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sharing programs take reciprocity or gift giving sharing scenarios.
In this article, I seek to analyze the relationship between the motivations and the personalities of sharing economy participants under the categorization of sharing defined by Belk: pure gift giving, reciprocity, and market exchange. I look forward to not only will it be possible to draw closer the gap of research, but also this thesis could provide a possible guidance to businesses segmenting target customers when making market strategies in sharing economy.
Chapter 2 Review of Related Literature and Studies
In this chapter, I seek to construct theoretical backgrounds and to set the following hypothesis. Three sessions listed below constitute this chapter:
1. The definition and the categorization of sharing and sharing economy
2. The business status of sharing business models and bike-sharing
3. The motivations and materialism to attitudes and intentions
2-1: Sharing and Sharing Economy
Definition
Sharing is an inherent human behavior growing and evaluating its forms alongside the evolution of the human societies. The oldest and most natural form of sharing can be traced back to the sharing of the uterus by a mother to her baby, or the food sharing by hunters in ancient hunter and gathering societies. (Belk, 2009) Through the assistance of information and communication technology (ICT), various forms of sharing become possible and popular among industries and consumers (Botsman, R.,
& Rogers, R. ,2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Wang & Zhang, 2012.) In which the
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most common mode is the access over ownership exchange (Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen, 2015). “Sharing Economy” nowadays becomes a trendy idea being discussed broadly by media and utilized by enterprises (Owyang, J., Samuel, A., &
Grenville, A., 2014). Not only sharing economy’s market size is fast growing, but also it becomes the new mainstream of buying (Owyang, J., Samuel, A., & Grenville, A., 2014). Because sharing rather than owning in many cases implies lower commodity consumption, less wastage, asset reusing, and energy saving, some scholars believe sharing economy can be one of the pathways to sustainability (Heinrichs, H., 2013).
Ownership is no longer the ultimate expression of consumer desire (Chen, 2008;
Marx, 2011). All in all, the formation of one’s social status by “you are what you own”
turns into the new “you are what you access” page led by sharing economy (Belk, 2014).
However, there also exist numerous controversial debates against sharing economy.
For instance, the fierce criticism came from the former USA chief labor department, Mr. Robert Reich, which he said the sharing economy is nothing but a new slavery (2015). His ideas was mainly against the topics on Uber though, it might also be another reflection of the unclearness on the sharing economy definition. Since there are not only consumers who participate into sharing economy, service providers resource donators, sharing community participants should also be included into our discussion. In addition, we should not only taking into consideration the short term rental sharing model, but also the models of peer-to-peer gift giving and sharing communities of reciprocity.
As an alternative to privately owning being emphasized in both market exchange and gift giving, sharing actually includes voluntary lending, pooling and resource
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allocation, and use of public property being authorized (Belk, 2007). The Economist describes sharing economy as “On the internet, everything is for hire (Zervas, G., Proserpio, D., & Byers, J. W., 2014).” While Jeremiah, Alexandra, and Andrew think sharing is new buying. Bardhi and Eckhardt define access-based consumption when talking bout the cases of car sharing as transactions in which no transfer of ownership takes place (Bardhi, F., & Eckhardt, G. M. 2012). It comes later one of the most common definition refers to a hybrid market model, in between owning and gift giving, of peer-to-peer exchange (Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen, 2015). Therefore, this research will follow the sharing economy definition composed with (Albinsson and Perera, 2012; Belk, 2010; Botsman, R., & Rogers, R., 2011): “The peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through community-based online services.”
Categorization
Fiske first categorized four psychological models to form human social life (Fiske, Alan Page, 1991). There are communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing. On top of Fiske’s summary, Belk constructed the first
categorization of sharing (Belk, 2010), where he treated sharing as a point standing on the continuous line in-between pure gift giving and market exchange. His idea was to differentiate sharing from the conventional understanding that it was included in gift giving or market exchange scenarios. This categorization is definitely a starting point to the following studies. Based on that we clearly distinguish sharing and sharing economy out of other human behaviors. However, Belk’s categorization makes the non-reciprocity as one of the necessary essences of sharing. Reciprocity is treated as a feature of market exchange, which does not belong to sharing or gift giving.
