**1. Introduction**

In recent years, day-to-day economic practice has given us a host of examples attesting to the changing nature of economic exchange. For most people, *Uber* and *Airbnb* are possibly the most recognizable examples but, simply by taking a look at the variety of digital exchange platforms and networks currently available, it is possible to see that economic transactions are profoundly changing. These platforms, which complement or replace traditional markets such as passenger transport or tourist accommodation, are two clear examples of the fact that some of the foundations of the economy are structurally changing [1–3].

This development has often been noted from the perspective of sharing or of collaboration [4, 5]. With the advent of Web 2.0 and social networks, whose major difference from the first digital wave is that they enable and facilitate interactive digitalization [6], sharing has modified the economic exchange. Collaborative consumption is the new form of mass sharing between and among people, principally through peer-to-peer (P2P) digital platforms [7]. It implies the coordinated acquisition and distribution of goods or services for use, it is always done in expectation of some type of compensation (monetary or otherwise), and it places access or use over ownership [4, 8, 9]. In this sense, the key question for management research is to establish how consumer behavior has changed and, as a consequence thereof, how these transformations modify the business strategy [3, 10].

But, how should sharing or collaboration be interpreted? What is new in such forms of collaborative consumption? Do they create the need for us to approach economic exchange from a new analytical perspective? Do we have evidence of these new forms of consumption? What effects does collaborative consumption have on the economic activity? These are some of the questions that have inspired this chapter.

In order to answer them, a wide range of conceptual and empirical studies has been reviewed. The analysis extends from the core to the periphery of the issue. Firstly, the background, definitions, and conceptual frameworks of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption will be addressed. Secondly, the set of motivations explaining their rise will be studied, which allowed me to postulate the research hypotheses. Thirdly, new pan-European empirical evidence will be provided. Fourth and lastly, the main conceptual and empirical corollaries of the research will be addressed and discussed.

## **2. Digital sharing as economic behavior**

The first digital wave was consolidated in the late twentieth century and generates new markets (digital markets) that significantly alter forms of consumption and production. Information goods and services, that is, all goods and services that can be digitalized, play a leading role in digital markets [11]. These goods have particular economic characteristics, such as nonrivalry (public goods), which are experience goods (whose utility can only be determined once they have been consumed), and they have a particular cost structure, with very high fixed costs (production) and decreasing marginal costs (reproduction) tending toward zero. The combination of these properties means that the price-setting rule revealed by all the information, which is equal to the marginal cost in traditional markets, does not work in digital markets. In establishing the value of information goods and services, the price is different from the marginal cost, and external network economies play an important role [12]. In addition, a decoupling of the traditional relationship between ownership and use is starting to occur through dematerialization, as represented by information goods and digital markets [13]. However, interpretative models of digital exchange are still based on rational and intangible decision-making, and individuals maximize its utility or the utility of its network only by taking into consideration individual or collective interests, which are still not collaborative [5].

In the early twenty-first century, a second wave of digital technology gave new impetus to the transformation of economic exchange behavior, which evolved from initial digital exchange into sharing or collaborative exchange. However, to understand this new trend, it is important first to define what sharing is. Sharing can be interpreted as one of the forms of people's economic behavior. Its existence and relevance as a type of exchange in human communities has been demonstrated since the beginning of the civilization [14]. Sharing means going beyond individual interests to take into

**163**

([5], p. 1597)."

accessing them ([8], p. 881)."

**3. Collaborative behavior in economic thought**

*Collaborative Behavior and the Sharing Economy: Pan-European Evidence for a New Economic…*

account human and social values. Sharing may have functional motivations, such as survival, but it can also be an altruistic act motivated by convenience, courtesy, or kindness toward others. All sharing practices are related to cultural norms, but sharing is much more than an altruistic act that occurs within the family, close social circles, or among friends. Indeed, it can also occur among strangers. In this context, it is possible to define sharing as "the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use as well as the act and process of receiving something from others for our use ([14], p. 126)." In an earlier, more socially oriented approach to the issue, sharing has been

