Development of the Sharing Economy: Factors, Effects, Motives of Participation

Introduction

The sharing economy is an innovation aimed at transforming the way businesses do business. This transformation entails serious economic consequences.

These changes include (Stolbov, 2018):

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  increasing rationalization of consumer behavior. This is due to simplified access to information, which allows the consumer to make an informed choice. This maximizes utility;

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  complication of behavioral function. At present, people cannot be viewed only from the standpoint of the neoclassical model of homo economics, since they are characterized by “both egoism and altruism, both the desire for competition and the desire for cooperation ...”.

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  the difficulty of choosing in a large amount of information. Knowledge becomes the basic economic resource. A large amount of information and its abundance puts the consumer in an ambiguous situation related, on the one hand, with the possibility of obtaining meaningful information, and, on the other hand, the difficulty of determining truly meaningful information;

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  the significance of the gravity model decreases, according to which a forecast of the distribution of the number of consumers in the market is made. In the traditional gravity model, the number of new consumers is inversely proportional to their distance from the place of transaction. In modern conditions, distance is no longer decisive. Increasingly, this factor is the cost of decision making.

Often, sharing economics is seen as a disruptive innovation (Ferrell and etc., 2017) that changes the market so much that the previously dominant state of affairs in the market and its habitual state is destroyed. The financial component is of fundamental importance. It has been proven that sharing economics destroys the familiar institutional environment and uses new technological solutions (Laurell & Sandström, 2016). Enterprises operating in these markets are forced to radically reconsider their business models. According to Richardson, L. this disruptive innovation strengthens traditional businesses (Richardson, 2015). This is necessary not only to maintain its competitiveness, but also simply to survive.

However, sharing economics, like any innovation, provides a number of social, environmental and economic benefits (Botsman & Rogers, 2011). From an environmental point of view, the economics of sharing implies a more rational and efficient use of various resources (Böcker & Meelen, 2017), makes it possible to save limited resources, and contributes to a longer use of goods. The economic benefits consist in reducing idle capacity, creating and promoting well-organized networks, changing the consumption model. Social effects consist in wider access to diverse services for socially vulnerable groups of the population due to cheaper access, increased social cohesion in society (Belk, 2010; Gansky, 2010).

Understanding the processes that form the basis of innovation, especially breakthrough innovation, helps in identifying the threats and opportunities that it represents (Druehl & Schmidt, 2008). Breakthrough innovations, to which the sharing economy belongs (Walsh, 2011), is a competitive response to the development of the economy and the market (Lepore, 2014). Therefore, studying economics of sharing is a strategically important activity from the point of view of building strategies for the functioning of business structures. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that J. Lepore proved that in the long run, the one who was able to accept, adapt and embed disruptive innovation in his business model more often wins, and not necessarily the one who was the first to promote a new destructive format (Lepore, 2014).