Participation in the Sharing Economy

This report gives an in-depth overview of the topic of participation in the sharing economy. It forms one part of a European Union Horizon 2020 Research Project on the sharing economy: "Ps2Share Participation, Privacy, and Power in the Sharing Economy". We aim to foster awareness of the consequences of the sharing economy for the way people behave, think, interact, and socialize across Europe. Our overarching objective is to identify key challenges of the sharing economy and improve Europe’s digital services through providing recommendations to Europe’s institutions. The initial stage of this research project involves a set of three literature reviews of the state of research on three core topics in relation to the sharing economy: participation (1), privacy (2), and power (3). This piece is a literature review on the topic of participation. It summarizes previous research on the antecedents of participation in the sharing economy, including factors such as age, gender, socio-economic status, attitudes, motivations, Internet skills and urbanity. It also looks at the outcomes of participation in the sharing economy in terms of economic and noneconomic outcomes including factors such as social capital, trust and reputation. By assessing the drivers and barriers to participation in the sharing economy, as well as the outcomes, it sheds light on points of intervention for policy and directions for future research.