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However, it is easy to find numerous various sharing applications all around the globe, where each of them posits on a different location on the continuous line between pure gift giving and market exchange. Fro example, Couch Surfing belongs to gift giving sharing, a used cloth swap-party is reciprocal, and models like Airbnb or BlaBlaCar are market pricing sharing. Belk’s categorization therefore fits not perfectly the situation in my research. As a result, I should take the categorization by Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen (2015) into consideration. In their research, a mapping on 254 collaborative consumption (CC) services on Internet was conducted. In that research they took a two-step approach on categorization. The first step is to differentiate CC into to access over or to transfer the ownership of goods. The second step was to classify renting and lending in the category of access over ownership, and to clarify swapping; donating and purchasing used goods in the category of transfer of
ownership. Similar to the case of bike-sharing, most CC services are short term renting though, there are many other sharing implications on the line between pure gift giving and market exchange. We therefore can say it is obviously not proper to exclude a case from sharing merely because it is somewhat reciprocal. Moreover, this categorization from Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen does not violate the principles built by Belk and Fiske that the classification guideline is still on the continuous line between pure gift giving and market pricing. To summarize, I will take the simplified definition form Fiske and Belk with the principles constructed by Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen’s research (2015). In this research the sharing scenarios will be classified to pure gift giving, market exchange, and reciprocity. In this research the reciprocity will be designed as a one to one purely fair reciprocal situation in order to simplify the perceived of fairness and to make easy for comparison with the other two scenarios.
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Research Gap and Setting Hypothesis
A research blank exists in sharing economy field alone this direction that if
participant’s attitude would be different under different sharing scenarios. By far I have clarified the definition and categories of sharing economy scenarios. Those three scenarios are the circumstances surrounding when consumers engage in sharing economy. Although there are many previous studies around how motivations form and trigger consumer attitudes (e.g.Mazis, M. B., Ahtola, O. T., & Klippel, R. E.
1975; Maison, D., Greenwald, A. G., & Bruin, R. H., 2004), and how consumer behavior derive or influenced by consumer attitudes (e.g. Feldman, J. M., & Lynch, J.
G., 1988; Vermeir, I., & Verbeke, W., 2006), all those previous researches were conducted under a predefined solo-scenario. There is no study yet to examine if the consequence will keep the same when all these procedures conducted under different sharing mechanisms.
I suspect that people tend to participate more in gift giving rather than market
exchange sharing due to the cost difference. On the contrary, I suspect that the attitude of a market-exchange sharing participant is more positive than those of a reciprocal sharing participant due to the concern of fairness. Not only in the view of real world observations, but there are numerous psychological studies show the similar result (e.g. Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C., 1985; Shoup, D. C., 2005). Researches on
motivations to pro-environmental behaviors also show that economic motivation is the most significant (Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen 2015). On top of above, this article will try to fill the existing research blank by asking questions and testing the following hypotheses.
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Q1a. Is the intention of a gift-giving sharing participant higher than the intention of a market exchange sharing participant?
H1a. Sharing mechanism differs participants’ intentions to participate.
Q1b. Are market exchange sharing participants get better attitudes toward sharing?
H1b: Participants’ attitudes toward sharing are different under different sharing scenarios.
Note: A summary table of the literature review to show the research blank is shown in the appendix.
2-2: Bike-Sharing
I choose bike-sharing to design the research scenarios in this article for several reasons: First, bike-sharing is nowadays one of the most well known and broadly accepted sharing business model worldwide. From Amsterdam to Beijing, from campus wide small-scale implementations to international projects, there are over 535 public bike-sharing programs operated in over 50 countries on five continents
including 712 cities (Larsen, Janet; 2013). Bike-sharing gains far-ranging enthusiasm among participants. Second, bike-sharing arouses the least controversy than other sharing business practices. Unlike Airbnb of the room- sharing or Uber of car-sharing incurred legal disputes in many countries, bike-sharing implementations are mostly acceptable with each local society. Finally, bike- sharing is widely recognized to be pro-environmental, sustainable, energy saving. Like the discovery by Fishman, Washington, and Haworth (2013), the majority of bike-sharing participants are substituting from sustainable modes of transport rather than the car. This features
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could be driven by either intrinsic or extrinsic motivations or both, which will be discussed in more details in this article.
Definition and Categorization
Bike-sharing is a service in which bicycles are made available for shared use to individuals on a short term basis and is a mature implementation of sharing economy.
