1. Introduction
With the spread of mobile internet, sharing economies have become a hot topic worldwide. It is estimated that the size of the global sharing economy will increase from 15 billion dollars in 2015 to 335 billion dollars by 2025 [
1]. China has witnessed an explosive growth in its sharing economy, whose market trade volume topped 4.92 trillion RMB in 2017, and the sharing economy is estimated to account for over 10% of China’s GDP by 2020, according to a report by the State Information Center (SIC) in China [
2]. More than 700 million people participated in China’s sharing economy in 2017, including about 70 million service providers [
2].
The term “sharing economy” lacks an unified definition. There are many terms related to the sharing economy, ranging from narrow definitions to broader ones. Broadly speaking, sharing economy models cover commercial or non-commercial models based on the aim of sharing [
3], the sharing of physical goods and service delivery based on shared resources [
4], and a peer-to-peer model, a business-to-consumer model, and a business-to-business model based on the actors in the sharing economy [
5]. Narrowly speaking, the term “sharing economy” is commonly used to describe peer-to-peer trading [
6] and the sharing of underutilized goods and services via online platforms without the transfer of ownership [
7].
Sharing economies have been considered to be an important social and economic phenomenon with the potential to contribute to the sustainable development of society [
1,
4,
5]. Sustainability is a concept encompassing environmental, social, and economic benefits for society over time [
8]. By providing flexible employment opportunities and generating extra income for individuals, a sharing economy contributes to the economic dimension of sustainable development [
5,
7,
8]. By promoting sustainable uses of resources and alleviating environmental problems, a sharing economy contributes to the environmental dimension of sustainable development [
5,
7,
8]. By enhancing social connections among people, a sharing economy contributes to the social dimension of sustainable development [
5,
7,
8].
Two of the most prominent and widely cited examples of the commercial sharing economy are Uber (ride sharing platform) and Airbnb (accommodation sharing platform) [
7]. The basic components of such sharing economy models include service providers, sharing service users, and platform. Through sharing platforms like Uber and Airbnb, asset owners can share products or services, such as spare rooms and cars, with consumers they are unacquainted with. The unacquainted individuals complete the transfer of the right to use products or services through a sharing economy platform. For sharing among unacquainted peers, trust is crucial [
9,
10]. A sharing economy is a business model developed between strangers based on technology and trust. A potential premise for its operation is the establishment of trust. It was found that 89% of users attributed the success of their sharing transactions to trust towards each other [
1]. The sustainable growth of a sharing economy greatly depends on trust [
10].
Compared to the explosive growth of sharing economies in practice, academic research on sharing economies is still scare. Many studies have been made on trust issue in an e-commerce context, but very little research has been done on trust in the context of sharing economies, especially from the perspective of providers. Trust in the context of a sharing economy is different to that found in e-commerce [
11,
12], thus, it is necessary to carry out research on trust issues in the context of a sharing economy.
In this paper, we focus on peer-to-peer accommodation sharing models like Airbnb and Xiaozhu. The development of the peer-to-peer sharing economy depends on the trust and participation of both providers and consumers. In the sharing economy context, both the consumer and the provider also face risks such as theft, robbery, property damage, and even risk to their personal safety. Thus, research on the influencing factors of provider’s trust in a sharing economy is also necessary. Current research about trust in sharing economies mainly focuses on the trust of consumers, and little research has been done on suppliers’ trust building mechanisms in the sharing economy. To understand how the trust of providers in the sharing economy is influenced, this paper has carried out an empirical study on trust-building mechanisms from the perspective of suppliers. The purpose of this paper is to extend the current literature on trust-building mechanisms in the sharing economy and provide a comprehensive view of how the perceived usefulness of three types of online trust-building mechanisms affect providers’ trust in the platform and trust in the consumers.
This paper studies how the perceived institutions of sharing platforms motivate the providers to trust the sharing platform and the consumers with data collected from 209 providers on online short-term rental platforms in China. A model is developed and tested by the partial least square and structural equation model methods.
The paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 reviews the literature on online trust-building mechanisms and trust in a sharing economy.
Section 3 introduces the research model and hypotheses.
Section 4 explains the research method and data collection.
Section 5 presents the empirical results. Conclusions, including discussions, theoretical contributions, practical implication limitation, and future research, are provided at the end.
6. Conclusions and Discussions
6.1. Conclusions
From the perspective of providers in the sharing economy, this study explored the effects of three trust-building mechanisms on provider’s trust in the sharing platform and trust in consumers. Empirical results show that: perceived personal safety system, perceived property safety system and perceived review system are positively related to provider’s trust in the platform; provider’s trust in the platform has a positive effect on trust in consumers, indicating the trust transfer relationship from trust in the platform to trust in potential consumers; perceived personal safety system and online review system have a positive effect on provider’s trust in consumers by the partial mediation of trust in the platform, while the effect of perceived property safety system on trust in consumers is not significant. Among the three trust-building measures, the effect of perceived online review system on trust in the platform is the biggest, followed by the perceived personal safety system and perceived property safety system.
