Openness and Legitimacy Building in the Sharing Economy:  An Exploratory Case Study about CouchSurfing

Márton, Attila; Constantiou, Ioanna D.; Lagoudakos, Georgios

doi:10.24251/hicss.2017.184

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Although previous literature provides us a theoretical foundation to understand customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform, to our knowledge, few studies have examined customers’ trust-building mechanisms from an institutional theoretical perspective. Compared with traditional marketplaces, the ridesharing marketplace lacks a clear and developed legal environment from the government, and institutional mechanisms established by the third-party platform may play a more prominent role in regulating the behaviors of service providers and guaranteeing the effectiveness of sharing transactions (Marton et al , 2017). Thus, this study focuses on institution-based trust in the ridesharing platform, which will be described in the next section.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform with institutional mechanisms

Shao

Yin

2019

INTR

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Purpose Drawing upon institution-based trust theory, the purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to examine the joint influences of legally binding and market-driven institutional mechanisms in promoting customers’ trust and continuance intention in the ridesharing platform; and secondly, to examine if there exists a trust transfer mechanism between institution-based trust and interpersonal trust. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted in China and data were collected from 307 customers in DiDi, which is one of the largest ridesharing platforms in China. Structural equation modeling statistical method was used to test the theoretical model and research hypotheses. Findings The empirical results suggest that market-driven institutional mechanisms, regarding feedback and surge pricing, have strong influences on customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform. In addition, legally binding institutional mechanisms, regarding payment security and driver certification, are also beneficial to promote customers’ trust. Furthermore, there is a trust transfer between customers’ trust in the platform and trust in the driver. Practical implications This study provides guidelines to the administrators of the ridesharing platform to establish effective institutional mechanisms. In particular, the platform can appropriately adopt and implement the legally binding mechanisms combined with market-driven mechanisms on the platform, in order to enhance customers’ trust and promote their subsequent transaction behaviors. Originality/value This study enriches and extends the extant literature of institution-based trust from e-commerce to the sharing economy by identifying four significant institutional mechanisms. Furthermore, this study presents a new perspective of customer trust (one-to-many) in the context of ridesharing and uncovers the transfer mechanism between institution-based trust and interpersonal trust.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform with institutional mechanisms

Shao

Yin

2019

INTR

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“…Moreover, user base is essential for new platform ventures in overcoming the liability of newness, as well as subsequent venture performance (Delmar, 2006; Huang et al., 2017). For instance, despite early controversies regarding the legal status of CouchSurfing's free travel accommodation service, the user base of this hospitality exchange platform increased to 12 million, which attracted a series of venture capital investments that facilitated new website features and mobile application development (Marton et al., 2017). In the case of the Chinese ride‐hailing giant DiDi Chuxing, despite consistent negative profit in the early days, it has continued to receive extensive funding from many investors due to its huge user base (Zhao, 2018).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growing user base in the early stage of sharing economy platforms: An integration of competitive repertoire and institutional legitimacy theories

Wang

Yang

Fang

et al. 2023

Production and Operations Management

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Sharing economy platforms are pressed to rapidly grow user bases at the early stage by aggressively targeting potential users through competitive actions. Due to the volatile nature of the sharing economy and its disruption to industry norms, these platforms encounter legitimacy challenges that impede user base growth. This paper integrates competitive repertoire and institutional legitimacy theories to develop a research model that explains early‐stage user base development in the sharing economy. We posit that the early‐stage user base is associated with structural characteristics of the competitive repertoire, whose effects are moderated by a platform's socio‐political legitimation efforts that address stakeholders’ regulatory and normative concerns. Using a comprehensive sample of 4644 monthly observations of 129 sharing economy platforms in China, we find that the volume of two context‐specific competitive actions, offering economic incentives and staging high‐visibility events, along with competitive repertoire complexity, are positively related to the platform's early‐stage user base. We also identify a significant negative relationship between repertoire differentiation and user base. Direct relationships are moderated by socio‐political legitimation, however, such that legitimation weakens the positive impact of context‐specific action volume but enhances those of repertoire complexity and differentiation. Managerial and practical implications are discussed in light of the findings.

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“…In particular, our definition reflects the motivations and benefits generally ascribed to the sharing economy. First, the sharing economy allows consuming without buying, which enables consumption at lower costs [18]. Access over ownership refers to the temporary use of consumer goods without a transfer of ownership [23].…”

Section: Sharing Economy and Platformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Platforms in the Sharing Economy: Does Business Strategy Determine Platform Structure?

Clemons¹,

Constantiou²,

Márton³

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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Sharing economy businesses are increasingly important, but the relationships between their strategies and their platforms' structure has received insufficient attention. To address this gap, we develop testable hypotheses building on following expectations. 1) Sharing economy businesses are attacking mature markets; 2) most sharing economy businesses follow one of Porter's two basic strategies, seeking a price advantage or a differentiation advantage; and 3) platforms that support differentiation-based strategies must provide more information to their users than platforms that support cost-based strategies. We located a database of 100 investment-grade sharing economy businesses to test our hypotheses. Our hypotheses received strong support from this database.

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Openness and Legitimacy Building in the Sharing Economy: An Exploratory Case Study about CouchSurfing

Abstract: Sharing economy start-ups

Cited by 6 publications

References 30 publications

Building customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform with institutional mechanisms

Building customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform with institutional mechanisms

Growing user base in the early stage of sharing economy platforms: An integration of competitive repertoire and institutional legitimacy theories

Platforms in the Sharing Economy: Does Business Strategy Determine Platform Structure?

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