Drivers and Barriers to Individual Participation in the Peer-to-Peer Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is a rapidly growing sector of our economy and society. Sharing platforms facilitate the exchange of idle resources among individual peers. The success of these peer-to-peer sharing (PPS) platforms largely depends on their understanding of the underlying drivers and barriers for individual users to participate in sharing activities on such platforms. Hence, we explore a broad set of drivers and barriers suggested in diverse streams of scientific literature, structure these drivers and barriers along the decomposed theory of planned behavior and build a conceptual model to explain the individual adoption of PPS. We use survey data to test the model empirically. Our findings suggest that benefit-related drivers of PPS are the attribution of ecological sustainability, cost advantages, and the expression of a modern lifestyle along with product variety and ubiquitous availability facilitated by PPS. Importantly, and in line with the narratives of platforms like Airbnb, our results also suggest the relevance of socially-related drivers, specifically the sense of belonging to a community, social interactions, altruistic enjoyment of helping others through PPS, as well as normative social influence exerted by one’s peers. ... mehr Some distinct barriers to adoption contrast these benefits. Barriers to usage exist with regard to effort, process risks, privacy risks, lack of trust, and knowledge on PPS. Lastly, seeking independence through ownership emerges as a barrier to PPS and contrasts the independence that can be gained from ubiquitous availability. We discuss implications for information systems theory and practice.