Are weak relations working? Sharing platforms and social capital

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Alberta Andreotti, Guido Anselmi, Christian Hoffmann
Publishing Year 2018 Issue 2018/152
Language English Pages 17 P. 87-103 File size 110 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2018-152005
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Users’ work enables the functioning of sharing platforms, as they dedicate a sizable amount of time to read reviews to select a suitable partner to exchange with. Moreover, they provide ratings and evaluations collected by reputational algorithms, helping users to overcome informational asymmetries. The goal of this paper is to understand whether there are additional side benefits linked to users’ work on platforms, the key hypothesis being that users’ work on plat¬forms produces social capital. To investigate this, data from a EU-based multi country survey on participation to the sharing economy will be used, as well as data from focus groups. Empirical results show that as users engage with others they develop a loose common identification based on a common set of ethics. Furthermore, users undertaking more work are more likely to repeat interactions with selected partners.

Keywords: Sharing economy, social capital, consumer work, prosumption

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Alberta Andreotti, Guido Anselmi, Christian Hoffmann, Are weak relations working? Sharing platforms and social capital in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 152/2018, pp 87-103, DOI: 10.3280/SL2018-152005