The first practical application emerged in 1965 in Amsterdam. Now bike-sharing programs are available in over 50 countries including over 700 cities with
approximate 1 million bicycles cities (Larsen, 2013). Bike-sharing allows each bike to be used by different users. In most cases bike-sharing is treated as an extension of short term bike rental programs though, some pure gift giving programs, such as public bike donation or in-campus free bike projects, and some reciprocal programs such as swipe bikes projects thrive. Almost all kinds of bike-sharing projects take advantage on ICT that smartphone mapping for bike availability pushes up the usage of each project. Benefits of bike-sharing summarized by Shaheen et al. (2010) are flexible mobility, emission reductions, physical activity benefits, reduced congestion and fuel use, individual financial savings and support for multimodal transport connections.
There are two general categories dividing bike-sharing applications. Local community groups or non-profit organizations mostly organize “Community Bike programs”;
while government agencies, sometimes in a public–private partnership, operate
"Smart Bike programs"(DeMaio, P. J., 2003; Shaheen, S., Guzman, S., & Zhang, H., 2010). Smart bike programs can be divided into two sub-categories, dock based bike-sharing and dockless bike-bike-sharing (DeMaio, P., 2009). Dockless bike-bike-sharing requires more bicycles in total while dock based bike-sharing becomes more popular and is
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implemented in more cities. All bike-sharing programs provide free or affordable short distance transportation through bikes that are also seen as a solution to the “last mile” problem and connect users to public transit networks (DeMaio, P., 2009).
People who participate in bike-sharing have various reasons. In some countries such as China, urban citizens who use their own bikes would concern more about theft or vandalism, parking or storage, and maintenance requirements would prefer more to participate in bike-sharing (Shaheen, S., Zhang, H., Martin, E., & Guzman, S., 2011).
On the other hand, with limits on the number of places where bicycles can be rented or returned, the service resembles public transit and has therefore been criticized as less convenient than a privately owned bicycle used door-to-door. Government-run bike-sharing programs can also prove costly to the public unless subsidized by commercial interests, typically in the form of advertising on docks or the bicycles themselves. (Shaheen, S., Guzman, S., & Zhang, H., 2010).
Status Quo and Case Examples
White Bike, emerged in Amsterdam in 1965, is the very first the bike-sharing program in the world. From then on, more and more players join the market. The world largest outdoor advertising company, Clear Channel, built the first IT-based bike-sharing system in 1998 in Rennes, France. In 2005, the first large-scale municipal third generation system called Vélo’v was launched in Lyon, French. In 2009. Public Bike System Company (PBSC) is formed in Montreal and North
America’s first major IT-based bike sharing program was launched. As of May 2011, the Wuhan and Hangzhou Public Bicycle bike-share systems in China were the largest in the world, with around 90,000 and 60,000 bicycles respectively.
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The development of bike-sharing business models is continually flourishing, in which each of the sharing scenarios has successfully operated examples. Below list
successful examples for each sharing scenarios.
1. Gift giving bike-sharing
Almost every gift giving bike-sharing practice sets either geographical or participants identity restrictions for risk-control. These programs often rely highly on donation or charity programs. In-campus sharing programs appear in many universities are the easy to see and most sustainable gift giving bike-sharing practice.
Webster University's Bike Share Program —
“By refurbishing our campus's abandoned and other donated bicycles, we can build a program that is free or low-cost for students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Our program promotes campus and environmental health, as well as continuing our strong
positive relationship with the community around us,” said by the Webster University's Bike Share Program website.
The university's bike-sharing program is supported by campus found and donation to maintain ongoing maintenance and daily operations. Such a gift giving bike-sharing program is only open to users on campus to lower the risk of thief or destruction.
These characteristics can be seen on most of the gift giving bike-sharing programs.
2. Reciprocal bike-sharing
Reciprocal bike-sharing programs mostly adopt membership policies. Peer-to-peer bike-sharing and sharing communities organized by nonprofit or municipal projects are the two main forms in this category.
