts 29, 211, 214 pure sharing 12–13, 124, 209, 304 quantification, reviews and 351–2 Ramblers 35 rapport, and goodwill 316, 319, 320, 321, 322–3, 324, 325 Rasnača, Z. 248

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Index  399 ratings/rating systems 4, 5, 42, 147, 285, 293, 324, 371, 380; see also aggregated ratings; inflated ratings rational actors 375 rational choice theory 278 rational utility theory 80 rationality 52, 93, 279, 284, 353 Raunig, G. 44 Raworth, K. 106, 118 re-embeddedness, of the economic into the social 4, 376, 378–9, 381 re-feudalizing logic of digital capitalism 3, 24 Re-imagining Work (German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs) 243 re-individualization 44 Really Really Free Market 209 reciprocity 17, 27, 65, 137, 144, 149, 156, 194, 209, 285, 329, 354; see also generalized reciprocity; indirect reciprocity; negative reciprocity recirculation 49, 75, 76, 132, 220 reclamations (European) 15 recovery phase (disaster) 258, 261–2 recycling 126 Red Cross (American) 261 Reddit 291, 296–8 redistribution 2, 29 redundancy (resource) 256 registration (user) 32, 33 regulated sustainability 224 regulation 5, 225, 247, 271, 296, 322, 370–71, 373; see also self-regulation regulatory institutional work 268–9, 271–2 Reischauer, G. 181 relation mediators 165 relational asset 117 relational elements, and (dis)satisfaction 308, 309, 311, 312 relational modality, shift in 15 relational value 313 relationships between institutional logics 181 collaborative workspaces 98–102 see also contiguity; power relations; social relations; triadic relationships religion 65–6 Rent the Runway 83 renter considerations, and object history value 81, 82–4, 86–7 repopulation (Europe) 14–15 representation 56 reputation 4, 5, 34, 92, 371, 375–82 blockchain technology and 220, 225 as a fictitious commodity 376, 378–81 in sharing economy research 376–8

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systems 13, 224, 226, 269, 285, 287, 292–4, 324, 335, 371, 375, 380 timebanking 147 see also ratings/rating systems; reviews reputation cascades 285 reputation portability 294 resilience 49, 256, 257, 259 resistance to global capitalism 140–41 to marketization 17 to seigneurial exploitation 17 see also collective resistance Resolution Centre 341 resource management 106, 118 resource sharing 65, 131–2 resources, as adaptive capacities 256 response phase (disaster) 258, 260–61 restricted mutual exchange 137, 138 reviews 293, 324, 331, 339, 344, 348 as measure of performance 352–4 as quantification and commensuration 351–2 and trust-building 42 valuing private life and the self 355–7 visibility and normativity 354–5 reward-based crowdfunding 153–4, 155, 156–7, 158, 165, 166 rhetoric of sharing (analytical study) 6, 362–73 background 363–4 conclusion 372–3 popular SE literature 364–5 sharing economy as boundary blurring 365–72 Richins, M.L. 76 Richthofen, G. von 3 ride-hailing 68, 69, 246, 248, 249; see also Uber ride-sharing 53, 69–70, 237–8, 240, 271–2, 281, 321–2, 324; see also Lyft; Uber Ridership Beta Test Rider 237 risk(s) 169, 279, 280, 295, 317 rivalrous goods 282 robust resource networks 256 Rocas-Royo, M. 4 Rogers, E.M. 167, 170, 171 Rogers, R. 63, 344, 367 role clarity, and customer satisfaction 313 Roman law 16 Rosenblat, A. 332, 378 Roth, A.E. 106 routines 53 rural commons 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 rural communes 4 rural middle class 17 Rushkoff, D. 225 Ryan, A. 5, 6

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400  Handbook of the sharing economy Sabel, C. 20 Sacramento 240 sadaqah 2, 65 Sahlins, M. 138, 139 salience of indexical cues, and history value 78, 81 San Clemente 237–8 San Francisco 160, 193, 234, 267, 268, 271, 274, 363 Santa Monica 235–7, 240 Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of (KSA) 64, 68, 69, 70, 71 Scaraboto, D. 85, 130, 206, 215 scarcity logic 183, 184, 188, 189, 190 Scharpf, F.W. 248 Scholz, T. 44 Schor, J. 6, 39, 220, 255 scooter-sharing 70, 220, 233, 235–7, 240 Scott, W.R. 268 “second great transformation” 22, 50 The Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson and McAfee) 370 second-order dilemmas 285 secular individualism 17 SeeClickFix 262 seigneurial pressure 15, 16, 17 selection of offerings, owner–renter considerations 85–7 self and object history value 76–7 reviews and valuation of 355–7 see also calculable selves; calculating selves; entrepreneurs of the self; extended selves; sense of self self-demonstration 350 self-disclosure, and rapport 319 “self-employed” 144, 243, 244, 246, 249 self-examination 350 self-fulfilling activity, bartering as a 127 self-identification 211 self-interest 93, 124, 125, 195, 242, 250, 331 self-locking mechanisms 233 self-maximization 353 self-regulation 250, 339, 354, 368, 370, 371, 372, 378, 382 semiotic theory 78 sense of community 4, 6, 34, 67, 92, 125, 348 sense of self 84, 350, 352 Sensorica 222 sentimental value 79 Seoul 267, 268, 272, 273, 274 service apps 68 service ecosystems 257 service interactions (cohoming) 99–100

