Regulated Sharing Economy in the New Normal

Introduction

Although sharing is an innocent and non-monetary concept, it started to take a different turn with the emergence of sharing platforms. The sharing economy spread to societies with a positive image by causing idle products or products that are used on very few days of the year to be brought back to the economy, thus reducing purchases, and changing perceptions about sustainability. Sharing economy allows the owned products or services to be used by others in a short term. Sharing economy is a term describing digital platforms that connect consumers to a service or product through a mobile app or website (Cockayne, 2016). The sharing economy covers different sectors and a wide range of organizational forms, from for-profit initiatives to non-profit initiatives (Acquiera et al. 2017). The system, in which money is included in the sharing process and mediated by platforms, started with the social media sites established in the late 1990s with the partial widespread of the internet (Botsman & Rogers, 2010). Economic recessions such as the 2008 Financial Crisis pushed the search for cheap goods and services, and the global widespread use of smartphones increased the popularity of the sharing economy.

Basically, there are two different types of sharing economy, asset hubs and peer-to-peer networks (Rauch & Schleicher, 2015). While asset hubs rent their goods and services for a short term, the peer-to-peer network provides a connection between the host and the users. Besides accommodation and car sharing, the sharing economy spans many sectors, including education, finance, goods, public services, and the workplace. The sharing economy ensures that the capital costs of products are reduced and used effectively. Any idle goods can be included in the sharing economy. Borrowing has become an important alternative instead of buying household goods, cars, and houses.

Sharing economy offers broader and cheaper access to services for customers in the short term (Bardhi &Eckhardt, 2012). As a result of the development of technology, sharing platforms reduce transaction costs thanks to companies that provide services with websites and smart phone applications, and search costs are also reduced by making it easier to compare alternative prices published on the platforms. Thanks to the intermediaries that bring together consumers and people who have the opportunity to profit from their idle products, a new economy style has emerged, and it has reached a level that can compete with many institutions operating in the traditional economy in a short time. Moreover, due to the flexibility of supply, relatively inexpensive services reach the entire target customer without information asymmetry with the use of internet networks. Supply flexibility is one of the important advantages of sharing economy. By analyzing the situation of the market, hosts can quickly share their products actively or withdraw from the sharing upon the change in total demand in the short term. For example, with the app, Uber drivers can quickly add or remove themselves from the existing driver supply, and similarly, other suppliers can easily list and remove their selection of goods or services they offer (Zervas et al. 2017). In addition, sharing economy employees or intermediaries can provide a cost-free transition to platforms that make fewer interruptions, and provide more profit opportunities by using alternative applications, thus ensuring that the market remains constantly dynamic. In the demand part, users can act flexibly and sort according to the prices, user points and characteristics of the products that are subject to sharing, thereby minimizing search costs. The results of the survey conducted in Amsterdam showed that the most important reason for choosing the sharing economy is economic reasons, on the other hand, environmental reasons and sustainability factors are also effective (Böcker & Meelen, 2017).

The increase in small earnings over time, the diversification of the shared products, and the increase in total demand in proportion to the number of users of the platforms increased the interest in the sharing economy. Growing interest in the sharing economy is changing the behavior of people whose main motivation is sharing. With the profit of products, vehicles, homes and even experiences that are subject to sharing, individuals have started working full-time on sharing platforms., Even by making new purchases, has created new products to share or improved existing products. As a result, the sharing economy has become an alternative to traditional economics.