Sharing instead of owning is one of the major trends in modern (business) life. By changing how people consume, the rise of the sharing economy has the potential to redefine the role of owners, consumers and producers, change their mode of transaction, create innovative business models, disrupt existing industries, and challenge political and regulative institutions. In addition to these practical implications, the sharing economy phenomenon represents a novel playground for theoretical advancement, attracting a multitude of research and researchers from different disciplines. While this can potentially open up new avenues for practice and theory to stimulate each other, they do not seem to go hand-in-hand at the moment. This volume brings together research from a wide variety of theoretical backgrounds and disciplines to encourage academic discourse on the sharing economy phenomenon. It comprises contributions that are grounded in different theoretical perspectives, including business history, economics, strategic management, organization studies, information systems, political science, legal studies, linguistics, and semantics. While all contributions focus on the sharing economy phenomenon, they examine the subject from different disciplinary angles. Together, they provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of research on the sharing economy.

This book employs an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral lens to explore the collaborative dynamics that are currently disrupting, re-creating and transforming the production and consumption of tourism. House swapping, ridesharing, voluntourism, couchsurfing, dinner hosting, social enterprise and similar phenomena are among these collective innovations in tourism that are shaking the very bedrock of an industrial system that has been traditionally sustained along commercial value chains. To date there has been very little investigation of these trends, which have been inspired by, amongst other things, de-industrialization processes and post-capitalist forms of production and consumption, postmaterialism, the rise of the third sector and collaborative governance. Addressing that gap, this book explores the character, depth and breadth of these disruptions, the creative opportunities for tourism that are emerging from them, and how governments are responding to these new challenges. In doing so, the book provides both theoretical and practical insights into the future of tourism in a world that is, paradoxically, becoming both increasingly collaborative and individualized.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} Evaluating achievements, challenges and future avenues for research, this book explores how new dimensions of knowledge and practice contest, reshape and advance traditional understandings of sustainable consumption governance.

This open access book considers the development of the sharing and collaborative economy with a European focus, mapping across economic sectors, and country-specific case studies. It looks at the roles the sharing economy plays in sharing and redistribution of goods and services across the population in order to maximise their functionality, monetary exchange, and other aspects important to societies. It also looks at the place of the sharing economy among various policies and how the contexts of public policies, legislation, digital platforms, and other infrastructure interrelate with the development and function of the sharing economy. The book will help in understanding the future (sharing) economy models as well as to contribute in solving questions of better access to resources and sustainable innovation in the context of degrowth and growing inequalities within and between societies. It will also provide a useful source for solutions to the big challenges of our times such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and recently the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19). This book will be of interest to academics and students in economics and business, organisational studies, sociology, media and communication and computer science.

The book provides an encompassing overview of all aspects relating to the sharing economy paradigm in different fields of study, and shows the ongoing research efforts in filling previously identified gaps in understanding in this area. Control and optimization analytics for the sharing economy explores bespoke analytics, tools, and business models that can be used to help design collaborative consumption services (the shared economy). It provides case studies of collaborative consumption in the areas of energy and mobility. The contributors review successful examples of sharing systems, and explore the theory for designing effective and stable shared-economy models. They discuss recent innovations in and uses of shared economy models in niche areas, such as energy and mobility. Readers learn the scientific challenging issues associated with the realization of a sharing economy. Conceptual and practical matters are examined, and the state-of-the-art tools and techniques to address such applications are explained. The contributors also show readers how topical problems in engineering, such as energy consumption in power grids, or bike sharing in transportation networks, can be formulated and solved from a general collaborative consumption perspective. Since the book takes a mathematical perspective to the topic, researchers in business, computer science, optimization and control find it useful. Practitioners also use the book as a point of reference, as it explores and investigates the analytics behind economy sharing.

The wide-ranging implications of the shift to a sharing economy, a new model of organizing economic activity that may supplant traditional corporations.

This is the ultimate source for anyone who wants a comprehensive view of how the sharing economy began and how it may fundamentally change capitalism across the globe. The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Collaborative Consumption examines the business phenomenon of the sharing economy, giving readers a thorough analysis of this up-and-coming sector. The book presents a detailed historical perspective of sharing and cooperatives, followed by a discussion of societal factors—predominantly technology—that have facilitated the fast growth of collaborative consumption businesses. Additional chapters offer progressive perspectives on how companies can further commercialize sharing. Written for undergraduate and graduate students studying the collaborative market and for those with entrepreneurial aspirations, this book provides important insight about technology facilities sharing, peer-to-peer lending, grassroots social entrepreneurial efforts, the economics of the sharing economy, legal and public policy issues, and more.