With the emergence of digital forms of sharing behavior through collaborative consumption, the literature has made significant advances [15]. Especially relevant is the differentiation between collective consumption and collaborative consumption. The literature has traditionally taken collective consumption to mean "those events in which one or more persons consume economic goods or services in the process of engaging in joint activities with one or more others ([16], p. 614)." This approach, which includes a wide range of daily consumption practices, such as drinking and eating with friends, or watching a show together, places emphasis on joint participation, though it seems too broad for the purposes of describing the phenomenon of collaborative consumption. For consumption to be collaborative, people need to adopt a specific form of coordination beyond their group behavior: the coordinated acquisition and distribution of the goods or services consumed. In other words, collaborative consumption is "the act and process of distributing what

Similarly, the literature has made advances in terms of clarifying collaborative consumption, particularly in relation to the delimitation of the differences between it and other types of consumption with prosocial intentions, such as gift-giving or economic exchanges. A number of earlier approaches associated collaborative consumption with traditional market behaviors such as "sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping ([7], p. 15)," but that overly broad approach was further delimited, with collaboration being restricted to the coordinated "acquisition and distribution of a resource for a fee or other compensation

It is therefore necessary to insist on the fact that collaborative consumption behavior implies the coordinated acquisition and distribution of products or services for use, some type of compensation (monetary or otherwise), and access, often temporary, over ownership. In this respect, the notion of access-based consumption would adequately encompass the domain of and motivations behind collaborative consumption in the sense that "instead of buying and owning things, consumers want access to goods and prefer to pay for the experience of temporarily

Economic research addresses the sharing economy and collaborative consumption as if it were a conceptual umbrella that integrates diverse phenomena related to new forms of economic exchange and economic behavior. This new, sharing interpretation of exchange and behavior [10, 17] has been given many different names. Among them we find "product-service systems" [18], the idea of a consumption "mesh" or network [19], "collaborative consumption" [4, 7], the idea of "prosumers" [20], "commercial sharing systems" [9], "access-based consumption" [8], and even a new form of "crowd-based capitalism" [21]. All of these new exchange practices have two commonalities: "(1) their use of temporary access nonownership

interpreted as a "nonreciprocal prosocial behavior ([10], p. 331)."

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83608*

is ours to others for their use ([14], p. 126)."

#### *Collaborative Behavior and the Sharing Economy: Pan-European Evidence for a New Economic… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83608*

account human and social values. Sharing may have functional motivations, such as survival, but it can also be an altruistic act motivated by convenience, courtesy, or kindness toward others. All sharing practices are related to cultural norms, but sharing is much more than an altruistic act that occurs within the family, close social circles, or among friends. Indeed, it can also occur among strangers. In this context, it is possible to define sharing as "the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use as well as the act and process of receiving something from others for our use ([14], p. 126)." In an earlier, more socially oriented approach to the issue, sharing has been interpreted as a "nonreciprocal prosocial behavior ([10], p. 331)."

With the emergence of digital forms of sharing behavior through collaborative consumption, the literature has made significant advances [15]. Especially relevant is the differentiation between collective consumption and collaborative consumption. The literature has traditionally taken collective consumption to mean "those events in which one or more persons consume economic goods or services in the process of engaging in joint activities with one or more others ([16], p. 614)." This approach, which includes a wide range of daily consumption practices, such as drinking and eating with friends, or watching a show together, places emphasis on joint participation, though it seems too broad for the purposes of describing the phenomenon of collaborative consumption. For consumption to be collaborative, people need to adopt a specific form of coordination beyond their group behavior: the coordinated acquisition and distribution of the goods or services consumed. In other words, collaborative consumption is "the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use ([14], p. 126)."

Similarly, the literature has made advances in terms of clarifying collaborative consumption, particularly in relation to the delimitation of the differences between it and other types of consumption with prosocial intentions, such as gift-giving or economic exchanges. A number of earlier approaches associated collaborative consumption with traditional market behaviors such as "sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping ([7], p. 15)," but that overly broad approach was further delimited, with collaboration being restricted to the coordinated "acquisition and distribution of a resource for a fee or other compensation ([5], p. 1597)."

