The relative importance of the business model motive for customer participation in the sharing economy

The sharing economy, defined by peer-to-peer interactions through a platform, has been gaining ground in re-cent years. In this study, we discuss the relative importance of customers' perceived motives to participate in the two most common models of the sharing economy: access-based consumption and ownership-transfer. We focus on taxi-hailing and post-delivery as examples of access-based consumption and second-hand trade as an example of the ownership-transfer. While these two contain heterogeneous business model patterns that can motivate customers differently, common motives are significant in both models. We study common mo-tives and motives aligned with the business model patterns, which we call business model motives, i.e. variety for the ownership-transfer model and availability for the access-based. We demonstrate that while the business model pattern is different, the relative importance of the business model motive vis-a-vis other motives is similar. The novelty of our work lies in its coverage of more than one model of the sharing economy and juxtaposing mo-tives across them.(c) 2022 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.