Trust and Distrust in Two-sided Markets: An Example in the Sharing Economy

Abstract

Mobile applications and Internet-based platforms continuously foster the rise of the sharing economy business model that can nowadays be found in various industries. In this paper, we focus on potential customers in the ridesharing industry. We use the setting of 'BlaBlaCar', a popular ridesharing platform, to investigate the implications of 'trust' and 'distrust' on the users' intention to engage in a sharing encounter. In particular, we extend the research model by Mittendorf (2017) which investigates the influence of trust and risk in the sharing economy. In this regard, we differentiate between the platform and the sharing partners, while incorporating both trust and distrust. Our study employs survey data (n = 238) and structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Our results provide empirical evidence that trust and distrust have unequal effects on the respective user intention, which contributes to the understanding of two-sided market platforms. Academic and practical implications are discussed.

Spatial and Socioeconomic Analysis of Host Participation in the Shared Accommodation Economy – Airbnb in New York City

“…Social capital is a necessary factor for participation in sharing economy platforms [29]. Trust is the currency of sharing economy [4,19]. Trust itself can be characterized as trust in the platform and trust in the sharing partnership.…”

“…Trust itself can be characterized as trust in the platform and trust in the sharing partnership. Greater trust in the platform increases the intention to engage in sharing [19]. Trust between peers can be established through reputation mechanisms such as star ratings or review sharing [17].…”

“…Attitudes towards Trust and Greener Consumption: The analysis of trust in relation to participation in the sharing economy is well-researched [3,19,29], given the relative nascence of this general area. In inducing trust as an independent variable, the three-stage notion of the "trust stack" [3] -trust the idea of sharing or consuming collaboratively (stage 1), followed by trust in the platform, for example, Uber or Airbnb (stage 2), and finally trusting the other user (stage 3) -is important.…”

Sharing Data – Not With Us! Distrust as Decisive Obstacle for Public Authorities to Benefit From Sharing Economy

“…Several scholars highlight that trust is the “currency” of a collaboration that includes the sharing of factors such as information ( Botsman and Rogers, 2011 ; Mittendorf, 2018 ) in particular in relation to sustainability ( Penz et al, 2018 ). The research notes that trust is a significant and decisive factor for successful collaboration and motivation to share knowledge or cooperate with stakeholders (e.g., Dyer and Singh, 1998 ; Nienaber et al, 2015 ; Brattström and Bachmann, 2018 ).…”

“…The research notes that trust is a significant and decisive factor for successful collaboration and motivation to share knowledge or cooperate with stakeholders (e.g., Dyer and Singh, 1998 ; Nienaber et al, 2015 ; Brattström and Bachmann, 2018 ). Regarding sharing economy literature, researchers ( Mittendorf, 2018 ; Penz et al, 2018 ) demonstrate that trust in platforms such as crowdsourcing is one of the main drivers for people engaging in online platforms.…”