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service quality, and goodwill, see customer goodwill shared identity 130 shared learning 117 ShareDXB 68 ShareGrid 75 Sharehub 273 SharePay 295 ShareRing 295 sharewashing 6 sharing anthropology of 27, 28–9 concern and caring 44–5 in the contemporary Arab world 67–8 in the contemporary economy 31–5 contiguity and community 43–4 defining 208–9 difference between exchange and 63 difference between gift exchange and 29–31 and the everyday 42–3 inherent opposition between market exchange and 10 as a limit of exchange 40–42, 45–6 marketization 2 moral implication 1 non-engagement in 30 phenomenology and 38, 39–40, 42, 45, 46 research studies 62–3 tendency to move from equal to unequal 4 use of, in the sharing economy 46 see also pseudo-sharing; pure sharing; sadaqah; zaqat sharing cities 267, 272, 273 sharing cultures 107, 117, 118, 273 sharing economy Arab context 64–5 commercial variation of 209 DAOs and the 219–21 definitions 1, 136, 278 discourses 27, 93 four possible paths 224 historical sociology approach 3–4, 10–24 as an inclusive economy 363 institutional logics, see institutional logics as a liberatory space 49 nature of 1–3 object history value in 80–87 positive and negative impacts 6 research 178, 330 social dilemmas, see social dilemmas social movement perspective 49–57 tensions and paradoxes of 1–2, 3, 4, 6, 93, 177, 178–80 theoretical orientations 3 trade-offs 88

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Index  401 trust, see trust urban mobility, see urban mobility use of sharing in the 46 why and how it works 4–5 The Sharing Economy (Sundararajan) 369–70 sharing economy organizations (SEOs), institutional work 266, 268–70, 274, 275 sharing economy platforms 34, 209 and access 35–6 and collaborative consumers, see collaborative consumer (study) and community resilience 256 crowdfunding 163, 164, 165, 166 design for sharing 107–10 designing economies 106–7 diversity of economies 116–18 economics of sustainability (case studies) 110–16 excludability 282–3 failure of voluntary non-market mediated 4 financial crisis and 365, 367 goals and benefits of 4 joining, owner–renter considerations 82–4 shaping of user behaviour 3, 201–3 sustainability and success of 3, 118 and trust, see trust user profile requirements 44 utilization during disasters 4, 254, 257–62 see also neighbourhood platforms; transport platforms Sharing Economy UK 268 sharing-in 1, 63, 226 sharing-out 45, 63, 226 Shoup, D. 232 Shulman, D. 77 Sidecar 43 sign-value creation 84 signaling theory 318 significant others, and object value 77 similarity (user) 44 singularity 12, 42, 43, 44 singularization 12, 23, 76, 79, 80 skilled labour 20 skills sharing 131 Slee, T. 55 small and medium-sized enterprises 20, 21, 22, 23, 144, 266, 275 smart contracts 218–19, 220, 290, 296, 298 Smart Map 273 smartphones 33 SmashCup 158 Smith, A. 40 Smith, W.K. 149 sociability 4 social acceleration 12, 23

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social capital 13, 16, 34, 140, 211, 292, 317, 330 social control 5, 354 Social Credit System (China) 4–5, 382 social currency, reputation as 376 social dilemmas 278–87 conclusions and avenues for research 286–7 N-person 282–4 solutions 284–6 two-person 279–82 social embeddedness 122, 284, 285, 382 social engineering 5, 6 social Europe 248–9 social exchange 117, 118, 122, 124, 125 market exchange vs, see collaborative spaces (study) reciprocity in 137–8 social function, of sharing 30 social gatekeepers 165 social interaction 13, 53, 92, 102, 103, 381 social justice 247–8, 270, 274 social learning 286 social logic, of timebanking 140, 141, 147, 148 social market model 244, 246, 247–50 social media collaborative consumer study 334 and a data commons 22 new era of sharing 330 reputation portability 294 use in disaster response 259, 260, 261, 262, 263 social media analytics (SMA) 182 social movement(s) classical 52 sharing economy as a 365 timebanks created by 141 see also lifestyle movements social networks 255, 257, 259, 260, 284, 292, 295 social practices 2, 19, 41, 231, 367 social protection 50, 247, 249 social relations 14 bartering and 127 commoning and 11 consumer culture and change in Arab 67 economization of 53 embedded in the economic system 375 embeddedness of social dilemmas in 284 factory system and 19 general intellect embedded in 19 householding and creation of reciprocal 53 innovators 167 neoliberalism and 357 non-market exchange 331

