Inherently unstable? Scaling, mission drift, and the comparative performance of community-based platforms in the sharing economy

Jozef Cossey, Tom Dedeurwaerdere and Anaïs Périlleux

Ecological Economics, 2023, vol. 212, issue C

Abstract: Digital platforms have enabled sharing among strangers as a means to satisfy economic needs. This development was expected to allow traditional, community-based sharing to be taken to a much larger scale, providing a mechanism to address a variety of societal and environmental concerns. However, this early optimism seems misguided, as commercial sharing economy platforms are increasingly criticized for their negative societal consequences and ambiguous environmental impact. Testing claims made in the literature, we investigate whether this mission drift in community-based platforms can indeed explain this shift towards an increasingly commercial orientation in the sharing economy. Building on a comprehensive geographical mapping, the quantitative analysis of our granular dataset does not support these claims. Rather, we find that community-based platforms perceive increased scaling potential while avoiding mission drift. By complementing these quantitative findings with an in-depth case study, we explain the underlying mechanisms allowing for this alternative scaling strategy of community-based platforms.

Keywords: Sharing economy; Platform economy; Digital platforms; Community-based governance; Mission drift (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800923001908
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:212:y:2023:i:c:s0921800923001908

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.107927

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().