Towards a Prescriptive Framework of Sharing Platform Models

While research on the sharing economy has sought to illustrate business models within the sharing economy, the focus of this research has largely been on unicorns Airbnb, Uber, and other technology-driven market platforms. Furthermore, inductive approaches to study business models in the sharing economy fail to distinguish between the multitude of practices – in particular, those practices that promote sustainable consumption – currently attributed to the sharing economy due to continued semantic confusion. In contrast, this short paper departs from a prescriptive definition of the sharing economy for sustainability used to indicate relevant practices. We suggest that the study of business models, or platform models, in the sharing economy must encompass the mediated practice as disparate practices can take place on the platform and result in different sustainability implications. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present an initial framework of sharing economy platform models, which is linked to the mediated practice of sharing between a resource owner and a resource user. These practices illustrate the key activities that both actors engage in during the process of value co-creation with the platform. The initial framework is a result of ongoing morphological analysis in consultation among researchers and literature. In addition, we propose a schematic of sharing as a practice, which illustrates platform attributes that impact the value co-creation process perceived by the resource owner and resource user through the platform. With this paper, we seek to contribute to ongoing conceptualisations of business models for sustainability transitions, which we argue shall recognise the role of businesses, non-traditional organisations and grassroots initiatives that leverage online platforms in the sharing economy.