The Trap of Success: A Paradox of Scale for Sharing Economy and Degrowth

Abstract

Over the recent years, the sharing economy has been discussed as a community-based solution for a more sustainable future. Supported by the development of information technologies and defined by a large range of activities based on the access of underutilized resources over ownership, the sharing economy has been framed as a socio-economic model that is able to increase social bonding and collaboration and to reduce the inefficient allocation of resources. Within this framework, the sharing economy seems to align with the ideas of degrowth, broadly defined as a downscaling of production and consumption activities oriented to increase environmental quality and social collaboration. Despite the connections existing between them, no previous studies investigate the two concepts together. By considering the evidence provided by previous literature, this paper maps the links and similarities existing between sharing economy and degrowth and analyzes the discrepancies existing between the promises of the sharing economy and the impacts generated by practices. A paradox of scale, where the sharing activities fail to deliver as a consequence of success is also discussed together with future research directions. This paper contributes to the existing debate around alternative economic models and can support the design of sustainable practices.

Sharing communities – Community currency in the sharing economy

“…It has been framed as a complex, disruptive and controversial socio-economic phenomenon (Schor 2014), with no clear definition (e.g. Lengyel 2017), rather a large set of related definitions, such as collaborative, peer-to-peer or platform economy (Andreoni 2020). Depending on the discipline and the focus of research, there is a difference between academics in how much emphasis they place on IT support, on the genuine practice of sharing and on the role of money.…”

“…Nevertheless in many cases it leads to a "rebound effect" (Jevons 1865) through the creation of the so-called "on demand" economy. Companies operating under the umbrella of the sharing economy bought new goods in order to facilitate sharing and users created new capacity by accessing goods and services that would not have been used or made in the first place (Andreoni 2020). The present model is based on non-monetary transactions between peers and excludes such kind of business-topeer models.…”

“…The presented model may also increase collaboration and in some cases social bonding. In the case of traditional sharing economy platforms, the creation of social relations decreases over scale and time (Andreoni 2020). According to Barnes and Mattsson (2017), as the community grows, interpersonal connections become more casual and economic motivations prevail.…”

“…As a result, the sharing economy and solutions based on blockchain technology have started to grow exponentially. Both of them enable peer-to-peer transactions without the need for trusted third parties and both of them have been framed as models that disrupt the established economic structure and existing business models (Andreoni 2020). According to Killen (2015: 488), "the connectivity between peers is the infrastructure both of Bitcoin and the Sharing Economy."…”

Sharing Economy Platforms’ Pricing Strategies and Decision Preferences: The Example of DiDi

“…Today, the fast iterative of technologies such as the Internet, ICT, Cloud compu-ting, and Big Data has given the sharing economy a more multidimensional and deeper connotation (Frenken & Schor, 2017;Wu & Shen, 2015) and form (Zervas et al, 2013). Many scholars have researched the concept of the sharing economy from different perspectives (Andreoni, 2020), thus, it has been gradually extended from the production field to the consumption field (Hamari et al, 2016;Selloni, 2017), and discussions about the relevant theories have been deepened. For example, based on the view of Li and Lu (2015), the sharing economy is a kind of "collaborative consumption" system with a basic "use of ownership" concept, an "individual versus individual "trading business model, and based on new information consumption.…”