Socio-cultural Factors on Expansion of the Sharing Economy

Materialism, Eco-consciousness and Social Capital

Abstract

According to the representative literature (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Gansky 2010; Rifkin 2014), some socio-cultural factors are thought to have affected strongly the recent global diffusion of the sharing economy. In this paper, in terms of economic sociology, we took up three factors that are weakening in materialism, the rise in eco-consciousness, and the degree of social capital. And then we verified the relationship between those three factors and the intention to use the sharing economy services. The data (N = 1,609) from the consumer survey conducted between September and October 2016, in Tokyo metropolitan area were used for the verification. Our results indicated that, contrary to what was considered in the previous studies, the materialistic attitude prompted the intention to use. Eco-consciousness was also positively correlated with the intention. Concerning the social capital, while networks and norms both had a positive relation to the intention to use, the trust had statistically nothing to do with it.