Project

Member of University of Ljubljana

School of Economics and Business

Code

J5-1782

Project

Looking into the dark side of the triadic relationship in the sharing economy

Period

1. 7. 2019 – 30. 6. 2022

Range on year

1,66 FTE

Head

Barbara Culiberg

Research activity

Social sciences/Economics

Research organisation

/

Abstract

Recently, there has been an upsurge in a new type of economy, labelled the sharing economy which enables consumers to utilize goods or services through temporary access non-ownership models by relying on the Internet. As a result, the understanding of the market in the sharing economy has changed, as it is no longer divided only in terms of suppliers and consumers, but the relationships become much more complex, and a triadic platform-based relationship is created by three groups of participants: service enablers (e.g., Uber, Airbnb), service providers (e.g., driver, host), and customers (e.g., rider, guest). Consequently, the tensions among different players are growing and ethical misconduct is becoming more prevalent. Because of the complex relationships that develop in the sharing economy (i.e. enabler – provider, enabler – consumer, consumer – provider), existing models of ethical evaluations need to be reconsidered to understand how individuals develop their ethical position through these interactions.

The focus of this project will be on the users (i.e. consumers and providers) of the sharing economy. The objective is to understand the ethical evaluations of others’ transgressions, antecedents and outcomes of these evaluations in the sharing economy context. Therefore, the main research question is: How does the process of ethical evaluations of other participants’ wrongdoings in the sharing economy unfold? Considering the popularity of the sharing economy, it seems imperative to develop new models that would help explain:

• (1) how do users evaluate the disruptive behaviours of others (providers/enablers)?
• (2) what are the relational outcomes of user ethical evaluations of others and how do they interact?
• (3) how does ethics at different levels influence user ethical evaluations of others?
• (4) which factors from the ethical and relational theories moderate the relationships between the ethical antecedents, evaluations, and outcomes?

Researchers

sicris.si

Citations for bibliographic records

sicris.si

Research project is (co)funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency