Do Sharing Economy Platforms Foster Trust in Others? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

28 Pages Posted: 4 Jan 2019 Last revised: 28 Jul 2020

See all articles by Sylvain Dejean

Sylvain Dejean

CEREGE, University of La Rochelle

Thierry Pénard

Université de Rennes 1 - Faculte de Sciences Economiques; Armorican Mole for Research on the Information Society and Uses of the Internet; Centre de Recherche en Économie et Management (CREM)

Date Written: july 20, 2020

Abstract

The rise of digital platforms, where peers can share goods or services, has drawn attention to their ability to foster trust amongst their members. Combining experimental methods with an online survey of 1,334 representative internet users in France, we investigate whether users of Sharing Economy Platforms (SEPs) are more likely to cooperate in the context of a trust game. Our main findings show that trust in others does not increase with the use of SEPs. Moreover, our experimental design allowed us to test whether belonging to the same peer-to-peer platform (BlaBlaCar, in particular) created interpersonal trust. We show that a BlaBlaCar user is not likely to send more money to another BlaBlaCar user in a trust game. This finding suggests that trust built in digital platforms is not transferable elsewhere.

Keywords: Trust, Sharing Economy, Platforms

Suggested Citation

Dejean, Sylvain and Pénard, Thierry, Do Sharing Economy Platforms Foster Trust in Others? Evidence from a Survey Experiment (july 20, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3304528 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3304528

Sylvain Dejean (Contact Author)

CEREGE, University of La Rochelle ( email )

La Rochelle, F-17042
France

Thierry Pénard

Université de Rennes 1 - Faculte de Sciences Economiques ( email )

7, Place Hoche
35000 Rennes
France

Armorican Mole for Research on the Information Society and Uses of the Internet ( email )

France

Centre de Recherche en Économie et Management (CREM) ( email )

7 place Hoche
Rennes, Bretagne 35065
France

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