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402  Handbook of the sharing economy pure sharing and 12–13 reputation and objectification of 376 and trust 115, 148 social sharing 13 social status 36, 44, 156, 157 Social Structures Program 142 social struggles 15–16, 17 social systems 11, 13, 35, 261 social ties 29, 255, 329, 372 social welfare logic 141, 142, 145 socialism of capital 20 sociality 6, 138, 139, 308, 311 socialization 128, 132, 143, 147, 255 societal logics 194 socio-cultural perspective, sharing 62–3 socio-economic change 118 sociology 124 soft power 248, 249 software developers 34 solidarity 36, 43, 51, 52, 124, 143, 214, 222, 286 solidarity economy 107, 118 Sophists 40 sorge 45 Sörum, N. 333 Spain 2, 139–43, 244, 245 spatial factors, sharing tangibles 109, 110 Srnicek, N. 23 Stark, L. 332, 378 state of nature 43 status of Uber drivers 46 see also social status status accumulation 34 status symbols 67 Steal 68 Steinberg, D. 155 Stewart, D. 39 Stockholm 272 Storemates 269 Storj 223 strategic solutions, social dilemmas 284 structural elements, cohoming 98 structural solutions, social dilemmas 284 Student Volunteer Army (SVA) 261 stumbling into socialism/communism 14, 20 Style Lend 75, 83, 85 subjectification 46 subjectivity 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 123 substitutability of resources 256 Suddaby, R. 268, 271, 274, 275 Sundararajan, A. 27, 28, 368, 369–70 surplus value commons 21 surveillance 4, 5, 294, 352, 378 sustainability awareness about 274

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and bartering 122, 124, 128 communities of 54 economics of 106, 110–16 institutional work 273–4 of platforms 3 regulated 224 sharing and environmental 154 timebanking and 141 sustainability logic 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190 sustainable consumption 123, 125, 127, 128, 272, 363 Sutherland, W. 330, 331 swapping 2, 62, 70 Swarm City 223, 224 sweat-shop conditions 246 Sweden 267, 272; see also Gothenburg; Malmö; Stockholm; Umeå symbolic connection 78, 79 symbolic exchange 41, 42 symbolic meanings, commoning and 11 symbolic token, reputation as 376, 379, 380, 381 symbolic value 380 symbols 177, 180, 188 sympathy (customer) 316, 317, 318, 325 Szabo, N. 218, 219 tacit knowledge 13–14, 19 Takahashi, N. 286 “taking care of things” 45 tangibilization, of intangible object histories 85 tangibilizing contamination 78 tangible markers, as memories 84 tangibles and customer goodwill 321 sharing 109, 110, 111–16 TaskRabbit 43, 136, 177, 262, 278, 380 tax losses 246 taxation 15 taxis/taxi services 69, 233, 249, 321, 322 Taylor, M. 244, 247 Taylor, S. 357 temporality 53, 77, 102, 109, 110, 170–71 terms and conditions (labor) 243 Teubner, T. 4 Thatcher, M. 105 Thompson, E.P. 12, 14 Thornton, P.H. 139, 194 time credits 136, 144 time management 370 time sharing 131 time-dollar system 141 timebanks/timebanking 2, 109, 136–49 conflicts that destabilize 145–8 difference from other sharing systems 137

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Index  403 in disaster management 262 failure 137, 146 institutionalization 137, 143–5, 149 members’ double role enactment 144, 146 minus time-points 144 mobilized collective action frames 54 reciprocity 149 reciprocity in 144 and social networks 259 within the sharing economy 137–9 “To Gig nor Not to Gig? Stories from the Modern Economy” 243 tolerated taking 36 tool libraries/tool sharing 138, 282 toy libraries 138, 255 Toyotism 21 trade-offs, sharing economy 88 “tragedy of the commons” 11 TransferWise 1 transparency 108, 218, 222, 225, 249, 290, 294, 295, 343 transport platforms 68, 69–70, 110; see also Getaround; Lazooz; Lyft; Turo; Uber transportation, services, and goodwill 321–2 travelling barterer 131–2 triadic relationships 34, 303, 313, 329 trial software packages 33 trip data, urban planning 240 TripAdvisor 293 trust in Arab societies 71 and the sharing economy 108, 220, 278, 290, 331 Airbnb 108, 147, 340, 341 blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies 4, 220, 290, 291, 294–8, 299 Chinese social credit system and 5 customer goodwill 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 323, 325 electronic word of mouth and 4 historical evolution 291–2 Makerhood 113 promoting 115–16 provider competence 318–19 reliance on review systems 42 reputation systems 13, 285, 292–4 strategies for creating 32 timebanking 143, 145, 147–8 trust games 278, 280–82, 283, 284 trust transfer 293–4 trust-free systems 220, 290, 296 truth 40, 41 turbocharging technologies 367 Turo 75, 83, 232