It is therefore necessary to insist on the fact that collaborative consumption behavior implies the coordinated acquisition and distribution of products or services for use, some type of compensation (monetary or otherwise), and access, often temporary, over ownership. In this respect, the notion of access-based consumption would adequately encompass the domain of and motivations behind collaborative consumption in the sense that "instead of buying and owning things, consumers want access to goods and prefer to pay for the experience of temporarily accessing them ([8], p. 881)."

## **3. Collaborative behavior in economic thought**

Economic research addresses the sharing economy and collaborative consumption as if it were a conceptual umbrella that integrates diverse phenomena related to new forms of economic exchange and economic behavior. This new, sharing interpretation of exchange and behavior [10, 17] has been given many different names. Among them we find "product-service systems" [18], the idea of a consumption "mesh" or network [19], "collaborative consumption" [4, 7], the idea of "prosumers" [20], "commercial sharing systems" [9], "access-based consumption" [8], and even a new form of "crowd-based capitalism" [21]. All of these new exchange practices have two commonalities: "(1) their use of temporary access nonownership

*Strategy and Behaviors in the Digital Economy*

research will be addressed and discussed.

**2. Digital sharing as economic behavior**

collective interests, which are still not collaborative [5].

This development has often been noted from the perspective of sharing or of collaboration [4, 5]. With the advent of Web 2.0 and social networks, whose major difference from the first digital wave is that they enable and facilitate interactive digitalization [6], sharing has modified the economic exchange. Collaborative consumption is the new form of mass sharing between and among people, principally through peer-to-peer (P2P) digital platforms [7]. It implies the coordinated acquisition and distribution of goods or services for use, it is always done in expectation of some type of compensation (monetary or otherwise), and it places access or use over ownership [4, 8, 9]. In this sense, the key question for management research is to establish how consumer behavior has changed and, as a consequence thereof,

But, how should sharing or collaboration be interpreted? What is new in such forms of collaborative consumption? Do they create the need for us to approach economic exchange from a new analytical perspective? Do we have evidence of these new forms of consumption? What effects does collaborative consumption have on the economic activity? These are some of the questions that have inspired this chapter. In order to answer them, a wide range of conceptual and empirical studies has been reviewed. The analysis extends from the core to the periphery of the issue. Firstly, the background, definitions, and conceptual frameworks of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption will be addressed. Secondly, the set of motivations explaining their rise will be studied, which allowed me to postulate the research hypotheses. Thirdly, new pan-European empirical evidence will be provided. Fourth and lastly, the main conceptual and empirical corollaries of the

The first digital wave was consolidated in the late twentieth century and generates new markets (digital markets) that significantly alter forms of consumption and production. Information goods and services, that is, all goods and services that can be digitalized, play a leading role in digital markets [11]. These goods have particular economic characteristics, such as nonrivalry (public goods), which are experience goods (whose utility can only be determined once they have been consumed), and they have a particular cost structure, with very high fixed costs (production) and decreasing marginal costs (reproduction) tending toward zero. The combination of these properties means that the price-setting rule revealed by all the information, which is equal to the marginal cost in traditional markets, does not work in digital markets. In establishing the value of information goods and services, the price is different from the marginal cost, and external network economies play an important role [12]. In addition, a decoupling of the traditional relationship between ownership and use is starting to occur through dematerialization, as represented by information goods and digital markets [13]. However, interpretative models of digital exchange are still based on rational and intangible decision-making, and individuals maximize its utility or the utility of its network only by taking into consideration individual or

In the early twenty-first century, a second wave of digital technology gave new impetus to the transformation of economic exchange behavior, which evolved from initial digital exchange into sharing or collaborative exchange. However, to understand this new trend, it is important first to define what sharing is. Sharing can be interpreted as one of the forms of people's economic behavior. Its existence and relevance as a type of exchange in human communities has been demonstrated since the beginning of the civilization [14]. Sharing means going beyond individual interests to take into

how these transformations modify the business strategy [3, 10].

