Does the sharing economy increase inequality within the eighty percent?: Findings from a qualitative study of platform providers

Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2017, Pages 263-279

  Schor, Juliet B ^a  

^a BOSTON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

Airbnb; income inequality; platform economy; sharing economy; TaskRabbit

Indexed keywords

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT; EQUITY; INCOME DISTRIBUTION; LABOR; QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS; WAGE;

EID: 85019379934     PISSN: 17521378     EISSN: 17521386     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cjres/rsw047     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Albinsson, P. A. And Yasanthi Perera, B. (2012) Alternative marketplaces in the 21st century: building community through sharing events: Alternative marketplaces in the 21st century, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 11: 303-315.
2. Bardhi, F. And Eckhardt, G. M. (2012) Access-based consumption: The case of car sharing, Journal of Consumer Research, 39: 881-898.
3. Bellotti, V., Ambard, A., Turner, D., Gossmann, C., Demkova, K., and Carroll, J. M. (2015) A Muddle of Models of Motivation for Using Peer-to-Peer Economy Systems, pp. 1085-1094. New York: ACM Press.
4. Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
5. Bertoni, S. (2014) Uber CEO Kalanick Likely a billionaire after $18. 2 billion valuation. Forbes, 6 June.
6. Botsman, R. And Rogers, R. (2010) What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. New York: Harper Business.
7. Botsman, R. (2015) Defining the Sharing Economy: What is Collaborative Consumption-And What Isn't Available online at: https://www. Academia. edu/4020708/My-House-is-Yours. -A- Worldwide-Study-on-Home-Exchangers-profile- and-motivations-with-Roberta-Garibaldi- [Accessed 29 December 2016].
8. Cansoy, M. And Schor, J. B. (2016) Who Gets to Share in the "Sharing Economy": Understanding the Patterns of Participation and Exchange in Airbnb. Boston College, Unpublished Paper.
9. Council of Economic Advisors. (2016) Economic Report of the President. Available online at: https://www. whitehouse. gov/sites/default/files/ docs/ERP-2016-Book-Complete%20JA. pdf
10. Davis, A., Kimball, W., and Gould, E. (2015) The class of 2015: despite an improving economy, young grads still face an uphill climb. Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper #401. Available online at: http://www. epi. org/files/2015/the-class-of-2015-revised. pdf
11. Dubois, E., Schor, J., and Carfagna, L. (2014) New cultures of connection in a Boston time bank. In J. Schor and C. Thompson (eds.) Sustainable Lifestyles and The Quest for Plentitude: Case Studies of the New Economy, pp. 95-124. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
12. Edelman, B. G., Luca, M., and Svirsky, D. (2016) Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment (Research Paper Series). Harvard Business School Negotiation, Organizations and Markets Unit; Social Science Research Network.
13. Edelman, B. And Luca, M. (2014) Digital discrimination: The case of Airbnb. com. Harvard Business School Working Paper, (14-054). Available online at: http://www. west-info. eu/files/airbnb-research. pdf
14. Forno, F., Garibaldi, R., Scandella, E., and Polini, I. (2013) My house is yours: A worldwide study on home exchangers' profiles and motivations. University of Bergamo. Available online at: https://www. Academia. edu/4020708/ My-House-is-Yours. -A-Worldwide-Study- on-Home-Exchangers-profile-and-motivations- with-Roberta-Garibaldi- [Accessed 29 December 2016].
15. Fraiberger, S. And Sundararajan, A. (2015) Peer-topeer rental markets in the sharing economy. New York University. Unpublished paper.
16. Hacker, J. S. (2006) The Great Risk Shift. New York: Oxford.
17. Hall, J. V. And Krueger, A. B. (2015) An Analysis of the Labour Market for Uber's Driver-Partners in the United States. Available online at: https:// s3. Amazonaws. com/uber-static/comms/PDF/ Uber-Driver-Partners-Hall-Kreuger-2015. pdf
18. Henwood, D. (2015) What the sharing economy takes. The Nation. 27 January.
19. Ikkala, T. And Lampinen, A. (2015) Monetizing network hospitality: hospitality and sociability in the context of Airbnb (pp. 1033-1044). Presented at the CSCW'15 Proceedings of the ACM 2015 conference on Computer supported cooperative work. New York: ACM.
20. Kalamar, A. (2013) Sharewashing is the new greenwashing. Available online at: http://www. opednews. com/articles/Sharewashing-is-the-New-Gr-by-Anthony-Kalamar-130513-834. html [Accessed 29 December 2016].
