Assessing environmental effects of platform-enabled sharing economy business models –

Developing a conceptual framework

Abstract

The mounting environmental problems indicate that current patterns of production and consumption are not sustainable. The digital transformation has enabled sharing economy business models (SEBM) that interlink providers and consumers of goods and services to facilitate sharing as an alternative to traditional ownership modes of consumption. Whether such SEBM attain positive environmental effects depends largely on the changes in consumer behavior and product life cycles they induce. Better understanding the interlinkages between SEBM, consumer behavioral change, and product life cycles is therefore crucial for the evaluation of the environmental sustainability of SEBM. In this paper, we present our approach to developing an assessment framework to enable quantification of these factors.