This thesis is mapping in a detail and describes the current situation and prediction of the penetration of information technology based mostly on the cloud and blockchain technologies into the real global economy and identifying trends that affect these areas. Focus is primarily on socialization of services, concept of sharing economy and financial-technology (FinTech) companies. Next part describes the process of maturing of information technologies, which enables bypassing of costly intermediaries, who are replaced by other users or advanced algorithms in the fields, which werent fundamentally touched by ICT until now. Work intersects the knowledge of the of the IT industry and minor specialization from FFU VSE.

Research questions: What different factors impact trust in sharing economy platforms and sharing economy service providers? Purpose:     The study aims to explore which factors create trust towards the sharing economy platforms and actors providing the service, and mainly the potential relationships between the trust factors Method:      The study was conducted with a quantitative approach. A survey was used for data collection. The data gathered from the survey was analyzed using regression to test 7 predefined hypotheses Conclusion:     Trust towards the platform is influenced by two main factors, perceived security, and perceived risk. There are four factors of trust influencing the trust towards actors providing the service. These factors are personality-based trust, experience-based trust, cognitive-based trust, and lastly the trust towards the platform where the service provider operates.

The sharing economy is an evolving economic model that is based on collaboration and sharing access to goods with other people. A leading example of this are car-sharing services, which allow people who are strangers to each other to access a car in return of a fee. Although these services are widely spreading across the globe, there is still a short understanding of the customer motives and barriers to engage in these services. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the factors that affect customer participation in carsharing services including motives and barriers. The study was designed to test and modify an adapted conceptual framework through conducting an abductive qualitative study in the form of semi-structured in-depth interviews with a total of 18 interviewees. The empirical findings of the study suggest that there is a total of 14 relevant factors affecting consumer participation in sharing services: 3 factors were related to consumption trends, 7 factors were identified as motives and 4 as barriers. Among all of these factors, economic motivations were recognized to be the most critical factor for customers. The results of this study are highly relevant to companies which operate car-sharing services when considering customer needs and demands.

Sharing economy (SE) has become a major business on a global stage, given that many of the companies involved have grown to become some of the leading firms in terms of investment and reach. Examples include companies in the transportation and car service sectors along with the lodging services. Some of the famous companies are Lyft and Uber in the transport sector and Airbnb in accommodations. As the SE gains ground, there are new challenges presented in understanding customer loyalty. Traditional studies on customer loyalty focused on understanding why consumers remained loyal to one service provider, which was straightforward. However, SE is a challenge because more than one provider gives service. The main purpose of this research was to understand how the various antecedents of customer loyalty along with the traits of SE influence the loyalty of consumers who utilize the SE services, specifically concerning the vehicle transport and car services sharing economy. This research utilized quantitative methods through questionnaires that gathered data from respondents who have utilized a website or app to engage SE services in the transport sector. All antecedents of sharing economy tested such as perceived value and perceived service quality were found to have a positive correlation to customer satisfaction, which had, in turn, a strong positive correlation with customer loyalty.

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / In this dissertation, I argue that questioning the relationship between technological change, specifically the new types of markets and practices enabled by the “sharing economy” and inequality has become an urgent need. While the sector promotes itself as the harbinger of egalitarian access to economic opportunity and consumption, independent studies of its operations and impacts point towards significant discriminatory dynamics favoring the already privileged. As the sector keeps growing, understanding its impact on inequality becomes ever more critical. I focus on one sharing economy platform, Airbnb, which facilitates the practice of “home-sharing,” or more accurately short-term rentals. I investigate the relationship between Airbnb and inequality in three papers that focus on how the deeply unequal urban settings where much of the economic activity on Airbnb takes place operate within the context of economic activity enabled by the platform. The analysis for all three papers is based on the data for more than 450,000 Airbnb listings and the demographic and economic characteristics of the neighborhoods they are located in. In the first paper, I look at how race determines the patterns of participation and outcomes for people who rent out their properties. I show that the economic opportunities generated by the platform are unequally distributed across the urban landscape. There are fewer listings in areas with higher concentrations of non-White residents, the listings that are located in these areas charge lower prices, and have lower earnings. The second paper investigates the relationship between the public reputation system on Airbnb and racial discrimination. I show that characterizing the reputation system as a racially neutral tool, which has the potential to reduce discriminatory outcomes, is highly problematic. Airbnb listings located in neighborhoods with higher percentages of non-White residents have a harder time generating reputation information when they first come on the platform and tend to have systematically lower ratings. The third paper focuses on how short-term rentals generates new dynamics of gentrification in cities, by providing evidence for a new type of “rent gap” between long-term and short-term rentals, and how property owners are exploiting it. I argue that short-term rentals, in the absence of further effective regulation from governments, are likely to drive increasing levels of gentrification as they remain highly profitable and occupy an increasing number of housing units. I believe that studying these aspects of the sharing economy contributes to a fuller understanding of technological change and its understudied interaction with inequality. Moving beyond the mostly theoretical and aggregated understanding of change inherent in the SBTC literature, my research promotes a more concrete and empirical engagement with change in line with some of the research on the “digital divide,” and the emergent literature on inequality on online platforms. Ultimately, I think such an engagement can serve as the basis for a broader theoretical reckoning with the increased pace of technological change as more and more of our social life is “disrupted” by technological interventions, with significant consequences. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

