Understanding collaborative consumption: Test of a theoretical model

Abstract

Collaborative consumption websites have enabled consumers to focus on shared access to products rather than owning them. This study aims at developing a comprehensive theoretical model to explain consumer outcomes for collaborative consumption. It develops and tests a structural equation model using partial least squares path modelling and survey data collected from a car-sharing website. The results suggest that consumer intentions to rent are driven primarily by perceived economic, environmental and social benefits through the mediator of perceived usefulness, and enjoyment, in turn driven by sense of belonging to the sharing community. Interestingly, social influence did not play a role. When making word-of-mouth recommendations, in addition to these factors, consumers also take website trust into account, underpinned by the structural assurances of the website. The paper rounds off further implications of the research for theory and practice.

The Cinderella moment: Exploring consumers' motivations to engage with renting as collaborative luxury consumption mode

“…Similarly, other research studies show that SCC clothing platforms are very popular among luxury apparel enthusiasts as they offer ease of use and relieve users of the burden and potential risk of ownership (e.g., Habibi, Kim, & Laroche, 2016; Netter & Pedersen, 2019). Past studies also demonstrated that this kind of product consumption is impacted by the sense of ownership and perceived risk involved that can be mediated by consumers' involvement with the apparel product and emotional attachment to apparel (Barnes & Mattsson, 2017; Park & Armstrong, 2019).…”

Consumption in the Circular Economy: A Literature Review

“…Besides experiences, it also considers the impact that such solutions have on the everyday life of the consumer [74]. The social characteristics of consumers are important when it comes to influencing their perception [68,77,97,120,160]. Emotional and affective aspects such as enjoyment and excitement are included here, as well as ease of use and convenience [54].…”

“…In this category, we included aspects such as trust, risks, disgust, and newness, as well as concerns about lack of ownership. Trust refers to the ability to be confident that the provider is offering a quality solution, and that in case of damage, they will solve any problem [54,55,72,97,126]. It also refers to trust in other customers, as some of the solutions require interaction between customers [95,120,130].…”

“…Another aspect that influences the perception of circular solutions is the different types of benefits the consumer derives from the offering. On the one hand, economic benefits such as cost savings resulting from discounted prices have a positive effect on consumer acceptance according to the literature reviewed [77,84,97]. On the other hand, several authors found that environmental benefits support positive perceptions [54,60,78], and social benefits have also been mentioned by authors as aspects relevant to the consumer [77,90,120].…”

Proposição de um modelo teórico de intenção de consumo colaborativo entre idades

“…No intuito de compreender e explicar o comportamento do consumidor, muitas pesquisas têm utilizado a teoria do comportamento planejado para atingir estes objetivos. Esta teoria considera as crenças comportamentais, normativas e de controle, para explicar atitude, influência e intenção comportamental (AZJEN, 2002;BARNES;MATSSON, 2017). A crença comportamental, segundo Fishbein e Azjen (1975), refere-se às prováveis consequências que determinado comportamento irá gerar, sendo que estas podem ser percebidas como sendo positivas ou negativas.…”