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Citi-Bike in New York
From 2016 in Oxford, Cycle.land is one of the most well known peer-to-peer bike-sharing applications, where people treat it as the Zipcar of bike-bike-sharing. Cycle.land’s unique platform well solves, or as it does, bypasses, one of the biggest issues often occurs in peer-to-peer bike-sharing, the issue of fairness. Since not every bike to be shared value the same, sharing participants would concern about the imbalances from deal to deal. In Cycle.land, a member can choose whether to share their bike to somebody or to use a bike being shared by another member. All charge is free and all information is transparent to both sides. As it was said on their website: “Cycle.land is a peer-to-peer bike-sharing platform, that aims to make bikes easily available and affordable for everyone... Cycle.land makes effective use of existing resources rather than creating more bikes.”
3. Market exchange bike-sharing
Market exchange is the most widely adopted mechanism for nowadays bike-sharing in the world (Shaheen, S., Guzman, S., & Zhang, H., 2010). As it was discussed before, most market exchange bike-sharing programs are Smart Bike programs where they can be divided into dock based and dockless two subcategories.
Bike-sharing programs in China:
The Wuhan and Hangzhou Public Bicycle bike-share systems in China were the largest in the world as of May 2011, with around 90,000 and 60,000 bicycles respectively. 13 of the world's 15 biggest public bike share programs are in China.
China had a combined fleet of 650,000 public bikes by 2013. In March 2017, Beijing appeared over 200,000 dockless shared bikes from various companies in the market.
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Among them, Ofo & MoBike thrive and attract huge investments in the capital market.
Their bikes are accessible via smartphone applications and cost $0.16 per hour plus a refundable damage deposit of $50.
2-3: Motivations
It thrives the consumers’ enthusiasm to participate in various novel sharing platforms or business models. Statistical reports reveal that the participation of the new-sharing could double in 12 months, where consumers are mainly motivated by societal drivers, economic drivers, and technological drivers (Owyang, J., Samuel, A., & Grenville, A., 2014). Participation in sharing economy usually contains the implication as a pro-environmental behavior, which on some levels triggers off intrinsic-image
motivations (Albinsson & Perera, 2012; Belk, 2010; Botsman & Rogers, 2010;
Prothero et al., 2011; Sacks, 2011). Meanwhile, the participation in sharing economy usually accompanies with economic benefits brought by the reduction of consumption expenditures and the increase in life satisfaction.
Numerous studies and experiments have been dedicated to discovering the essence and relationships between motivations and human behaviors. The studies have not only shed light on the developmental and educational practices (Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000), but also gave broad implications on many aspects of our everyday business practices such as marketing ideas, pricing strategy and charity promotion plans (Bénabou, R., Tirole, J., 2006; Brécard, D., Hlaimi, B., Lucas, S., Perraudeau, Y., & Salladarré, F., 2009 ).
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation
It is generally believed that the motivations can be roughly divided into two
categories: intrinsic, extrinsic and that people’s behavior is a reflection of a mix of the
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two motivation types ( Bénabou, R., & Tirole, J., 2006 ). Intrinsic motivation, defined by ( Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000), is the “inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capabilities, to explore and to
learn.”(Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000). It is usually seen as “inherently interesting or enjoyable” (Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000). In other words, it is for the purpose of self-satisfaction which drives one to perform a certain activity, reasons behind varies from one’s attitudes, verbal commitment to the individual sense of
responsibility (Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J., 2002). It is also important to note that intrinsic motivation show different effects as the activities change, thus it lies on one hand within individuals, but on the other hand also exists in the relation to the activities performed (Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000).
However, in reality, it is logical to draw the conclusion that we engage in numerous activities not really due to intrinsic motivations, e.g. a not so interesting task.
Therefore extrinsic motivation is defined as to achieve a certain separable outcome (Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000). Economists tend to argue that our actions are mainly driven by extrinsic motivations, and the underlying reasons vary from experiencing external regulations, such behaviors are to satisfy an external result or reward, to interject regulation, which describes the psychological pressure exercised on people’s behaviors in order to avoid feeling guilty (Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L., 2000). This has also been proved by other studies which focused on self-benefit versus other-benefit appeals, pointing out one possible reason for going self-benefit appeal (to act pro-socially in order to maximize individual utility) is that the
motivation helps to solve the psychological conflict people have within (White, K., &
Peloza, J., 2009). Despite the fact that extrinsic motivation incorporates the above qualities, it’s important not to overlook the fact that a growing amount of evidence
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has enhanced the development on such topic — that our pro-social behaviors can be
has enhanced the development on such topic — that our pro-social behaviors can be