۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review

۳- Hypotheses development: SSCM practices

۴- Methodology

۵- Data analysis and results

۶- Discussion

۷- Conclusion

References

Abstract

The notion of the sharing economy has been introduced in many sectors and provided significant benefits to consumers and asset owners. Despite the remarkable improvement of the sharing economy in recent years, its relationship with sustainability remains insufficiently researched. This study adopts a sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) perspective. A large-scale survey with 420 participants showed that investment recovery (IR) practices and corporate social responsibility (CSR) conducted by sharing economy platforms significantly and positively affect customers’ intention to use sharing economy-based services/products, whereas internal green management (IGM), supplier green management (SGM), eco-design (ECD) and customer green management (CGM) practices do not. A follow-up qualitative study with ten participants provided further explanations and supported the findings of the survey. This study links the sharing economy and sustainability by testing the effectiveness of sharing economy platforms’ sustainable practices and proposes the best practices for sharing economy platforms to maintain a long-term sustainable marketplace.

Introduction

The collaborative consumption or the sharing economy is based on peer-to-peer actions through ‘borrowing, renting, gifting, swapping and buying’ in order to gain the services or products (Roos and Hahn, 2017, p.113; Hamari et al., 2016). Compared to the linear and individual consumptions, the sharing economy brings the consumption behaviour to a virtual circle, for instance, decrease over-consumption rate and environmental pollution issues (Lyon et al., 2018), and help the poverty by reducing the cost of transactions (Heinrichs, 2013; Scavarda et al., 2019). The sharing economy has grown significantly since 2010 with the rapid development of major players such as Uber (automobile sector), Airbnb (hospitality sector), Spotify (entertainment sector), LendingClub (finance sector) and Thredup (retail sector) through disintermediation, excess capacity utilisation, and productivity improvement (PwC, 2015). Unlike traditional businesses, sharing economy-based companies do not virtually purchase any inputs, produce products, and sell physical products. Instead, they invite participants and match different groups of participants to access the other groups of participants. Most of the existing sharing economy service providers offer something that traditional businesses offer to keep their participants in line. However, these sharing economy service platforms are being erected on top of platforms that are already being erected on top of platforms. For instance, Google Android is an open source operational platform for application developers, handset makers, and users. Uber’s platform for matching drivers and travellers is built on top of Android, and Uber Eats is building a platform on top of Uber which matches restaurants, drivers and consumers who want a quick home delivery meal. This has made sharing economy- based companies more flexible and enabled them to provide more convenient services to consumers compared to traditional businesses.