How to Grow the Sharing Economy? Create Prosumers!

Abstract

The sharing economy has changed many rules of business. One of those rules is the role of the firm and – importantly – the role of consumers, who can perform two roles and become both providers and consumers, i.e. “prosumers”. Therefore, the key network effect to leveraging the power of the sharing economy is for one-sided users, those who are consumers (e.g., Airbnb guests) or providers (e.g., Airbnb hosts), to add the second role and perform as providers and consumers and become prosumers (e.g., those who are Airbnb guests and hosts). Surprisingly, no studies have investigated this important phenomenon and measured how one-sided users may become prosumers. An online survey of 305 Airbnb users showed that trust and gratitude had a significant positive influence on service providers’ and consumers’ intentions to adopt the respective other role and become prosumers, and that those with high gratitude and trust had the highest intentions to become prosumers. However, consumers and providers differed markedly in how trust and gratitude influenced their intention to become prosumers. This study expands our understanding of trust and gratitude and highlights the potential for sharing platforms to create prosumers from both pools of one-sided users. Furthermore, it also makes a valuable contribution to the prosumer and sharing economy literatures by being the first to empirically measure users’ intentions to become prosumers in the sharing economy. We discuss the implications of the findings for practitioners, and suggest how future research could help leverage the sharing economy.

Share or not to share? Sharing economy in public eyes

“…Here, up to 80% of respondents put clear statement that rating (obtained by customers) play a significant role in the sharing economy. Also other studies confirmed this fact [7,11].…”

“…It means when one is experiencing good trustworthy service, and this service is overcoming ones' expectations person can feel gratitude. Consumers who experienced such a service are more willing to adopt the role of the provider in the sharing economy in the future [7]. Nadeen [11] confirmed, that being cared and understood -(multidimensional social support), has strong impact to value co-creation trough sharing economy platforms.…”

“…There are different motives why are people willing to share. The study by Lang [7] who aimed on psychological factors, showed that the trust and gratitude have positive effect on consumers to become providers of the service. Trust is ability to count on individual, group or company [8].…”

“…Development of information technology enabled to create interactive sharing business platforms. "Central to success of sharing economy platform business is their ability to generate network effect" [7]. The more providers are registered at platforms, the larger is offer for consumers.…”

“…It works vice versa, the more consumers are registered at platforms, the larger is potential market for providers. There is potential, that consumers can also become both consumer and provider -"prosumers" [7]. In order to create sustainable competitive advantage at high profits sharing economy service have to have market orientation: to reflect consumer respondents; identify user potential desires and share value between service and user [16].…”