In a world where climate change is becoming increasingly apparent, a transition to acircular economy is emphasised as necessary to achieve a sustainable future. Sharingunused assets and products, instead of producing and consuming new ones, ishighlighted as an important part of the circular model. This is usually referred to as thesharing economy. Currently research into the phenomenon is mainly linked to largecities, where the municipality is highlighted as an important player. But since the wholeof Sweden needs to change to a circular, and thereby sharing, economy, not just the bigcities, it is important to examine how municipalities of different sizes act in relation tothe sharing economy. This master's thesis therefore explores how the size of amunicipality, operationalized as the number of inhabitants, affects the municipality'sgovernance strategies regarding the sharing economy. Data collection has been donethrough semi-structured interviews with officials from three municipalities withdifferent population numbers: Bollebygd, Ulricehamn and Borås. A thematic analysiswas carried out, and a framework for municipalities' governing strategies of the sharingeconomy was applied. The results show that size in some cases affects howmunicipalities govern the sharing economy, where larger municipalities have moreresources and can therefore interact more with sharing initiatives. This is mainly evidentwhen the municipality itself owns a sharing initiative. It is also apparent when it comesto acting as regulators of the sharing economy, where the largest investigatedmunicipality has introduced more regulations. The results also show that there are someparts of the municipal governing of the sharing economy that do not seem to be affectedby size. All municipalities face common challenges in the form of questions about howmuch the municipality should participate in the sharing economy, the need for abehavioural change in the population to increase sharing, and logistical challengesaround sharing. These challenges can also be found in previous research. Conclusionsthat can be drawn from this study are that size affects to some extent the ability ofmunicipalities to govern the sharing economy, where small municipalities with fewerresources do not have the same opportunities as larger municipalities. This can bemitigated however by taking part in networks, where knowledge can be shared betweenmunicipalities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-226146 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Ekenberg, Linnéa |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för naturgeografi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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