Abstract
The sharing economy has developed very quickly. However, organizations like Airbnb and Uber have encountered crisis of trust. Academia still does not know what is the type of trust in sharing economy organizations. Therefore, the authors designed two studies, used data from Airbnb, to test 2 hypotheses: (1) the level of inter-organizational trust in sharing economy organizations is relatively positive to the level of participation, and (2) the price of the product or service being shared is relatively negative to the level of participation. The results find out that consumers are more willing to choose non-shared renting methods in China, yet the opposite in America. Under both conditions, price is an important moderator. This shows that the role of trust in China is mainly inter-organizational trust, but interpersonal in America. The theoretical contribution is to reveal the type of trust in the sharing economy organizations, collaborative relations and studies of Airbnb.
TopIntroduction
In recent years, one of the major innovations of Web 2.0 technologies called the Sharing Economy has dramatically influenced the user experience in Web 2.0 technologies. In specific, Airbnb is a typical business platform based on sharing economy, it does not own many houses but enables its users to share their houses on the platform. This is different from traditional businesses and changed the user experience during this process. Users are not only consuming the products but also producing goods and services like a “producer”. For example, one person can rent a house in Airbnb while traveling and lease his or her own house through this platform as well. It is clear that sharing economy presents an important role to understand the change of user experience in Web 2.0 technologies. So research on Airbnb in this chapter will give new insights to the change of the user experience in sharing economy.
Technically speaking, The sharing economy is a process of collaborative consumption online, so it is no doubt that there is a great risk of uncertainty in this process. In reality, several typical representatives of the sharing economy have encountered a crisis of trust during development. For example, violent incidents have repeatedly appeared in Airbnb, and two of Didichuxing’s female passengers were killed years ago. Trust is an important factor in overcoming this kind of risk, but academia still does not know what is the type of trust in sharing economy organizations, neither knows little about the cultural influence under these circumstances. Although trust has always been the focus of sharing economy research (Huurne, Ronteltap, and Corten et al., 2017), relevant research is still insufficient in quantity and quality.
In this chapter, we view business platforms in sharing economy like Airbnb as growing organizations (Perren and Kozinets, 2018), and we will use “sharing economy organizations” for short in the following context. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to find out the trust types in sharing economy organizations from a cross-cultural perspective. And the research question comes from the observation of Airbnb: Airbnb is a typical representative of the sharing economy, it should carry the main logic of sharing economy, that is, the participants would share, interact and trust each other, but the reality in China is just the opposite. This means users from different cultures in Airbnb perform differently and earn different user experiences. Why is that this counterintuitive phenomenon happened?
Key Terms in this Chapter
Transaction Cost: It refers to all the costs incurred to facilitate transactions. It is difficult to clearly define and enumerate because different transactions often involve different types of transaction costs.
Value Creation: Refers to a series of business activities and cost structure of an enterprise that produces and supplies products or services that meet the needs of target customers.
Airbnb: Is an abbreviation of AirBed and Breakfast (“Air-b-n-b”). It is a service website that connects tourists and homeowners who have rooms for rent. It can provide users with various accommodation information.
Sharing Economy: An economic phenomena, with the help of a digital network platform, based on the transfer of using right and ownership between individuals or organizations, to maximize the usage of products and services.
Collaborative Consumption: Consumers use online and offline communities, salons, training, and other tools to connect to achieve an economic model of cooperation or mutually beneficial consumption, including lend, use, or exchange of goods and services.
Value Co-Creation: Refers to the cooperation between producers and consumers to create value. Value is not created independently by the enterprise but is created jointly by the enterprise and the customer.
Cross-Cultural Study: Refers to a method and activity that reveals the similarities and differences between people ’s social behaviors and psychological characteristics and their development laws under different social conditions through the comparison of different cultures, to provide a basis for understanding the universality of social psychological phenomena.
Uber: The world's first ridesharing app, was founded by a Silicon Valley technology company.
Sharing Economy Organizations: The emerging enterprises based on the logic of sharing economy.
Didichuxing: Is the world's premier ride-sharing platform. It provides comprehensive travel services such as taxis, special cars, luxury cars, buses, minibusses, shared bicycles, etc. for more than 450 million users.