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In this thesis, we use methods from econometrics to empirically measure and quantify how digital information influences industries and markets. Specifically, we focus on two important areas of marketing: online reputation management, and competition between online and offline markets. In the first part of the thesis, we study the impact of management review responses, a popular reputation management mechanism, on consumer ratings. To do so, we exploit a difference in managerial practice across two hotel review plat- forms, TripAdvisor and Expedia: while hotels regularly respond to their TripAdvisor reviews, they never do so on Expedia. Based on this observation we employ a “difference-in-differences” design to identify the causal impact of management responses on ratings, and show that responding hotels see an average increase of 0.1 stars. We then turn to analyze the mechanisms behind this increase in ratings and show that by responding to reviews, hotels attract consumers who are inherently more positive, and therefore more likely to leave good reviews. In the second part of the thesis, we study peer-to-peer markets and their impact on traditional industries. We do so by looking at Airbnb, a sharing economy pioneer offering short-term accommodation. We combine data from Airbnb and the Texas hotel industry, and estimate the impact of Airbnb’s entry into the Texas market on hotel room revenue. To identify Airbnb’s causal impact on hotel room revenue, we use a “difference-in-differences” empirical strategy that exploits the significant spatiotemporal variation in the patterns of Airbnb adoption across city-level markets. We estimate that in Austin, where Airbnb supply is highest, the impact on hotel revenue is roughly 8-10% for the most affected hotels. Further, we find that affected hotels have responded by reducing prices, an impact that benefits all consumers, not just participants in the sharing economy. The results presented in this thesis have practical implications for firms seeking to improve their operations and marketing strategies, platforms seeking to design better and efficient marketplaces, and consumers who are often not aware of important dynamics that can be helpful in their decision-making process.

This thesis presents a public relations perspective of the sharing economy by exploring how three prominent sharing economy companies, Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit, communicate to form a relationship with key stakeholders, including customers and service providers. Employing a qualitative, thematic analysis, this study analyzed each company's website communication and found the relationship qualities of social trust, safety and support to be prominent elements of relationships communicated by each company. Serving as one of the only public relations studies to address the sharing economy, this thesis extends relationship management theory's application to a new socioeconomic movement and situates current sharing economy research in a new context of public relations. This study provides important communication insights for organizations in the sharing economy that rely on strong organization-public relationships in order to be successful, and it unites public relations and sharing economy research. / Master of Arts / This thesis provides the academic discipline of public relations with a new context for understanding the way organizations communicate relationships with the general public and their customers or independent workers (gig workers) in a new environment called the sharing economy. The sharing economy has dramatically altered the way people consume products and services, as it allows people to temporarily share goods and services with strangers through an online platform. The study analyzes three prominent sharing economy companies, Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit, using a qualitative method to explore this new, peer-to-peer business model. Through analyzing each company's website communication, the study revealed that companies in the sharing economy communicate the relationship qualities of social trust, safety and support with the public.

Yes / Much of the existing scholarly debate on sharing economy to date has focused on the use of technology in developed countries. However, the recent upsurge of mobile technology adoption in developing countries has provided suitable breeding ground for sharing economy. The lack of native theories in tourism and hospitality sector with scare utilization of unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) provide necessity for this research. This study adapted meta-UTAUT model as theoretical lens and extended the model with hedonic motivation, trust, and self-efficacy. Based on data from 301 potential Indian consumers, the results underscored the central role of attitude that significantly mediated the effects of effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions on consumer intention to use Airbnb. Meanwhile, performance expectancy emerged as significant direct determinant of intention alongside attitude, trust, and self-efficacy. The proposed model explained as much as 65% variance on Indian consumer’s intention to use Airbnb.

Yes / Privacy is an emerging issue for home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb. Home-sharing providers (business customers) are subject to both digital privacy risks (e.g., data breaches and unauthorized data access) and physical privacy risks (e.g., property damage and invasion of their personal space). Therefore, platforms need to strengthen their institutions of privacy management to protect the interests of providers and maintain their commitment. By applying the micro-level psychological aspect of institutional theory, our research investigates how providers decide their level of commitment to a platform by evaluating the institutions of the platform’s privacy management. Our survey recruited 380 Airbnb providers from the Prolific panel. Structural equation modeling analysis shows that both physical and digital privacy practices strengthen providers’ legitimacy judgment of the platform’s privacy management and subsequently increase their commitment to the platform. Our theoretical contribution lies in revealing the effects of physical and digital privacy practices on B2B relationships from an institutional perspective. Our research is among the first to provide an integrative framework illustrating providers’ psychological process of legitimacy judgement. It also has practical implications for sharing economy platforms to manage privacy. / The authors gratefully acknowledge the Seed Corn Funding from University of Bradford and the Research Productivity Support Scheme from Macquarie University.