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Tussyadiah, Lis P. 305 two-factor theory 304–5, 309, 311, 312 two-person social dilemmas 279–82, 284–5 Uber 1, 10, 32, 39, 43, 139, 152, 177, 230, 232, 237, 295, 321, 370, 377 in Arab countries 68, 69, 70 labor platform 46, 243, 244, 245–6, 248, 250, 332, 378 and market change 118 unwillingness to share trip data 240 ubuntu 34 Umeå 272 uncertainty 41, 158–9, 167, 169, 170, 303–4, 317, 382 United Arab Emirates (USE) 64, 68, 69, 70, 71 United Kingdom 14, 17, 35, 111, 164, 242, 245, 247, 249; see also London United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD) 246 United States 64, 68, 91, 232, 233; see also Chicago; San Clemente; San Francisco; Santa Monica updating 43 Upwork 91 urban guilds 16–17, 18 urban mobility, and local regulation 230–40 historical context 231–2 infrastructure 231, 232, 233, 240 public policy 231, 234 and the sharing economy 230, 232–3 Chicago: dockless bike share 238–9, 240 a conceptual model for 234–5 conclusions 239–40 conflicting impulses 230 data sharing 240 San Clemente: ride share as public transit 237–8 Santa Monica and electric scooter share 235–7, 240 social practices 231 see also transport platforms usage history, and object value 85, 86, 87, 88 use value 20, 84, 125, 129, 130, 211, 222, 377, 379, 380, 381 user behaviour, platforms and shaping of 3, 201–3 user profiles Airbnb 203, 338–9 Kickstarter 157 promotion of authenticity 349–50 reduction of similarity 44 timebanking 147 Zerorelativo.it 128–9 utilitarianism 83, 85, 93, 126, 127, 143, 146, 172, 212, 214, 215, 313, 331

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Copyright © 2019. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie! 209, 210 collaborative exchange 210–11 types of engagement 211–14 value creation 214–16 valence of object history 76, 77 Valor, C. 2, 3 valuation of self 355–7 valuation technologies 356 value assessment, in bartering 129–30 collective intelligence and 14 cultural conception of 379–80 financialization of 21 of land 15 logic of 11–12 subjectification as a generation of 46 utilitarian 313 see also exchange value; functional value; object history value; use value value co-creation 214–16, 256–7 value creation 23, 24, 256–62, 263 value extraction 126 value regimes 124–5 value-in-use 257 values 53, 64, 69, 70, 269 Van den Bussche, P. 6 VanderZanden, T. 235 Veer, E. 260 vegetarianism 54 venturesomeness (innovator) 167 verification (user) 32 vesting 271, 272 village economy 13 Virno, P. 46 virtual gated communities 226 visibility 55, 57, 352, 353, 354–5 “visible hand” 20 vital subsumption 19 Voima, P. 256–7

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voluntary non-market mediated platforms 4 VRBO 268 Wachtendorf, T. 260 Wahlen, S. 4 waiting, innovation-decision process 171 Waldorff, S.B. 180, 181 Wan, Y. 380 Wasselni 68 Waterman, R. 22 Waze 260 we-ness 52, 56 wealth (Arab) 65–6 Web 2.0 technology 46, 63, 164, 365 Weber, M. 204 Westbrook, R.A 317 What’s Mine Is Yours (Botsman and Rogers) 363, 365 White Paper (Uber) 250 Widlok, T. 2, 208 Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams) 209, 365 Wikipedia 32, 34 Willer, R. 208 Wimdu 270 “with or without” activities 95, 96, 101 with-bound (mithaft) 43 with-world (mitwelt) 38 work/employment distinction 243–4 Wrathall, M.A. 39 zakat 2, 65–6, 67 Zald, M.N. 55 Zeitlyn, D. 34 Zelizer, V.A. 41, 124 zero-credit balance 144, 146 Zerorelativo.it 122–3, 125, 126–32 Zervas, G. 339 Zetlin, J. 20 Zipcar 13, 70, 84, 91, 93, 273, 377 Zvolska, L. 268, 271, 274

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