21. Katz, L. F. And Krueger, A. B. (2016) The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015. Available online at: http:// krueger. princeton. edu/sites/default/files/akrueger/ files/katz-krueger-cws---march-29-20165. pdf
22. Konrad, A. And Mac, R. (2014) Airbnb cofounders to become first sharing economy billionaires as company nears $10 billion valuation. Forbes, 20 March.
23. Lampinen, A. And Cheshire, C. (2016) Hosting via Airbnb: motivations and financial assurances in monetized network hospitality. Presented at the CHI'16 Proceedings of the annual conference on Human factors in computing systems. New York: ACM.
24. Lampinen, A., Huotari, K., and Cheshire, C. (2015) Challenges to participation in the sharing economy: The case of local online peer-to-peer exchange in a single parents' network. Interaction Design and Architecture(s), Special Issue on Peer-to-Peer Exchange and the Sharing Economy, 16-32.
25. Mishel, L. And Bivens, J. (2015) The State of Working America. Cornell, NY: ILR Press.
26. Möhlmann, M. (2015) Collaborative consumption: determinants of satisfaction and the likelihood of using a sharing economy option again, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 14: 193-207.
27. Morozov, E. (2013) The "sharing economy" undermines workers' rights. Financial Times, 14 October.
28. Myers, C. (2015) Decoding Uber's proposed $50B valuation (And What It Means For You). Forbes, 13 May.
29. Newton, C. (2013) Temping fate: can TaskRabbit go from side gigs to real jobs The Verge, 23 May.
30. Overgoor, J., Wulczyn, E., and Potts, C. (2012) Trust Propagation with Mixed-Effects Models. Stanford University, Unpublished paper. Available online at: http://web. stanford. edu/~cgpotts/papers/ OvergoorWulczynPotts. pdf
31. Parigi, P., State, B., Dakhlallah, D., Corten, R., and Cook, K. (2013) A community of strangers: The dis-embedding of social ties, PLoS One, 8: e67388.
32. Parigi, P., and State, B. (2014) Disenchanting the world: The impact of technology on relationships. In L. M. Aiello and D. McFarland (Eds.) Social Informatics, LNCS 8851, pp. 166-182, 2014. Available online at: http://link. springer. com/chapter/ 10. 1007/978-3-319-13734-6-12 [Accessed on 29 December 2016].
33. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
34. Piketty, T. And Saez, E. (2014) Inequality in the long run, Science, 344: 838-843.
35. Ravenelle, A. (2017) Sharing economy workers: selling, not sharing, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 10: 279-293.
36. Reich, R. B. (2015) The Share-the-Scraps Economy. Available online at: http://robertreich. org/post/ 109894095095
37. Rifkin, J. (2014) The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons and the Eclipse of Capitalism. New York: St. Martin's Press.
38. Saez, E. And Zucman, G. (2016) Wealth inequality in the United States since 1913: evidence from capitalized income tax data, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131: 519-578.
39. Schneider, N. (2014, December 21) Owning is the New Sharing. Available online at: http://www. shareable. net/blog/owning-is-the-new-sharing
40. Scholz, T. (2016) Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
41. Schor, J. (2014) Debating the sharing economy. Great Transition Initiative. Available online at: greattransition. org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy
42. Schor, J. B. (1992) The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books.
43. Schor, J. B. And Attwood-Charles, W. (2017) The Sharing Economy: labour, inequality and sociability on for-profit platforms, Sociology Compass. forthcoming.
44. Schor, J. B. And Fitzmaurice, C. J. (2015) Collaborating and connecting: The emergence of the sharing economy. In L. Reisch and J. Thogersen (eds.) Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption, pp. 410-425. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
45. Slee, T. (2015) What's Yours is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy. New York: OR Books.
46. Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. New York: Bloomsbury.
47. Sundararajan, A. (2016) The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
48. Telles, R. Jr. (2016) Digital Matching Firms: A New Definition in the "Sharing Economy" Space, ESA Issue Brief #01-16, U. S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Office of the Chief Economist, Washington, D. C. Available online at: http://www. esa. gov/sites/default/files/digital-matching-firms-new-definition-sharing-economy-space. pdf, [Accessed on 29 December 2016].
49. Zervas, G., Proserpio, D., and Byers, J. (2015) A first look at online reputation on Airbnb, where every stay is above average. Social Science Research Network. January 28.