The Role of Individuals in Sharing Communities: Exploring Determinants for Sharing Behavior and for Designs of Sharing Economy Models

The recent emergence of sharing economy models has established novel organizational forms which are founded upon individuals who participate in commonly sharing resources with others in sharing communities. Sharing economy... [ view full abstract ]

The recent emergence of sharing economy models has established novel organizational forms which are founded upon individuals who participate in commonly sharing resources with others in sharing communities.
Sharing economy models show a high organizational complexity with varying degrees of openness and relationships between the crowd and the firm. They are designed along a spectrum from purely open to purely closed design options.
Although design options capture the building parts of sharing economy models and help create and differentiate individual configurations, they are insufficient to explain the variety of sharing economy models and individuals’ sharing behaviors.
Hence, in this paper, we seek to understand the factors that determine respective sharing behaviors and designs of sharing economy models.
The factors are explored through a regression model at the empirical example of the organization Gawad Kalinga. The regression model is composed of two groups of dependent variables, individual’s sharing behavior and outcome of sharing economy model, and three groups of independent variables, i.e. individual’s profile, individual’s possessions and individual’s trust mindset.
The findings centrally suggest that individual’s sharing behavior is driven by individual wealth and age, and the designs of sharing economy models influenced by the individual’s trust and position.