6.2. Discussions
The model had a good explanatory power in explaining provider’s trust in the sharing platform, implying that trust-building measures of property safety, personal safety and online review system are important factors that influence the provider’s trust in the sharing platform. The sharing of private property with unacquainted individuals leads to unprecedented levels of risk on personal safety and property safety in the context of sharing economy. Previous studies have confirmed that trust-building measures have positive effects on consumer’s trust in e-commerce context [
18,
43] and sharing economy context [
11,
16,
17,
30], while this study confirmed that these trust-building measures are also important for providers since the sharing platform is a two-sided market. It is very important for the sharing platforms like Airbnb to provide such trust-building measures to counteract providers’ risks and enhance providers’ trust in the sharing economy.
The results confirm that trust in the sharing platform enhances trust in peers on the platform, which are consistent with the previous studies of Mittendorf [
34,
35,
44] in the context of Airbnb and Uber. Some studies from the perspective of consumers in the context of sharing economy report similar findings. For example, Mittendorf found that passenger’s trust in Uber has a positive effect on trust in drivers [
44]. Möhlmann found that consumer’s trust in Airbnb has a positive effect on trust in providers of Airbnb [
11]. Thus, the results confirm the trust transfer relationship from trust in the platform and trust in peers.
Consistent with findings of Möhlmann [
11], the results show that trust in the sharing platform plays a partial mediation role between trust-building measures (perceived personal safety system and online review system) and trust in consumers, indicating that providers on sharing platforms are concerned about their personal safety and the trustworthy of potential consumers. However, the mediation effect of trust in the platform between perceived property safety system and trust in potential consumers is not significant. One possible explanation may be that the financial and property risks in the sharing economy environments have not been fully perceived yet by the providers in China compared to the obvious risks on personal safety.
6.3. Theoretical Contributions
For theoretical implications, this study makes at least three major contributions to the current literature in sharing economy.
First, this paper contributes to the growing literature on trust in the sharing economy context from the perspective of providers instead of consumers. Current research about trust in the sharing economy mainly focuses on the trust of consumers and little research has been done on the provider’s trust-building mechanisms in the sharing economy. To our knowledge, this is one of the few studies that empirically examines the antecedents of trust in the sharing economy from the perspective of providers.
Second, this paper explores the roles of perceived personal safety system, perceived property safety system and perceived online review system on provider’s trust. Unlike previous studies only examined the roles of specific trust-building measures like privacy policy and insurance coverage, this study classifies the trust-building measures into three types based on the roles of these trust-building measures and examines their effects on trust. Specifically, our results indicate that three institutional trust-building mechanisms have a significant influence on trust in the platform, which adds to the growing evidence on the effect of structural insurance on institution-based trust by confirming its applicability in the context of sharing economy.
Third, this paper distinguishes trust in the sharing platform and trust in peers in light of the trust targets of providers on sharing economy platform and explores the relationship between them. In addition, this paper also examines the mediating roles of trust in platform between trust-building measures and trust in potential consumers. Specifically, our results indicate that provider’s trust in the platform has a positive effect on trust in potential consumers and plays a mediating role between two trust building measures (i.e., personal safety system and perceived online review system) and trust in consumers, which extends the extant literature of trust transfer from the online e-commerce context to the sharing economy context and enriches the literature on trust transfer from consumer’s perspective to provider’s perspective in the context of sharing economy.
6.4. Practical Implications
For practical implications, this study provides guidelines for the sharing economy platforms to attract providers and establish effective institutional mechanisms for providers.
First, as a typical two-sided market connecting the demand and supply sides, in order to enhance user’s trust in the sharing economy, the sharing economy platforms should pay attention to not only consumer’s trust but also provider’s trust.
Second, the platform should recognize that online review system is the most significant antecedent in building provider’s trust in the sharing platform. In order to enhance provider’s trust, the platform should endow providers the right to review on consumers.
Third, the platform should focus on the institutional measures like identity authentication, background check and life insurance protection to ensure the personal safety of providers since perceived personal safety system has a significant effect on provider’s trust.
Fourth, in order to enhance provider’s trust in the platform, the sharing economy platforms should also pay attention to institutional measures like property insurance protection to reduce the provider’s risks toward property safety.
6.5. Limitations
This study has some limitations that should be addressed in future research.
First, this study collected data through online survey platform at one point in time and a longitudinal data collection or data from different sources would enrich the robustness of the model.
Second, the data was collected from providers on peer-to-peer accommodation platforms such as Airbnb and Xiaozhu in China. Although the peer-to-peer accommodation platform is one of the popular models of sharing economy, future research is necessary to improve the validity and generality of the results based on the different types of sharing economy platforms since the difference of goods to be shared might influence provider’s trust.
Third, since this research focuses especially on the three trust-building measures with respect to the two types of trust, models by adding moderation variables regarding provider’s experience or the difference of shared goods in the future might provide new insights to the trust-building mechanisms of providers in the context of sharing economy.