**162**

models of utilizing consumer goods and services, and (2) their reliance on the Internet, and especially Web 2.0, to bring this about ([5], p. 1595)."

Conceptually, collaborative consumption behavior has been delimited by two distinct conceptual frameworks (**Table 1**). Consumer theory addresses the phenomenon from the perspective of a cultural and identity-based form of alternative exchange and behavior [22]. It has therefore paid greater attention to the concept of sharing, to types of consumption, and to collaborative markets or to the antiestablishment foundations of sharing [4, 7, 9, 23–26]. In contrast, information systems theory analyses the phenomenon from the perspective of digital P2P platform and network uses and behavior [27, 28]. These two approaches simply place more or less emphasis on the main components of collaborative consumption. While consumer theory has emphasized the analysis of motivations to explain nonownership access and uses, the information systems approach focuses on the study of technology acceptance models (TAMs) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) models that make using collaborative platforms and networks possible. The salient idea behind this second approach is that collaborative consumption operates through technological platforms (Web 2.0 or mobile applications). Within this context, the problem of motivations behind collaborative consumption behavior becomes the problem of motivations explaining the use of online collaborative consumption platforms. Thus, the success of such digital sharing platforms would explain the sharing behaviors of their potential users and resource providers [29]. In other words, participation behavior in collaborative consumption platforms can be formulated as an intent of acceptance and, therefore, can be approached from the perspective of TAMs and/or TPB models [30].

From the information systems approach, we are able to understand collaborative consumption as a "peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through community-based online services ([17], p. 2047)." In fact, this new type of exchange and behavior is an economic and technological phenomenon driven by new development of information and communication technologies (ICTs), advances in consumer awareness, and the proliferation of collaborative online communities that make commerce more social, sustainable, or fairer [31, 32].


**165**

**Table 2.**

*Collaborative Behavior and the Sharing Economy: Pan-European Evidence for a New Economic…*

I just showed that, through new forms of collaborative consumption, exchange behavior evolves the economy toward a new interpretative paradigm, from initial digital markets to sharing markets. Sharing exchanges incorporate and reveal a lot

Good properties Nonrivalry (public goods) Divisibility (rival goods become public) Experience goods Experience uses

Price differs from marginal cost Price or fee equal to marginal use

Network economies Sharing economies

Intangibles assets Disintermediation

Networked business and labor Networked individual

Temporary work Contingent work (e.g., gigs)

Individual and collective interest Prosocial interest (ethics, sustainability)

Monetary compensation Monetary or nonmonetary price or fee

Network competition Sharing competition

ICTs and Internet 2.0 (interactive digitization)

Digital uses of goods and services (information

Social networks and social media

or knowledge intensives)

Low fixed and marginal costs

Digital, noncoincident, and unregulated (temporary and diffuse economic activity)

that coordinate electronic exchange

information, or knowledge

Consumers/producers and businesses/platforms

Information is revealed before the price or fee

Cheap inputs of sharing uses of goods, services,

De-identification between ownership and use (repersonification; use without ownership)

Rational and emotional decision-making

Access over ownership exchanges

Free entry and exit

**Characteristics Initial digital exchange Sharing exchange**

(noninteractive digitization)

High fixed and low marginal

Consumers and businesses engaged in e-commerce

Price does not reveal all the

Cheap inputs of information and

Digitization Sharing

information

knowledge

Semi-identification between ownership and use (dematerialization)

Rational and intangible decision-making

Information and knowledge

Entry and exit costs (e.g., lock-ins)

exchanges

*Exchange in the initial digital economy and the sharing economy.*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83608*

**4. Toward new economic approaches**

Technology ICTs and Internet 1.0

Products Information goods and services (digital ownership)

costs

Markets Digital, noncoincident, and semiregulated

Key market stakeholders

Golden rule of the market

Efficiency sources

Basic process and economic activity

Production and labor organization

Ownership/use relationship

Economic interpretation and market structures

#### **Table 1.**

*Sharing economy and collaborative behavior: definitions and conceptual frameworks.*

*Collaborative Behavior and the Sharing Economy: Pan-European Evidence for a New Economic… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83608*
