Opportunities of a Shared Economy in Hungary Based on Primary Research

Abstract

The term ‘shar­ing eco­nomy’ means an eco­nomy based on shar­ing, a com­munity eco­nomy. The model fea­tures ele­ments such as pay­ing at­ten­tion to the en­vir­on­ment, the im­port­ance of curb­ing con­sump­tion, and ra­tion­al­ising con­sump­tion habits. Its sig­ni­fic­ance could best be high­lighted through re­cyc­ling waste, the pur­pose of which is to re­duce the amount of waste gen­er­ated from the goods we use, and also to re­duce the need for new re­sources by re­cyc­ling such waste back into the sys­tem. For those ad­voc­at­ing the shar­ing eco­nomy it is a po­ten­tial way to rein in the global over­con­sump­tion that is based on in­di­vidual con­sump­tion, while for those op­pos­ing the idea it sig­ni­fies com­pet­i­tion and a threat to their live­li­hood, not to men­tion the pos­sib­il­ity/sus­pi­cion of tax op­tim­isa­tion, or in a worse-case scen­ario tax avoid­ance. This study does not aim to de­cide which of the camps on the two sides of the ar­gu­ment is right; in­stead, it provides an over­view of the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the shar­ing eco­nomy and its main areas thus far. It ar­gues for the model re­ly­ing mostly on in­ter­na­tional prac­tice and ex­per­i­ence. One of the ob­ject­ives of our re­search is to ex­plore the dif­fi­culties, obstacles and an­om­alies re­lat­ing to the reg­u­la­tion of the area, par­tic­u­larly to tax laws. Fur­ther­more, we strive to identify the cir­cum­stances that have res­ul­ted in flour­ish­ing shar­ing eco­nom­ies in some coun­tries, so that we can put for­ward pro­pos­als to foster such de­vel­op­ment in Hun­gary, mak­ing use of the coun­try’s cap­ab­il­it­ies. The study sum­mar­ises the res­ults of our sec­ond­ary re­search, our primary re­search con­duc­ted in Hun­gary in 2019, an on­line sur­vey and in­de­pth in­ter­views. The ques­tions of the on­line sur­vey were aimed at in­vest­ig­at­ing the aware­ness and use of the shar­ing eco­nomy, and people’s open­ness to such ini­ti­at­ives.