Risk Aversion and Engagement in the Sharing Economy

Jessica Santana and Paolo Parigi
Additional contact information
Jessica Santana: Department of Sociology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Paolo Parigi: Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, Stanford University, 30 Alta Road, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Games, 2015, vol. 6, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: The sharing economy is a new online community that has important implications for offline behavior. This study evaluates whether engagement in the sharing economy is associated with an actor’s aversion to risk. Using a web-based survey and a field experiment, we apply an adaptation of Holt and Laury’s (2002) risk lottery game to a representative sample of sharing economy participants. We find that frequency of activity in the sharing economy predicts risk aversion, but only in interaction with satisfaction. While greater satisfaction with sharing economy websites is associated with a decrease in risk aversion, greater frequency of usage is associated with greater risk aversion. This analysis shows the limitations of a static perspective on how risk attitudes relate to participation in the sharing economy.

Keywords: risk; online; sharing economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/6/4/560/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/6/4/560/ (text/html)

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:gam:jgames:v:6:y:2015:i:4:p:560-573:d:57807

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().