Between Pressure and Flexibility: Provider Scheduling in the Sharing Economy

10 Pages Posted: 12 Sep 2018

See all articles by Gemma Newlands

Gemma Newlands

BI Norwegian Business School; University of Amsterdam

Christoph Lutz

BI Norwegian Business School

Christian Fieseler

BI Norwegian Business School; Harvard University - Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

Date Written: June 14, 2018

Abstract

The sharing economy offers individuals various opportunities to generate additional income through sharing their personal possessions with strangers. The flexibility promised by sharing platforms, to share when and how often individuals prefer, has been highlighted as the key advantage of the sharing economy model. However, for sharing platforms which rely on ongoing and reliable sharing among private individuals, a tension can be observed between platforms encouraging and discouraging this flexibility. Simultaneously, the ostensible flexibility and informality of the sharing economy must in-creasingly reconcile itself with the reality of over-work and full-time engagement, whereby individuals may face pressure to provide a mixture of platform and individual factors. In this contribution, we conduct an initial exploration into this tension between flexibility and pressure in the sharing econo-my. Using data across twelve European countries, we differentiate perceptions of flexibility and con-trol among those who share their assets. The findings indicate that perceived pressure to provide var-ies by country, sharing frequency, motivation, most frequently used platform, and is based on whether individuals depend on the income from sharing. Perceived schedule control varies by age, education, country, and motivation. Taken together, the results show a picture where those most involved and dependent on sharing their assets feel the most pressured, while young, lesser educated providers also have least perceived schedule control. Thus, our study presents providing in the sharing economy as a more hierarchical activity than one might assume based on media and platform narratives.

Keywords: sharing economy, flexibility, control, scheduling, platforms, survey, quantitative

Suggested Citation

Newlands, Gemma and Lutz, Christoph and Fieseler, Christian, Between Pressure and Flexibility: Provider Scheduling in the Sharing Economy (June 14, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3241689 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3241689

Gemma Newlands

BI Norwegian Business School ( email )

Nydalsveien 37
Oslo, 0442
Norway

University of Amsterdam ( email )

Roetersstraat 11
Amsterdam, NE 1018 WB
Netherlands

Christoph Lutz (Contact Author)

BI Norwegian Business School ( email )

Nydalsveien 37
Oslo, Oslo 0448
Norway
+4746410206 (Phone)

Christian Fieseler

BI Norwegian Business School ( email )

Nydalsveien 37
Oslo, 0442
Norway

HOME PAGE: http://www.bi.edu/ncis

Harvard University - Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society ( email )

Harvard Law School
23 Everett, 2nd Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://cyber.harvard.edu/

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